5 ms·

Yeah, but he's right. The future of entertainment doesn't have DVDs in it. I'm hoping with Apple TV I can skip BluRay alltogether, but I haven't seen the HD sp

by dcurtis 19y ago

Yeah, but he's right. The future of entertainment doesn't have DVDs in it. I'm hoping with Apple TV I can skip BluRay alltogether, but I haven't seen the HD specs from the iTunes store yet.

mattmaroon 19y ago
Apple TV has to be using some serious compression to be able to serve you a 720p movie fast enough that you can watch it as it does. You're still getting an inferior experience to the guy with Blu-Ray, especially if he has a 1080p capable set. That said, highly compressed 720p is still going to be an upgrade to a lot of people over a standard DVD. Perhaps only obsessives like me will care.
- boucher 19y ago
  You obviously weren't watching the keynote. Steve demoed downloading and starting an SD movie, not an HD one. SD downloads fast enough to start "instantly". HD does not. The claim that this is "highly compressed" is baseless.
  - mattmaroon 19y ago
    It still has to be highly compressed. An uncompressed HD movie is something like 25 gb. I don't have or want iTunes so I can't verify it, but I'd be surprised if the files they send are more than 1/10th of that.
    - tlrobinson 19y ago
      True, it is most likely compressed, but compression does not have to be lossy. Apple tends to use H.264/MPEG-4, which is (or at least can be?) lossless. It would be silly to send uncompressed HD video to the Apple TV when lossless or nearly lossless compression could be used. The only other thing I can say on the matter is that I was at Macworld today, and they were demoing Apple TV playing an HD movie on a giant screen (probably 50 feet across) and it looked excellent.
      - mattmaroon 19y ago
        Well, h.264 is a fine codec, but just like aac, it offers a range of quality, and better quality means bigger files. I haven't played around with it to see how it handles motion, but I know with DivX/WMV that's always been a big problem. I can't imagine watching an action movie in compressed 720p is going to be anywhere near as good as uncompressed 1080p, but then I also can't imagine most people will know or care about the difference.
        boucher 19y ago
        You've gone from complaining that the device has super compressed 720p which won't be as good as blue-ray, to claiming that you don't really know what it will look like, but that any compression on 720p video will look worse than uncompressed 1080p. The facts on blue-ray: "Discs encoded in MPEG-2 video typically limit content producers to around two hours of high-definition content on a single-layer (25 GB) BD-ROM. The more advanced video codecs (VC-1 and H.264) typically achieve a video runtime twice that of MPEG-2, with comparable quality." In all likelihood, iTunes is using H.264, or their newest variant. The same as blue-ray. So, in reality, the choice of codec matters a great deal, blue-ray is not uncompressed video (thus, 25GB holds a 2 hour compressed movie), and yes, 1080p is better than 720p. And it's also worth noting that digital cable, and as far as I know every other on demand HD video service, is also "highly compressed" 720p.
        mattmaroon 19y ago
        Huh? First you said that uncompressed movies take up about 25gb for 2 hours. Blu-ray movies are generally around 25gb, which leaves the second layer free for extras or whatever. Then you said that "blue-ray is not uncompressed video (thus, 25GB holds a 2 hour compressed movie)" By your own math they would only take up 12.5ish gb if compressed. I actually am curious what digital cable uses. It's definitely 720p in my area, and probably compressed, but not highly.
        boucher 19y ago
        Actually, Matt, you claimed uncompressed movies take 25GB for two hours. Right up here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99416 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99416 What I said is, Blu-ray movies take up on average 25GB with MPEG2 compression. In other words, your original estimate of the size of things was wrong, as was your implication that blu-ray was uncompressed.
- far33d 19y ago
  Most people can't tell the difference between 1080p and 720p resolution at any normal home viewing size or viewing distance. The issue of compression is a bit more hard to answer, since all these formats all use the same codec. I have no idea what parameters you can tweak to make the same resolution video smaller.

by dcurtis 19y ago

Yeah, but he's right. The future of entertainment doesn't have DVDs in it. I'm hoping with Apple TV I can skip BluRay alltogether, but I haven't seen the HD specs from the iTunes store yet.

mattmaroon 19y ago

Apple TV has to be using some serious compression to be able to serve you a 720p movie fast enough that you can watch it as it does. You're still getting an inferior experience to the guy with Blu-Ray, especially if he has a 1080p capable set. That said, highly compressed 720p is still going to be an upgrade to a lot of people over a standard DVD. Perhaps only obsessives like me will care.

boucher 19y ago
You obviously weren't watching the keynote. Steve demoed downloading and starting an SD movie, not an HD one. SD downloads fast enough to start "instantly". HD does not. The claim that this is "highly compressed" is baseless.
- mattmaroon 19y ago
  It still has to be highly compressed. An uncompressed HD movie is something like 25 gb. I don't have or want iTunes so I can't verify it, but I'd be surprised if the files they send are more than 1/10th of that.
  - tlrobinson 19y ago
    True, it is most likely compressed, but compression does not have to be lossy. Apple tends to use H.264/MPEG-4, which is (or at least can be?) lossless. It would be silly to send uncompressed HD video to the Apple TV when lossless or nearly lossless compression could be used. The only other thing I can say on the matter is that I was at Macworld today, and they were demoing Apple TV playing an HD movie on a giant screen (probably 50 feet across) and it looked excellent.
    - mattmaroon 19y ago
      Well, h.264 is a fine codec, but just like aac, it offers a range of quality, and better quality means bigger files. I haven't played around with it to see how it handles motion, but I know with DivX/WMV that's always been a big problem. I can't imagine watching an action movie in compressed 720p is going to be anywhere near as good as uncompressed 1080p, but then I also can't imagine most people will know or care about the difference.
      - boucher 19y ago
        You've gone from complaining that the device has super compressed 720p which won't be as good as blue-ray, to claiming that you don't really know what it will look like, but that any compression on 720p video will look worse than uncompressed 1080p. The facts on blue-ray: "Discs encoded in MPEG-2 video typically limit content producers to around two hours of high-definition content on a single-layer (25 GB) BD-ROM. The more advanced video codecs (VC-1 and H.264) typically achieve a video runtime twice that of MPEG-2, with comparable quality." In all likelihood, iTunes is using H.264, or their newest variant. The same as blue-ray. So, in reality, the choice of codec matters a great deal, blue-ray is not uncompressed video (thus, 25GB holds a 2 hour compressed movie), and yes, 1080p is better than 720p. And it's also worth noting that digital cable, and as far as I know every other on demand HD video service, is also "highly compressed" 720p.
        mattmaroon 19y ago
        Huh? First you said that uncompressed movies take up about 25gb for 2 hours. Blu-ray movies are generally around 25gb, which leaves the second layer free for extras or whatever. Then you said that "blue-ray is not uncompressed video (thus, 25GB holds a 2 hour compressed movie)" By your own math they would only take up 12.5ish gb if compressed. I actually am curious what digital cable uses. It's definitely 720p in my area, and probably compressed, but not highly.
        boucher 19y ago
        Actually, Matt, you claimed uncompressed movies take 25GB for two hours. Right up here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99416 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99416 What I said is, Blu-ray movies take up on average 25GB with MPEG2 compression. In other words, your original estimate of the size of things was wrong, as was your implication that blu-ray was uncompressed.
far33d 19y ago
Most people can't tell the difference between 1080p and 720p resolution at any normal home viewing size or viewing distance. The issue of compression is a bit more hard to answer, since all these formats all use the same codec. I have no idea what parameters you can tweak to make the same resolution video smaller.