I am Jack's Complete Lack of Surprise.

I think we're a lot further away from this technology being THE way content is delivered. It's definitely the future, but the future isn't next Tuesday.

That's really quite an amazing difference.

I've seen Vudu Kiosks in the mall, now i know what it is.

It's bad.

Or, you know, someone could get the drift and offer entire DVDs for download. Like, um, how about Bit Torrent?
And then you can burn it at home, or simply mount an .iso image and watch it, and save a few bucks.

But wouldn't that be terribly complicated and prone to piracy, you may ask.
Well, if the prices were competitive, and not outrageously disproportionate (like, say, mp3 downloads), that wouldn't be a problem.
I'd be a customer in an instant if I could download the US release of a DVD the moment it is released. 5-10 bucks a pop, I'm in!

The other problem is who gets to download what movies. What if there are certain movies on itunes that you can't find elsewhere? And, what if certain download services conflict with others such as iTunes vs Netflix?

bitrates. HD approx. 20Mbps...and 4Mbps not equal to 20Mbps.
Hence, 4Mbps=crap.
Dixit.

were are all the "downloads are the NEW format" fanbois?

PS the user that calls himself vertabaker (or w/e) could SOOOOO see the difference between the the HD and sd downloads. heck, the guy has BOTH the HDDVD and blu-ray and he can "clearly" see that HDDVD is higher quality. amazing......

HD isn't HDDVD. HD is just 1080i/720p or better. This review needs to compare it to the DVD version, not the HDDVD version. HD downloads aren't competing with HDDVD/Bluray but with DVD sales. Obviously 40GB+ video file > 1-2GB video file.

@Sean: Vudu isn't bad. In fact, I really like the standard-def content. I just don't see the huge advantage in the so-called HD streams just yet. I might add, Vudu is not alone in this particular doghouse. Xbox 360 HD downloads have also been criticized, and the upcoming Apple TV will have a lot to prove.

Holy hell, ive been preaching this for a while. Downloads are coming, but we just dont have the bandwidth to handle HD streaming at quality that can even rival HD/BD discs.

Physical media is the way to go for at least the next 5+ years. Jump on the bandwagon, because out of personal experience, nothing compares to 20-25Mbps and lossless audio.

Believe me, i want downloads too.

@conception: The truth is, 480p downloads on Vudu are quite similar to their DVD counterparts. I think that standard-def downloads (1-2 GB) are what's competing with DVD sales, not HD downloads (which really aren't that plentiful—see my note about Hollywood).

@conception: From all the comments ive heard whenever a format war is talked about, most people say discs are already dead due to downloads, so in fact, they are in competition.

Just like HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are in competition with DVD's, so are HD download movies.

Its called movie delivery methods, and they all are competing with each other (in a way). Its just that some studios support some (if not all) ends of the delivery.

This just in: Unwatchable Michael Bay Piece of S**t Still Not High Def Enough.

@Hvedhrungr: Like anything in this world, theres always something holding us back and preventing us from getting what we want.

In your example, its the fact that some ISP's put download caps on what you can download in a month. DVD's being 6-8Gigs in size, it wont take long before you exceed it.

HD-DVD/BD, and your done in 3 movies (60Gigs in my case).

What always gets me is that there are better free(probably illegal) versions of all this stuff. This means, ignoring the content, it is possible to deliver free. Why are the content providers not making their crap available in the exact same way and just charging a few bucks? Just set up their own bittorent site with DRM'ed content and a make a player like vudu to play them.
What you say, that is what vudu is? Then why is the selection limited, the quality poor, content is not released immediately... Sheer incompetence is the only explanation.

I was just thinking about downloading the HD version of Transformers via Xbox Live Marketplace. Has anyone compared the differences of SD and HD on XBLM and HD-DVD?

It is my understanding that the delay in the AppleTV update stems from the quality of the HD downloads. Might be baloney, but I remember reading that somewhere.

What is the problem with eight hour downloads? Thats a at least 40 hours shorter than it takes to send a movie back to netflix and have the next movie in your queue sent.

@diabolusunknown: Well, honestly, if you plan on getting your content from downloads, a connection with a cap probably isn't the smartest move to begin with.
While I agree that bandwidth is the ultimate limiting factor these days, it's easily possible to download 4-8 GB within 24 hours, with a connection that costs about 20 bucks a month.

Personally, I used to buy 2-4 DVDs a month, usually in the 8-12 buck range. Right now, the selection doesn't much interest me, or hasn't dropped in price to my segment, so if I could get newer content online, for a little less, I'd burn it myself.
What I don't condone, and therefore don't accept, is paying the same price, or even more, for digital content without a medium.
The provider is saving money by not having to press and ship the DVD, so some of those savings should be passed on to the customer.
That is the exact problem I have with music downloads.
I haven't bought a CD in 5 years. And I've downloaded precious little.

any chance we would see the appletv and xbox 360 thrown into the fray? it would be very interesting to see how they compare as well (on my system the 360 hd content looks surprisingly good compared to hd-dvd) but i have no way to compare appletv or vudu.

I could accept half the bit rate at full resolution but interlaced compared to the hd equivalent and the same for audio as long as it is still 5.1 but the file sizes would still be crazy by today standards.

To be fair, I think we need to look at more movies than one to judge average HD quality on Vudu. The reaction to HD quality is generally very positive on Vudu forums...

@ Wilson: Out of curiosity, what output were you using on Vudu? Did you do 1080p/24 or one of the lower settings (1080i, 720p)?

sticking with blu ray, kthx.

Format war is over, and I can finally begin buying HD movies when Apple updates it's MacBook Pro.

But can we still call them HD?

Some people actually call McDonald's food, too, but that doesn't mean I am eating it.

I'm with gwlaw99 - I'm more than happy to start a download and watch it the next day and get proper bitrate 1080p images. Why are we all paying big bucks for these great tv's if the images are going to end up looking like crap?

Holy Cow, fugly images!

I watched Transformers last night via Time Warner HD VOD and I think it looked pretty good. Additionally, I've downloaded quite a few HD movies via XBLM and have felt they all look great too. When I get a Blu-Ray player, I'll do an A/B comparison, but for now I'm happy with the quality. Ultimately, that is what matters.

Whats that now? 4Mbps? download caps? Doesnt sound like a good experience for downloading HD content

Best regards
Sweden - 100/100Mbps

@monkeyrotica:
"This just in: Unwatchable Michael Bay Piece of S**t Still Not High Def Enough."

Amen.

@getz76, monkeyrotica: Yeah, pretty damn bad, that movie. The special effects and dizzying camera work make it a good HD guinea pig, but it's an utterly abysmal turd for all other purposes.

While I am not about to argue that 4-5 mbps will best a 20+mbps stream from an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player, I have been surprisingly impressed by HD (720p) content out of my AppleTV. This is for HD stuff "found online" and converted to a 5mbps 1280x720 H.264 file for the AppleTV specifically. The movies I watched that way looked way sharper than anything I can get out of an upconverting DVD player.

It's not all perfect, of course, there are sometimes some blocky areas, and in particular, dark scenes are far from perfect. But are they better than SD stuff? Definitely. Are they as good as HD-DVD or Blu-Ray? I hope not (I don't own either), because that would be very disappointing!

On the same note: HD content from my cable provider is also blocky at times, and I am sure not nearly as good as Blu-Ray. It also varies greatly from channel to channel.. but overall, I'd say the HD I have seen from my Apple TV so far compares very well to a HD cable feed

The point of my comment is this, I guess: while it might not be as good as HD-DVD, it doesn't mean it does not provide advantages over SD stuff. Are there people saying HD cable feeds are "not HD", too?

I for one can't wait to test the high-resolution stuff from iTunes (there, I didn't call it HD.. better?) We'll see if it's worth $1 more but from what I could test so far, it will.

@getz76:

You probably think Monty Python is funny too.

I'd like to see the xbox 360 marketplace version compared too. Usually I only have to wait about 15 minutes for an HD movie to start playing.

@lladnar and all the other people interested in the Xbox 360 and Apple TV comparison: I promise to do it when Apple TV (finally) launches, so that we can accurately compare loading time of SD movies and HD movies, as well as video quality and all else, side by side. Who knows, we may even throw in a Media Center Extender or that new HP MediaSmart receiver, which has some form of VOD on it.

It's like this whenever any new thing comes out. Remember all the Vista Basic systems this time last year? I hardly see any now with less than Vista Premium...they tried to shaft customers with a new technology, assuming they could sell a lesser product with the same name, cheaper. MP3 players is another thing...when they first came around, before iPods, they really sucked (I remember buying a $100 thing that played MP3's off of burned CDs...sounded like it was underwater), until customers insisted on quality in addition to format ability, and now they at least work. Give it a year, and HD download companies will be advertising high-bandwidth streams to sway people like us wh know the difference. Until they find another buzzword they can use to rip people off.

The bitrate meter on my PS3 has peaked at 50Mbps during BD playback. We're not going to see bandwidth that can match that for another 10 years.

So let's get this straight: based on three shrunken-down, compressed images and Mr. Rothman's say-so, we're supposed to conclude that all movie downloads suck?

Hold the phone for just one cotton-pickin' second...

I download TV shows in HD from Xbox Live all the time. They are far better in HD than they are in SD.

Could it possibly be that Vudu's encoding techniques and bitrates stink, since they're trying to do HD streaming over 4Mb/s?

Xbox Live HD video content is around 6-10Mb/s, IIRC.

@lladnar: Yeah, in my experience all of those HD movies on xbox live are barely better than an upconverted dvd due to all of the compression artifacts. It's still an improvement for sure, but nowhere near as good as a blu ray disk.

Well, I know the HD downloads on XBLM look significantly better than their SD downloads. The SD is noticably soft, but still watchable. The HD Looks nice. Sharper than my upconverting DVD player for sure. I can't compare to a hd-dvd or blu-ray since I dont have one. However it looks fairly comparable to the quality I get with native HD programing on dish network. That is, not as good as a straight ASTC signal, but still better than SD.

This is about convenience and not so much about quality. The tradeoffs to get a pretty picture through a skinny pipe are so ginormous. Does anyone here know how they are doing their encoding? Lots of smearing and artifacting.

If anything, the quality of the "HD" Vudu version looks worse than the SD version. I sure hope XBox live HD video looks better than that.

And about :
"Hollywood deems it fit [...], those dudes hold the keys, now and forever, whether we like it or not."

If we don't like it, they won't hold the keys forever. In a time when the quality/cost ratio for independent productions is rising, and when a lot of foreign producer make alliances to make big-budget productions like Hollywood, these dudes definitely won't hold the keys forever...

@nflsonic:

I have watched 300 via HD DVD and XBox download. The HD DVD was superior to the download, but the download was good. I would compare the XBox download to the content on my DirecTV HD channels.... not bad at all...... but not as good as HD DVD.

Having watched a bunch of HD movies on Xbox live, there is no question that these over-compressed low-bit rate HD movies are vastly inferior to HD-DVD/Blu-ray.

The reality is that a good upscaled DVDs are pretty close to these XBL HD download in terms of quality in many respects. However, you really can't expect a 7-10GB HD download to have equivalent quality to 30-50GB movie in the exact same codec.

I'm always amused by this. I had a co-worker that got a HD set before there was even really any HD content available. Day after day he would comment on the unbelievable difference between SD and HD, usually following it with some sort of lament about the lack of HD content.

I would of course follow up with something like "yeah, HD does look better, but it's no the end of the fracking world." Why anyone would buy a HD set before HD was ready for the consumer is beyond me. Even worse than all that, SD isn't *that* much worse than HD - it is still perfectly watchable in either format! In short, get over it - it's not the end of the fracking world.

I'd like to see comparisons of a human face. That is truly where differences can be seen as we're all familiar with what humans look like.