More HD movies hit iTunes' virtual shelves

I love the iTunes Store: I use it to buy music, apps, and irregularly TV series. The SD quality is about on par with DVD (a bit softer but with less artifacts). Sometimes I even buy the HD versions.

But the movie offers are something I just don't get. I have to pay more than for a DVD to get the SD version, usually without any bonus content or languages/subtitles. The HD versions are even more absurd, delivering an image quality significantly below BD while costing the same or even more.

I understand that it's extremely convenient to just download movies and be able to access them from HDD rather than an external physical medium (although that takes up huge amounts of disk space). But considering the low image quality and high cost I can't imagine why anyone would still chose this over the more conventional, butter superior BD?

I am not a fanboy of blu-ray, and 720 video looks great for me, so I am very happy that Apple finally added more HD movies to iTunes. Now I hope more studios will join this (WB, Fox, Sony, Universal). Yes, SD of iTunes was too low video quality even on 13 inch macbook, which stopped me from getting anything andy SD content. Now, if apple was fair and arranged a deal to upgrade previously purchased SD content, it would be just awesome.

From a screenshot I saw, "Up" is a 3.2GB download, and the extras are another 1.5GB. I'll stick with my 50GB Blu-ray Disc that also includes a copy of the film on DVD, and a Digital Copy. It was even cheaper, $16.49.

And of course, most of them still don't offer captions or subtitles.

Too bad that they are not very HD. Blu-ray movies are what Apple needs to support. They have more content (including things like blu-ray live) have much better audio and video quality. Apple needs to wake up to this fact. I want to be able to watch the movies I rent at Netflix in transit but my MacBook Pro and its operating system still does not support this contemporary technology. It is sad having to use such antiquated hardware and software. To make matters worse, BD-R is only $2/25GB which is great. I create a lot of content on my Macs but for some asinine reason Apple does not want me to write to current technology and expects me to write to multiple DVD-Rs and/or CD-Rs.

On a side note, the videos and movies I rent and buy (download and stream) from the Playstation store are higher quality than the ones I have gotten from iTunes, in fact much of the HD content I stream from my instant queue at Netflix is better than the HD content at iTunes. Why is Apple so bad in this area? What is their problem?

would love to buy digital copies of HD movies but when will flicks in 1080P be available? or at least a guarantee to account holders that when the become available that we could purchase at a moderate amount.

Well then we, Scandinavia, only need to be blessed with access to these movies.

Come on Apple, when the fuck do we get access ? How long are we gonna wait ?

If it's not Apple who is holding back then who is it ? Please tell me.

My iTunes HD purchased content stopped working (playback on my mac) when I replaced my G5 tower with a Mac Pro. Both were/are connected to a 23" cinema display. Apparently HDCP handshake issues.

Crazy considering it's a $2300 mac connected to a $1000 monitor and legally purchased material. Perhaps they need my blood as well.

I'm out as far as buying HD material. At least all the HD purchases also included a SD version. What a joke.

And as an added bonus, if you have version 3.0 or later on your Apple TV, your content will be automatically erased at random times.

While watching your HD movie, your Apple TV may randomly freeze up on you.

Also, as an added bonus I only realised this evening (Currently in Australia) - iTunes 9 can FINALLY output 5.1 surround out. Before this was limited to AppleTV and when the channel was selected in iTunes it was silent.

I was very happy to see this working.