Classic movies not yet in Blu-ray but sold on iTunes in 1080p HD (1 Viewer)

In iTunes store, I just went to Movies, looked under the Classic section, and found quite a few of 1080p titles that are not currently on Blu-ray. Many are for sale and rental, and some are for rent only. Has anyone seen them and can say "A Few Words About..." their quality? I bought "The House of Seven Gables" in 1080p and the picture is indeed 1080p. Even though you notice some compression artifacts (file size is only 3 GB), but you do see details that you don't see on DVD, such as the existing Universal Vault DVD. I even took some screen captures. Below are only some of those titles and there are quite a few more: House of Seven Gables Romeo and Juliet (1968) Rebel without a Cause Giant East of Eden Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore Suspicion (1941, rent only) Terms of Endearment Blow-up (1966, rent only) Pride and Prejudice (1940) Wait until Dark (1967, rent only) My Dinner with Andre Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) Anna Karenina (1935) High Sierra (1941, rent only) Marie Antoinette (1938, rent only) Baby Doll (1956, rent only) The Ring (1927) The Manxman (1929)

A lot of these are for sale @ VUDU!

Not a classic, but a great Paramount catalog title that always gets play in my house around Superbowl Sunday: Black Sunday (1977) 1080p on iTunes. It is a marked improvement over the DVD.

Does anyone know anything about the likelihood of seeing more Nicholas Ray Blurays released soon (i.e., In A Lonely Place, Rebel Without A Cause, They Live By Night)? In the meantime, I suppose I'll rent Rebel from iTunes. Is iTunes pretty trustworthy as far as honouring proper aspect ratios is concerned?

Originally Posted by Intaglio
Does anyone know anything about the likelihood of seeing more Nicholas Ray Blurays released soon (i.e., In A Lonely Place, Rebel Without A Cause, They Live By Night)?
In the meantime, I suppose I'll rent Rebel from iTunes.
Is iTunes pretty trustworthy as far as honouring proper aspect ratios is concerned?

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Rebel is coming out with East of Eden and Giant later this year.

Everett Stallings said:

A lot of these are for sale @ VUDU!

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A lot of the HD offerings at VUDU are not available for PC, only for VUDU-capable devices like Xbox and PS3.

Intaglio said:

Does anyone know anything about the likelihood of seeing more Nicholas Ray Blurays released soon (i.e., In A Lonely Place, Rebel Without A Cause, They Live By Night)? In the meantime, I suppose I'll rent Rebel from iTunes. Is iTunes pretty trustworthy as far as honouring proper aspect ratios is concerned?

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The more well-known and popular titles will likely get Blu-ray releases. I use iTunes only for those that are relegated to overpriced MOD, Twilight Time, or Olive Films releases or no releases at all. Btw, your PC needs to be HDCP-compliant in order to download HD titles from iTunes. Secondly, by default, iTunes is set to download 720p, not 1080p. You need to go into iTunes settings and choose 1080p as the default. Thirdly, videos downloaded from iTunes can only be played with iTunes' built-in player due to copy protection. Fourthly, the iTunes player has no brightness or color controls, so you need to make sure your PC's graphics drivers provide brightness and color controls. You will likely need to use them because chances are the iTunes videos may be quite dark. I recently downloaded the 1984 Jack Lemmon comedy "Mass Appeal" in HD. It is rarely shown TV, and although a MOD DVD is available, there is just not much hope that it would come out on Blu-ray. I suppose iTunes provides whatever the studios provide, as far as aspect ratios are concerned.

I will say it is mighty tempting seeing all the those classic Disney movies available from iTunes in HD: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Swiss Family Robinson Old Yeller Pollyanna Treasure Island The Happiest Millionaire The Parent Trap and the list goes on and on. But $17.99 seems a bit pricey for a file that is 1/4 the size of a Blu-ray. It can't possibly look as good.

kevin_y said:

A lot of the HD offerings at VUDU are not available for PC, only for VUDU-capable devices like Xbox and PS3. The more well-known and popular titles will likely get Blu-ray releases. I use iTunes only for those that are relegated to overpriced MOD, Twilight Time, or Olive Films releases or no releases at all. Btw, your PC needs to be HDCP-compliant in order to download HD titles from iTunes. Secondly, by default, iTunes is set to download 720p, not 1080p. You need to go into iTunes settings and choose 1080p as the default. Thirdly, videos downloaded from iTunes can only be played with iTunes' built-in player due to copy protection. Fourthly, the iTunes player has no brightness or color controls, so you need to make sure your PC's graphics drivers provide brightness and color controls. You will likely need to use them because chances are the iTunes videos may be quite dark. I recently downloaded the 1984 Jack Lemmon comedy "Mass Appeal" in HD. It is rarely shown TV, and although a MOD DVD is available, there is just not much hope that it would come out on Blu-ray. I suppose iTunes provides whatever the studios provide, as far as aspect ratios are concerned.

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Thanks for the info. I actually use Apple TV, so I'm able to stream the rented titles on my HDTV.

Excuse me for asking, as I'm hardly download/streaming savvy, but why does it say on the iTunes download store that the HD "includes 720p, 1080p" then states "downloading 720p"? Is what you're buying true 1080p when it downloads at 720p, and is about 3 gigs sufficient for a 1 hour 45min feature? There are many there I'd LOVE to own on BD, but fear that the studios will NEVER produce a buyable pressed (or BD/R) version. Some "die to own" titles they offer include KINGS OF THE SUN, PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, THE HAUNTING and LADY IN A CAGE. Can you then burn these from your computer's iTunes (Mac Mini in my case) onto a data BD in a firewire connected blu-ray burner? Do they look good, like "true 1080" blu-rays? My fear is that there is some clause that won't allow a BD/R to be made. It would be fun to create one's own artwork. And, for the archivist, there are the gold BD blanks, which promise 200 years but are pretty expensive. I can burn CDs from iTunes, and just hope that the same option exists for blu-ray burning. Anyone done this?

THE HAUNTING (63) has been rumored for Blu this anniversary year.

Bob Cashill said:

THE HAUNTING (63) has been rumored for Blu this anniversary year.

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Wow, I'll be pre-ordering that one! Just hope that we get more of these and more often. Seems not long ago that I couldn't keep up with the new releases I wanted, now there's almost nothing to look forward to.

Ed Lachmann said:

Excuse me for asking, as I'm hardly download/streaming savvy, but why does it say on the iTunes download store that the HD "includes 720p, 1080p" then states "downloading 720p"? Is what you're buying true 1080p when it downloads at 720p, and is about 3 gigs sufficient for a 1 hour 45min feature?

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. That was what I mentioned in my last post: by default, iTunes is set to download at 720p; you need to change that default to 1080p. Go to Edit, Preferences, Playback, and change preferred video version to 1080p. .

There are many there I'd LOVE to own on BD, but fear that the studios will NEVER produce a buyable pressed (or BD/R) version. Some "die to own" titles they offer include KINGS OF THE SUN, PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, THE HAUNTING and LADY IN A CAGE. Can you then burn these from your computer's iTunes (Mac Mini in my case) onto a data BD in a firewire connected blu-ray burner? Do they look good, like "true 1080" blu-rays? My fear is that there is some clause that won't allow a BD/R to be made. It would be fun to create one's own artwork. And, for the archivist, there are the gold BD blanks, which promise 200 years but are pretty expensive.

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You can save or burn your downloads wherever you want, but you can ONLY play them in iTunes and ONLY on the PCs or devices you have authorized (in iTunes, go to Store, Authorize or Deauthorize this PC). No, they don't look at good as 1080p blu-rays. The file size and bit rate are MUCH smaller than Blu-ray. But they still look much better than DVD due to the higher resolution.

I can burn CDs from iTunes, and just hope that the same option exists for blu-ray burning. Anyone done this?

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Music downloads from iTunes often don't have copy protection, but movie downloads do. Hence, you can only play them on iTunes, and on authorized devices.

I'm totally ignorant in this area but I see that Amazon is offering an HD 720p download of the Astaire/Rogers movie 'Swingtime' (my personal favourite from their canon) for about $20. I haven't yet seen whether I can buy this from here in Australia, but before I plunge in, I just want to check whether, once downloaded, I'll be ablt to burn this as an MKV or AVI file on DVD (it's less than 4gig size) so I can play it on my standalone player or is there something limiting playback to certain devices only.
I was given a file by a friend which had some 720p MKV files of some early theatre shorts ... there seemed a prob with the files because neither my Oppo BDP83 nor my Toshiba Blu ray player could play them, although they usually handle MKV files really well. I solved that prob by using AVS Video Converter to convert the files to 720p AVI files and they played just fine, with no loss in resolution. So I'm hoping a similarly straightforward solution will work to sort out any Amazon download format problems.
Hope someone can help

AnthonyClarke said:

I'm totally ignorant in this area but I see that Amazon is offering an HD 720p download of the Astaire/Rogers movie 'Swingtime' (my personal favourite from their canon) for about $20. I haven't yet seen whether I can buy this from here in Australia, but before I plunge in, I just want to check whether, once downloaded, I'll be ablt to burn this as an MKV or AVI file on DVD (it's less than 4gig size) so I can play it on my standalone player or is there something limiting playback to certain devices only.
I was given a file by a friend which had some 720p MKV files of some early theatre shorts ... there seemed a prob with the files because neither my Oppo BDP83 nor my Toshiba Blu ray player could play them, although they usually handle MKV files really well. I solved that prob by using AVS Video Converter to convert the files to 720p AVI files and they played just fine, with no loss in resolution. So I'm hoping a similarly straightforward solution will work to sort out any Amazon download format problems.
Hope someone can help

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Amazon videos are just like iTunes videos: they have copy protection that prevents you from doing any conversion and/or DVD burning. The one you were able to convert & burn probably had no copy protection. Amazon videos need to be watched on compatible devices. If your TV and Blu-ray player are not compatible, then you can only watch the videos on your PC. If you a tech-savvy enough, you can run AV cables from your PC to your TV, so you can watch on your TV.

If you have compatible TV and player, you need to hook them up to your PC network, and you need to "register" them in your Amazon account so Amazon "recognizes" them. If you want to watch them on your iPhone/iPad, you need to register the iPhone/iPad at Amazon. Want to watch on Xbox or PS3, register them at Amazon, and so and so forth. Welcome to the new age of movie watching. Yes, I know you must feel that wouldn't it be easier to just burn it on DVD and pop it in to the player. But the industry wants copy protection on everything to fight piracy, as we all know.