HD definetly does not stand for Honest Definition
Apple, TV — By Andrew on September 10, 2008 at 10:40 pmAny of you mobile-video fanatics are probably drooling at the notion that Apple is now releasing HD TV show Episodes on their new iTunes 8, and what’s probably not as surprising as the fact I will probably finish this sentence without bashing the them is the other fact that the video quality isn’t really as “HD” as one would think. Yes, that is all 1 sentence.
The good people over at Gizmodo, with a little help of my main man George Oh of ZDNet (ooooo OOOOOHHHHHHHH!!!!! …yeah I never spoke to the guy), have wrote up a very detailed and knowledgeable comparison between Blu-Ray DVD quality all the way down to HD Online downloads, including Apple’s new HD videos.
To spoil your HD dinner, Apple’s HD episodes (which cost $2.99 compared to their $1.99 Standard Def brethren) are actually worse than DVD quality video. Their comparison is based on the Bit-rate, which is the amount of megabits of data per second used to create image. This is the same as MP3 Bit-rate, only it is much more noticeable to see grainy video then it is to notice subtle differences in sound quality.
If you really want to know what you spend your money on, I really suggest this read. It’s very informative and maybe, just maybe, it will make you hate Apple as much as I do. If not, there’s always the $9.99 FIRMWARE UPDATES. Are you as unsurprised as I am?
Tags: Apple, downloads, hd downloads, hd video, high definition, iTunes

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