Comments on: iTunes rolls out high-def movie downloads

Film purchases in high definition will cost $19.99 and rentals, which will be available a month after the movie's release, will cost $4.99.

[firi]

When will TV Shows will be available for rent...i don't want a yottabyte of high definition shows in my hard drive...although I would love the yottabyte hard drive!

[draystl]

Does this mean you can finally rent HD movies via iTunes, without having to have an Apple TV?

[kelmon]

Yes.

[BigGuns149]

"Apple's downloads use more compression than Blu-ray so that means a falloff in quality."

Actually the comparison to Blu-ray is silly insofar as that these "HD" downloads are really compressed 720p content whereas Blu-ray is uncompressed 1080p. Compression is only part of the reason why these films will look inferior to their Blu-ray equivalents. The resolution is lower as well.

Considering that I can buy a Blu-ray disc that is uncompressed 1080p, has all the extras, and 7.1 sound for at most ~$5 more and sometimes less than $20 I am not really too impressed by the price. To make matters worse the "HD" iTunes version may end up often being twice as expensive as the SD iTunes version when you still don't get extras, subtitles, or high fidelity sound.

Save for a few really diehard Apple fans or people who are gullible to advertising I don't see this ever being terribly popular at the current price points. Apple isn't the first to the scene to claim "HD" movie downloads and the price points just seem underwhelming. Even a lot of posts on Appleinsider, a clearly pro-Apple site, have been panning the price points as being too high for the marginal benefits over the current SD versions. If members of the Apple faithful who often rationalize expensive Apple products find the prices to high you can be sure that the general public isn't going to be too keen on this.

On thing is clear, contrary to the arguments of some CNET editors I don't see Blu-ray being threatened by iTunes "HD" content or similar "HD" content online anytime soon. The bandwidth to offer 1080p downloads in a practical time period just isn't there for most people and the "HD" content that is currently available online isn't much better than a DVD.

[bommai]

Bluray uncompressed!!!! For audio, PCM is uncompressed. But for video AVC-HD, VC-1 and MPEG2 are all lossy compressed formats. In fact, you cannot fit an uncompressed movie in a bluray disk. It will take much more space than 50GB to fit an uncompressed video file. The compression scheme used by Bluray has a higher bit rate so theoretically you can get a better picture. While the picture will be better on bluray, it all depends on how much hand tweaking apple does on their encoding and how many passes it goes through.

[3tire]

"... compressed 720p content whereas Blu-ray is uncompressed 1080p." Your comment shows you don't know what you're talking about otherwise you would not even use the words compressed and uncompressed with 720p and 1080p in the same sentence. In fact, you would not even say "uncompressed" if you knew what you were talking about.
There are too many people spouting off whose only credentials are that they read a lot of web sites and magazines. Lots of lingo but nonsensical.

[BigGuns149]

"Apple's downloads use more compression than Blu-ray so that means a falloff in quality."

Actually the comparison to Blu-ray is silly insofar as that these "HD" downloads are really compressed 720p content whereas Blu-ray is uncompressed 1080p. Compression is only part of the reason why these films will look inferior to their Blu-ray equivalents. The resolution is lower as well.

Considering that I can buy a Blu-ray disc that is uncompressed 1080p, has all the extras, and 7.1 sound for at most ~$5 more and sometimes less than $20 I am not really too impressed by the price. To make matters worse the "HD" iTunes version may end up often being twice as expensive as the SD iTunes version when you still don't get extras, subtitles, or high fidelity sound.

Save for a few really diehard Apple fans or people who are gullible to advertising I don't see this ever being terribly popular at the current price points. Apple isn't the first to the scene to claim "HD" movie downloads and the price points just seem underwhelming. Even a lot of posts on Appleinsider, a clearly pro-Apple site, have been panning the price points as being too high for the marginal benefits over the current SD versions. If members of the Apple faithful who often rationalize expensive Apple products find the prices to high you can be sure that the general public isn't going to be too keen on this.

On thing is clear, contrary to the arguments of some CNET editors I don't see Blu-ray being threatened by iTunes "HD" content or similar "HD" content online anytime soon. The bandwidth to offer 1080p downloads in a practical time period just isn't there for most people and the "HD" content that is currently available online isn't much better than a DVD.

[thirdmonster]

I don't mind 720p, and neither should you, frankly... I mean, how many people have televisions much over 50" anyway who can actually see the difference (that's rhetorical... let's not get into a pissing contest about who has a larger television or best eye-sight)? Blu Ray compression (and, yes, folks, it is compressed... a lot) has been grainy at best and downright blurry at worst (look closely and you'll see the "gnats" of compression; no, that's not film grain, it's artifact). As for HD content online, there have been significant leaps in the .h264 compression scheme. Just look at some of the HD trailers. They're stunning at a mere 5MBp/s!!! So I have no doubt the picture quality will be great from the iTunes store. I would, however, like to see the price a little lower since, as has been pointed out, there will be no extras, it is 720p, and the audio will probably be the lossy AC3 of standard DVDs. Which brings up another question: what will the dolby digital scheme be? If it's anything like AppleTV, the channel assignments will be all jumbled so as to make digital audio playback on a different home theatre media centers (like Plex or Boxee) impossible. But overall I think this is the right direction. Blu Ray was pretty much DOA since physical media delivery was already receding into obsolescence by the time it won the HD DVD war (think about the last time you bought an actual music CD). Face it, people want to be able to download it now... And lower prices for HD web content is certainly the way to go, particularly now. People are just as happy as can be with their existing DVD up-converters and HDTVs, but this method may just be the nudge they need to start buying HD content. Folks won't have to buy an expensive, new player. They won't have to buy (or store) Blu Ray discs at an extremely bloated prices. And they can store it on a hard drive, ready at a moments notice to pull up and watch. For **most folks**, entertainment works in the order of cost first, convenience second, and (argue this if you must) quality last. And, personally, I wouldn't mind seeing Blu Ray get a little kick in the pants. Competition is good for all of us. And the Blu Ray licensing scheme is just crazy and an incredible overhead cost for many lower and independent films. So iTunes can be a great outlet for those types of productions now. So there! Now I need to go figure out how much money I owe Sony for using the words "Blu" and "Ray" together.

[kelmon]

I'll be happy with digital movie downloads when there is parity with the high street and your local movie rental shop. Right now it is ridiculous that movies are not available to rent/buy until weeks after they are in your traditional bricks-n-mortar outlets. Further, it is also highly annoying that movies that were available to rent suddenly disappear from the library because of "exclusivity contracts" that do not appear to impact the likes of Blockbusters.

Finally, and with no great surprise, this service is US only at the moment.

[mrbofus]

Blu-ray discs seem to be about $15-25 these days, so $20 for a HD download seems a little high to me.

[thirdmonster]

I'm sorry, I just had to mention something. There's a note here about "parity"??? According to iTunes, both Quantum of Solace and Twilight are day-and-date with their physical media counterparts. So I'm not sure where that argument comes from. (BTW: I find it interesting that Quantum is a Sony film. Is Sony feeling the sting of absolute disinterest from the general public regarding Blu Ray? Hmmmmm....)

Hey, Apple! $14.99 would be the TOTAL sweet-spot for pricing on this stuff. I'm just saying...

[azzuro2006]

I wouldn't BUY a movie from iTunes because it will only allow my to play it through iTunes. However, I will happily RENT movies on iTunes. I will buy TV shows because its convenient and timely - i don't have to wait for the series to come out on DVD or BD to watch it. I think thats how most people feel. The rental model makes much more sense for movies at least. But pricing models will continue to evolve with many choices - i.e rent the movie without ads, watch it for free with ads, monthly subscription models, or some kind of hybrid mix. I wouldn't be surprised to see iTunes offer several ways to enjoy the content on-line. Its in their interest to do so - anything that makes it popular and allows them to get their cut. Apple has a lot to lose on music but nothing to lose on movies and TV shows where it still doesn't dominate.

[azzuro2006]

By the way, there is a big disconnect between the cost of buying and renting. How many people watch the movie more than 4 times? Only at that point does it become economical to buy it.

[n25philly]

There are still people dumb enough to use itunes?

[thirdmonster]

Quote from MacWorld:
"The iTunes Store now has more than 10 million songs, more than 40,000 TV episodes, and more than 5,000 movies available for rent and purchase. Apple has already sold more than 250 million TV episodes and sold or rented more than 33 million movies"

So I guess there are people who use iTunes. And, considering how many iPods and iPhones have been sold, I would hazard there are plenty of people using iTunes as their service of choice.

[azzuro2006]

The media companies are being st*pid. On-line media is too expensive. If you sell a DVD for $10 in a store, the media company probably makes $3-4 max after netting of manufacturing costs, liscening costs to DVD group, retail margin, and wholesale margin. That is what they should sell movies for on-line and rent them for a few dollars max. I don't see why all of them get together and set up a site so they don't have to pay Apple and charge a lower price. They would make the same margin but don't have to deal with inventory risk and is less capital intensive - i.e good economic sense. The number of purchases would sky rocket and fewer people will see the reason to pirate movies on the net. Aside from the fact that its "stealing", people who choose not to get it for free base that decision on convenience (P2Ps can be punishing), and lower risk of getting viruses, and you at least know what you are getting if you buy (or rent) it. File sharing accounts for more than 50% of on-line traffic - the opportunity is huge for them if they were willing to price the media at the proper price.

They are making the same mistake with movies as they did with music. I would have thought that they would have learned their lesson.