iTunes Store goes HD for movie purchases, rentals

"Still no closed captioning however. " Do you mean no closed captioning on just the HD films or have they not come through on CC on films in general?

@Modern, I believe Paul meant to say that the vast majority of Films and Television content from iTunes lacks closed captioning. This is somewhat surprising since a good majority DVD's at least give you subtitles as an option. @Compact Since 720p television sets are much more affordable for the masses than most 1080p, I think 720p would be found in most homes. The most common internet distribution of video in high definition is 720p. At 720p, that is a lot less on storage and bandwidth restrictions than a full 1080p media, since both storage and badnwidth restrictions are being imposed by some ISP's like Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Although there are some broadcasters that do broadcast at full 1080P such as ESPN. I'm just happy that iTunes is really one of Apple's most affordable and consumer friendly services. I regularly dump whatever extra money on music content and television content. I just wish Apple would apply the same to the rest of their company producing high quality machines at a reasonable price for the masses.Apple proved that they can do cheap very will with iTunes, without sacrifising quality. The same can be applied to the Mac Desktop and Notebook units.

Honestly, 720p is more than good enough for most people with the size screens they have and the distances they are from their televisions. Most people could not tell the difference between 1080p and 720p with these smaller televisions sets so it only makes sense to save bandwidth and serve 720p.

from Paul... "The movie came in both HD (1280 x 544) and standard definition (853 x 362) formats," That means they're not even 720p. In fact, PAL standard definition is 720x576, and therefore has a higher vertical resolution than i-tunes "HD"

I do seem to remember when Steve Jobs said at the keynote for video on iTunes that it would be "near DVD quality". This was with their standard defintion content. So we're not quite getting HD, but its probably closer to ED or Enhanced Definition. Maybe because of their own storage limitations, Apple is intentionally doing less than HD? That's my hypothesis. From what I've read on Enhanced Defintion, that would put iTunes "HD" at about basline DVD resolution.

Without getting too deep into it, theatrical films typically have an aspect ration of either 1.85:1 or 2.39:1, which is wider than the 16:9 ratio used in 720p or 1080p HD TV sets. (You may have noticed that movies broadcast on HD TVs are usually sill letterboxed a little.) This would mostly account for the reduced vertical resolution in HD movies, I think.

As someone who has been in the video conversion format for years and years, I will fill in the "blanks" literally. at 1280x720 you will have the standard black bars at the top and bottom of the screen(on films that are not true 16x9 which is most movies today). To cut down on the size of the file they "edit" or "crop" those bars out. Since those black bars have no video content there is really no need for them and they are just taking up space in the video file, and your TV will use the Hor size to fit the video to the screen which cause the black bars to "reappear". So as long at the hor res is at 1280 then you are pretty much getting the HD video just without the black bars. You can test this on the Quicktime site by checking out a few HD trailers and see that the res of video is not 1280x720 but actually 1280X5xx(usually) and that there are no black bars at the top and bottom. So yes you are getting an HD movie and if you find a true 16x9 movie then you will see a full 1280x720 res but anything less just means that the hor res was greater then 1280 and it has been sized down to 1280 which caused the black bars, just like webguy3000 said. Hope this helps.

BTW: When you watch a Hollywood film shot on 2.35:1 stock on Blu-ray, it's also not going to be 1920x1080, at least, the actual movie portion won't be. The height of the movie will be less, and the letterbox bars will accomodate the rest of the pixels.

"you either have to scale it down to 1280x544 (2.35:1)" As I mentioned, not every single film can fall into a "2.35:1" ratio. Some are 2.21:1, some are closer to 2.40:1. There are different ratios. 2.35:1 is the most common though. "you can fill the screen with a 1692x720 video but 2 bands on each sides of video will be cropped." ? If you crop 2.35:1 video and stretch it so that the height fits as 720p, but increase the resolution of the width, you wouldn't have bars at all. What you'd be doing is artificially increasing the resolution for no reason though, so it doesn't make sense to do that. Also, it's not a valid HD resolution anymore as it doesn't fit into the "720" or "1080" standard resolution sizes. BTW: "EDTV" is basically the same as SDTV except that it's progressive scan. That is to say, it's "480p" (or 576p if you're using PAL). The number of lines doesn't change, and it still uses non-square pixels.

Another little point of info: The reason why you have a nice round resolution like 544 is because it's also divisable by 8, making it suitable for MPEG and most other derivative perceptual compression schemes. The people that came up with NTSC (and HD) resolutions are some pretty smart cookies.

Also, 853x362 is a bad resolution to compress. To get the 8x8 matrices to be more efficient, they should've used 856x360. It would've required cropping a few lines: If 853 has to increase by 1.0035169~ to get to 856, then 362 increased by the same factor = ~363. So exactly 3 horizontal lines would be cropped. That's not such a big deal if it means that you'd gain a lot of encoder efficiency by not having a <8 pixel set, then I'd say it's worth it. On a TV, you'd likely not even see those as they'd be offscreen due to overscan.

"Bottom line (and my original point) is that nobody's gypping you out of any pixels, they're just adapting for the aspect ratio of theatrical films." My only response to that is that you won't ever get the number of pixels of the original from a download service like this. Even Blu-ray is a gyp when you consider it that way. It's still no substitute for watching it on a 2-storey (or more) movie theatre screen.

FYI Paul, you didn't say whether you had to pay extra for the SD version, or if you meant that the SD version was just available but you didn't get it.

Waethorn, "It's still no substitute for watching it on a 2-storey (or more) movie theatre screen." Clearly shows you don't know home theater. Most movie theaters blow, unless you take the time to go to a THX theater on opening night, I guarantee you will have an experience that is far poorer than one on a good home theater, with blue ray. A good projector with 1080p resolution on a six to eight foot screen (measured horizontally not diagnoly) will give you a better image. Since the image is digital, you don't have to deal with frame jitter, or with scratches and dirt on the print. While a 35mm still frame CAN give you 4K of resolution (horizontal) once you run the film through the projector a mechanical device at best you get around 2K of actual resolution. Further, most theaters have rather poor sound reproduction, a decent receiver with decent speakers and a good sub will provide better sound. Finally, anything that allows me to actually enjoy the movie and not listen to screaming kids or talking teenagers is a positive. Regards Joe Dokes

Wow, this is such an interesting thread! All those calculations and discussions on what the right HD resolution is. Well I can't get ANY resolution. No need to go all mushy on me and cry your eyes out on my behalf. I'll be fine. Honestly, I don't mean to bash you, there's no reason you guys should care. But that's just the problem. No one gives a shite. Ah, well the next episode of Battlestar Galactica - soon on a torrent site near you. In (some kind of) HD format. That's what I call customer serivce. Now, please go ahead and argue some more about what is the right HD resoultion. Considered what the effects of compression are on "true" HD? Like I care? ;)

@joe-dokes: The movie theatre near me has a 3.5-storey screen and 10 channel surround sound blasting your ears, that's nothing short of amazing. Trust me - you can't hear anyone in the theatre talking when the movie is playing. After the movie, you can't hear anything else either. I don't mind paying the $8.50CDN to go and watch a movie there. It's about $3 more than an HD movie on PPV, but it's a huge improvement too. For the number of movies actually worth watching, I'd rather pay about $25/month to go out, than blow $4000 on a home theatre that's nowhere close.

"Truth be told on most non huge sets of 50" or smaller there is likely little benefits of 1080p over 720p." My set is one of the last model Sony 3CCD LCD rear projection TV's that were made. It's a 50". It supports 1080i. I dunno if it actually outputs it, but 1080i on my Bell TV looks sharper than the 720p option, but I certainly don't see any interlacing. It's also much sharper using 1080i on a PS3 than setting it to 720p. I like Asus' new monitors too. I sell some of the new true 16:9 1080p HDMI-equipped monitors that they make. Image quality is amazing. The smallest "full HD" monitor they make is 22" AFAIK. I have one here and have previously plugged in a PS3 into it and tried some Blu-ray movies. I normally have a Blu-ray equipped PC with HDMI on it too. It's very impressive. The 26" is a nice size too. I wish that video cards and monitors would just standardize on 16:9 HD resolutions and HDMI cabling. 16:10 and 15:9 is just stupid.

@Angel of Death: LOL! You make me laugh! (in a good way) That's coming from a budding non-American Canuck who feels your pain. ....still waiting on a Canadian Zune Marketplace, even though I already have the hardware. PS: My TV bill is about $110/month and Bell Canada still shows me the simulcast of American shows from a Canadian channel that's carrying the same thing, EVEN WHEN I TUNE INTO THE AMERICAN CHANNEL! What I hate about it is sometimes they show opaque channel logos for the Canadian channel to hide the American network that is broadcasting it. When they recompress the video stream with the new logo, the quality is worse than the original feed, and the sound is usually dropped from 5.1 down to stereo. It's maddening!

Angel of Death, Okay, but I really think your problem is with the studios, and or the various copyright issues involved, not Apple. One of the key problems with IP is that different laws exist in different countries and the fact that different people own the rights in different countries has got to make it maddening for anyone trying to create a LEGITIMATE download service. That being said, I think the studios et al. are stupid for not rapidly ironing it out, because people like you are going to get it from some other perhaps illegal source. Thanks MGM et al, you made AOD a criminal. Waethorn, you actually listed as a benefit of your local multiplex a reason I don't go to some theaters. Many theaters in an attempt to play the volume over the teenager talking baby crying crank up the volume, WELL BEYOND THX standard, frankly I already have a rather serious hearing loss, I do not wish to exacerbate it. The other issue when you consider home theater is that most people sit TOO F-ING far away from their screen. they are so use to standard def, that they don't buy a big enough TV. For my room to get a picture big enough to actually fully utilize high def, I should have gone for 73" inches. But since there are some seats closer than the ideal I went for the 61" that and my wife was like, "NO F-ing WAY." She actually thought 61" was going to be way to big, and when I first put in the room she about had a cow. Now that we watch mainly High Def and DVD she really enjoys it. The other issue with the multi plex is that if they are using film, after twenty or thirty showings it really starts to look like crap. Scratch, lint, dirt, make the image much poorer. Now your place may have a digital projector,(which has its own limitations, but overall can provide as good or better picture than film under all but the most pristine circumstances) in which case you probably see a pretty good image. Waethorn, only 8.50 a movie, wow here in So Cal, its now 11.00 USD. By the time I buy two tickets a couple of sodas and maybe, just maybe some popcorn, plus a baby sitter and maybe a burger at some place cheap (though not fast food) a night at the movies is nearly 100.00 USD. I absolutely love movies, but the theaters here are just getting too pricey. So for me, (by the way your 4K estimate is pretty close to what I've spent on my current equipment, though over the years I've spent about double that amount) the price of a nice TV is well worth it. Finally, the other issue is the scaling is a serious one. Each TV will process the signal depending upon what is sent to it. For example, you may set your 360 to 1080i or 720p but if you are using component cables your basically sending an analog signal, which is not necessarily bad, but your tv if it is digital (and by that I mean non-CRT) it must recreate a digitial signal out of the analog one. If you use an HDMI cable then the TV will still have to do some processing to get the picture on the screen correctly. For example, if you send the TV a 1080i digital signal but your TV is 720p it will have to BOTH deinterlace the signal and scale it to 720p. At the same time if the original format was say 720p but your cable box will only output 1080i then your box will scale it and interlace it to 1080i then your 720p TV will have to rescale it back to 720p. What does all this mean. It basically means that there are no hard and fast rules about how an image should be handled or what will look better. For example, if the scaling is better in your tv, you should do most of the video processing there, but if you bought a cheap HDTV and it does great when given a signal at its native resolution but the picture looks horrible when the TV has to scale it, then you might want to do the scaling somewhere else. A great example of this might be the 30 dollar DVD player that supposedly upscales to 1080p. If the chip in the unit is a poor quality scaler, you might be better off just feeding the TV the standard 480i output from the player. Getting a good picture out of some of these TVs is actually a bit difficult unless you buy good source material. For example, we have verizon Fios tv, and since they have plenty of bandwidth, and don't overcompress the signal even lowly basic cable stations look pretty good, so the rule of garbage in garbage out still applies. Regards Joe Dokes