What is VUDU's Picture Quality?

[HeadHodge]

This may have been covered elsewhere but I can't find it, so hope I'm not being redundent.

I've finally had a chance to watch a few movies on VUDU and read the forums a lot too.

I keep stating that I'm not interested in renting SD/stereo movies, just DVD or better with DD5.1 movies.

I've watched the Bourne HD movies and they were great.

But I'm confused about what SD movies mean.

I've watched a couple of movies that were listed as Enhanced Widescreen with surround sound (DD5.1?). They looked to me like they were DVD quality and sounded great (and would not have a problem renting more of these kinds of movies)

Then I've watched a couple of older movies, and they were what I consider SD/stereo movies with 4:3 aspect ratios (which I would not want to rent).

So I guess I'm confused about what SD really means.

To me SD means to me a 4:3 aspect ratio and low res quality.

While DVD quality means to me a true widescreen aspect ratio (whether it's letterboxed or not) at 480i or 480p res quality with DD5.1.

And HD quality means to me the same as DVD quality except it's 720p or 1024p quality resolution.

So I would appreciate if someone could explain what type of quality the movies on VUDU have to help my selection process of movies I would want to watch and rent that meet my picture and sound quality criteria.

After watching a few enhanced widescreen movies with surround sound, it just seems like you're short changing yourself in your product promo by calling it just either SD or HD in picture quality, when it seems like you may actually have SD, DVD, or HD picture quality.

Regards

[NA9D]

Re: What is VUDU's Picture Quality?

SD does not mean 4:3. And it says nothing about the "quality" of the image - only the resolution. HD only means the resolution is above 720p. Again - you can have a poor quality HD film as well.

SD means the movie format is in 480p/24. SD can be in 4:3 format, 16:9 or wider as well.

SD can be in stereo or DD5.1 (HD can be in stereo or DD5.1 as well).

HD means the movie format is in 720p or higher. On Vudu, HD films are in 1080p/24. By virtue of the fact that the format is 16:9, you would expect all content to be in 16:9 or higher aspect ratios. But that may not always be the case (I haven't seen a 4:3 HD movie yet though) and the pillar boxes on the sides would simply fill in the missing content.

The quality of the SD and the HD content is very much dependent on the quality of the source material obtained from the content provider. If the studio gives Vudu a high quality source, then the quality you get on Vudu is very high (for example, look at the movie 300 or Spiderman 3). If the source quality is poor, then you'll see a poor movie quality (look at something like an old movie such as His Girl Friday).

If a movie is a newer film, but the movie looks bad on the Vudu, please report that in the bug report section.

[HeadHodge]

Re: What is VUDU's Picture Quality?

SD means the movie format is in 480p/24. SD can be in 4:3 format, 16:9 or wider as well.

Thanks for the reply.

I understand the garbage in garbage out concept.

I could be wrong, but I seem to recall some Vudu movies listed as Widescreen and some as Enhanced Widescreen. Does that mean one is native widescreen and the other is streched 4:3 content?

If the movie is listed as neither, does that imply a 4:3 aspect?

Also, I'm curious what you're definition of DVD quality is.

Regards!

[NA9D]

Re: What is VUDU's Picture Quality?

Widescreen = 16:9
Enhanced Widescreen is higher aspect ratios such as scope, etc.
4:3 movies are listed as standard or something like that.

The only stretching that goes on is what you define in the video settings for how to handle 4:3 content.

There is no definition of "DVD Quality" as that's a subjective term. SD DVDs are encoded at 480p.

[HeadHodge]

Re: What is VUDU's Picture Quality?

There is no definition of "DVD Quality" as that's a subjective term. SD DVDs are encoded at 480p.

Thanks again for your reply.

I'm not trying to be a nit. I really like Vudu and wouldn't be hanging out here if I didn't. I'm just extremely curious by nature.

I just can't figure out why Vudu's marketing material (and some product reviews) claims to provide "near" DVD quality movies.

It's hard for me tell if that's true or not, when I'm not sure what that means (other than the subjective comparision of a DVD movie to a Vudu movie).

If there's no true definition of "DVD quality", why doesn't Vudu just say they provide DVD quality content for marketing purposes?

Thanks for your replies, best regards.

[HeadHodge]

Re: What is VUDU's Picture Quality?

4:3 movies are listed as standard or something like that.

I scrounged around a little and it looks like they say "Full Screen" for4:3 movies.

It seems a little misleading, but I can live with it, now that I know what it means.

I even saw one that said B&W. Is that a derivative of S&M?

[Nded]

Re: What is VUDU's Picture Quality?

I scrounged around a little and it looks like they say "Full Screen" for4:3 movies.

It seems a little misleading, but I can live with it, now that I know what it means.

I even saw one that said B&W. Is that a derivative of S&M?

Maybe it has something to do with the Democratic presidential debates...

[HeadHodge]

Re: What is VUDU's Picture Quality?

Maybe it has something to do with the Democratic presidential debates...

Those rat bastards!

(oh just got it LOL, getting slow in my old age!)

[Nded]

Re: What is VUDU's Picture Quality?

Those rat bastards!

(oh just got it LOL, getting slow in my old age!)

As a moderator here I'm obligated to uphold the integrity of this forum. Were you really LOL? http://www.nomorelol.com/

[HeadHodge]

Re: What is VUDU's Picture Quality?

As a moderator here I'm obligated to uphold the integrity of this forum. Were you really LOL? http://www.nomorelol.com/

If there were pig s*** here I'd be rolling in it!

[aaronwt]

Re: What is VUDU's Picture Quality?

Maybe he meant ROTFLMAO

[Nded]

Re: What is VUDU's Picture Quality?

I try to aim for SCOK when Max is here in the morning (Spit Coffee On Keyboard).

[NA9D]

Re: What is VUDU's Picture Quality?

I just can't figure out why Vudu's marketing material (and some product reviews) claims to provide "near" DVD quality movies.

It's hard for me tell if that's true or not, when I'm not sure what that means (other than the subjective comparision of a DVD movie to a Vudu movie).

You are correct that "Full Screen" is 4:3. I couldn't remember. It's a throw-back to the days when most people only had 4:3 sets and "widescreen" was letterboxed to fit. So now the terms Full Screen and Wide Screen apply to 4:3 and 16:9.

In terms of Near DVD Quality vs. DVD Quality - I really don't know. They probably say "Near DVD Quality" because it allows wiggle room in case there's a bad source, etc. Keep in mind that the video bit rate of a DVD is a lot higher than Vudu. A DVD movie is many times something like 5 to 6 Gigabytes of data. I know, it's MPEG-2, but even if you assume a 75% efficiency improvement from MPEG-2 to H.264 (and I think it's less than that), you are just beginning to get down to the Vudu file size on a 5 Gig sized movie (which is on the small size - I just checked and Pearl Harbor on my hard drive is over 7 Gigs). So Vudu compresses the video a lot more than DVD. So there's going to be some more compression artifacts even using H.264. Most people won't be able to tell it but some probably will. All in all, it's pretty darn good.

I think that's why they use the terminology they do.

[HeadHodge]

Re: What is VUDU's Picture Quality?

As a moderator here I'm obligated to uphold the integrity of this forum. Were you really LOL? http://www.nomorelol.com/

Ok I finally looked at the link. I'm not only getting slow but definetly out of my league.

You guys are twisted. Thanks for making my day! "LOI"

[RonV]

Re: What is VUDU's Picture Quality?

Ok I finally looked at the link. I'm not only getting slow but definetly out of my league.

You guys are twisted. Thanks for making my day! "LOI"

You only get to use one "Smiley" when using LOI.