Life of Pi: iTunes vs. Vudu vs. Blu-ray (updated) - Page 2

Happens with more Bluray too...plus bitrate isn't per sa everything.

There's such a thing as corporate socialism in this supposed land of milk and honey you call the "free market economy." When they get in a financial pickle (like the banks or the car makers), they just loooooves themselves some good ol' fashioned socialism. And sometimes there actually is a place for it.

We're saying there WON'T be a choice for consumers like there is now. You're stuck. Their internet way direct from the source... or no way. How is that the free market? Just like with health care... there is no free market. It's fixed... it's rigged. You really want that with media too?

Hollywood is worried about piracy now? Just wait 'til it's all in the cloud. Piracy will be the alternative source when their servers get hacked by the Chinese.
Edited by Dan Hitchman - 2/28/13 at 6:32pm

I'm talking more about UHD and beyond. This juncture is where it could possibly all change. At 1080p, for the time being, yes there still is a choice.

If there is a big enough stink from retailers and the public about no physical alternative for UHD... then maybe we'll get that necessary alternative to the internet. But like with DIVX... there had to be that stink in the air.

How is that working for audio? Has iTunes surpassed CD quality? It's going to be the same for video. Find the bare minimum people will accept and sell that. Technology improvements make more money for Apple, not better quality for consumers.

There still is CDs and SACD/DVDAs if you want them. I have a feeling that when the time comes when streaming/downloading becomes the new "medium", there will be options for the few who want "High" quality downloads.

iTunes is prevalent today but we still have CDs/DVD-A/SACDs being made.

Here is a demo of 4K video streaming in HEVC/H.265 at ~10 mbps. The future of streaming video is looking bright!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXY8Szhz42M

Wait, these are crops or downsampled images?

Very few SA-CD's and fewer still DVD-Audio's are being manufactured in comparison to the record company labels out there.

You can say this with confidence on a really crappy Youtube stream? Vimeo is bad enough, Youtube is worse still.

iTunes has destroyed music quality for everything except classical music (since you can still find some SA-CD's and a few Blu-ray audio titles) due to the fact they don't have this "fix it in the mix" attitude and record live using the very best microphones and digital consoles. Even if you had a 24/96 lossless audio file, most pop, rock, country, etc. genre song masters are dynamically compressed with over-emphasized treble and bass before they even get to the MP3 stage. They've done this to try and "make up" for the heavy lossy compression.

One very noted example was the Genesis SA-CD boxed set collection. Audiophiles were appalled when they played the high resolution discs (direct from the master recordings) and found that the remasters had virtually no sonic depth with treble that would almost make your ears bleed (even compared to the older CD's from the 80's). The engineer for the project fired back that they thought people would like the newer mastered for MP3 sound because that's how most music is downloaded these days. On a friggin' audiophile format!!! The damage had been done at the mastering stage. They'd have to completely re-do the mix to fix the problem and get it back to the original master characteristics.

Notice too in the article that they are working on compressing the files further to make them ever smaller. He didn't talk about specifics on A/V specs. either. The larger video files (using H.265) are more than likely to get you hooked on the quality for those willing to shell out thousands upon thousands for a shiny new UHD TV... but those files will be a hog for their servers (space equals money), and their movie download device will fill up quickly (as people who work with A/V files know quite well)... and then as the files get squeezed further and further... the A/V quality will more than likely go down. It's the oldest trick in the book (hook them and reel them in with the shiny new "lures" and then...). This quality dip also happens with certain studios' Blu-ray's already when they bitstarve the video by setting their encoders too low for the material being compressed. They may also more heavily filter said video master to make it easier to compress into a smaller space... and you lose detail.

Also, this is a proprietary box. The encryption... you can bank on it... will be proprietary to that Sony console and not cross-platform encrypted to allow you to move files to a more "universal" 4k player in the near future (like a third party whole-house media streamer).

So, as of right now it looks like you'll more than likely get Sony owned movies on a Sony device from a Sony download site. But will other studio play nice too with a rival studio (they haven't shown a willingness to do this in the past and we've always ended up with a format fight)? Right now, it's gearing up to have a box for certain A/V files and another box for other files, and yet another box... yadda yadda yadda.

There are no set industry standards yet... they may not even show up until some time this summer. Some have stated 2014 or 2015 for other UHD standards.

And then there is the problem you see now with iTunes and Amazon and Netflix and Vudu and the like... where the same content has differing compression qualities. Let's say Sony has a Disney movie on their UHD download site and you only have the Sony console. Great! But here comes Disney with their own UHD content that works on some other device... and it has even better A/V quality (even an object-oriented mix!) than the one offered by Sony. Now you have to buy some other device to see it.

It's the frickin' wild wild west played out on the internet!

I'm telling you that a universal standard UHD disc that has all the goodies for the video/audiophile community needs to happen.

Got a chance to check out the Blu-ray and compare it with itunes. The Blu-ray definitely looks better as expected. The difference is not as huge as in some titles, but it's definitely apparent even without comparing screens. There is so much more detail in the Blu-ray, especially on peoples faces. You can make out every line and wrinkle on Blu while the itunes just looks kind of soft (both versions).

In comparing itunes 720p vs 1080p, it was a tossup for me. 1080p was definitely sharper, and background objects and text were more in focus. 720p seemed to hold facial detail better though in motion, 1080p tended to breakup in quick pans or when someone is talking and bobbing their head around. 1080p wasn't any more detailed than the 720p, it was just sharper. If you held a gun to my head I guess I would choose the 1080p for the increased sharpness.

The thing that stood out to me though was how much better the 1080p Blu-ray looked than the 1080p itunes. In comparison, I would categorize the 1080p itunes as almost 720p+, there just wasn't enough detail in the picture and I'm sure this comes down to the low bitrate of the encode. At 8-10 mbps instead of 5 I'm sure it would have fared much better.

If you are interested in this movie I recommending watching the Blu-ray if you can because it is so visually stimulating, you will appreciate it more. itunes wasn't a total fail but given the option I wouldn't choose the itunes version unless it was like 99 cents, and even then I would still have to think about it.
Edited by StinDaWg - 3/2/13 at 1:16am

That is pretty darn cool!

How exactly did you do that, and furthermore I don't really understand what this is trying to show. That's like the whole frame, how can you say the 1080p has that much more detail over the 720p? You wouldn't hardly be able to make out anything on the 720p if that were the case. I don't see any more "detail" with my own eyes sitting 2 feet from the tv and comparing, but it does look "sharper" do to 2x the resolution. I don't see any more detail on the boat picture you posted at the top either, and I've got my eyes right up to the screen. The dimples and markings on the white parts of the boat look exactly the same.

I don't know why you keep saying the 720p itunes are artificially sharpened. Apple has strict encoding guidelines and I highly doubt they would allow any manipulation like this to the picture. It looks slightly soft to me, the way all 720p videos do played back on a 1080p tv.

If the studio s can screw up blurays so can apple lol

Wow, Mark, this is really cool! So Photoshop lets you select two still images to compare and then produces this sort of image that reveals the difference between them? Brilliant!

Mark, I still think we are arguing over "detail" vs. "sharpness". I still don't see any more detail in the 1080p picture for this movie. It definitely looks sharper and clearer I agree. Take a look at this comparison between The Walking Dead 720p/1080p itunes. There is much more detail in the 720p encode. You can make out the ribs on the white cloth much better and there is more facial detail and grain retention on the 720p. Unless you are able to make a screenshot comparison like this I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/8096/picture:1

Scott, nice to see you here! I was just listening to Home Theater Geeks earlier. Congrats on the new position at AVS.

A difference filter isn't particularly useful when comparing videos of different resolution.

The aspect ratio of the iTunes 1080p version is slightly different to the 720p. How did you account for this difference? Even a sub-pixel misalignment of two identical images will result in the kind of differences you are getting. In fact the heavy outlines in your 720p vs 1080p point specifically to that issue - they are caused by alignment differences or edge-ringing in one of the images.

A hammer is just a tool, but if you use it to paint a fence then clearly you don't understand how to use it.

Im not having a go at you but your comparison is technically flawed.