Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

[NA9D]

Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

I forgot the P stood for progressive scan.

Do you think a Vudu HD movie would be better to watch with 720P instead of 1080i?

I'll definitely try it myself, but was curious what you thought.

Regards

Well, the correct answer to your question is for you to watch the movie in the native resolution of your TV. If your TV's native resolution is 1080i, then watch the content in 1080i. If the native resolution is 720p (1280x720) then, watch it in 720p. Most sets that aren't 1080p native are 720p. I believe there are very few 1080i native sets. Now, if you have a 1080p/60 set, the Vudu's 1080i/30 output will be converted to 1080p/60 by your TV with no loss of quality.

Bottom line is that your TV will convert whatever you input to the native resolution of the set. My set's native resolution is 720p. So 480i, 480p, 540p, and 1080i content are all converted to 720p.

[NA9D]

Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

I don't think there's a need for poping up a message whenever you are going to play 1080p content as then anyone playing an HD movie on a 720p set would have to view that. What should pop up is during the initial setup, perhaps the box should tell the user what the determined resolution is on the default (automatic) setting. That would be a useful thing as many people who have a 1080p/60 set assume the box is going to output 1080p/60 which it won't. The box will default to 480p then....

[HeadHodge]

Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

It's very possible his set doesn't accept 1080p/24. So he was probably running at 1080i and taking a photo like Volker said would only potentially capture 1/2 the actual image since it's interlaced.

So yeah, write him back and ask him to do the tests using an actual HD setting of something like 1080p/24 or 720p.

I forgot the P stood for progressive scan.

Do you think a Vudu HD movie would be better to watch with 720P instead of 1080i?

I'll definitely try it myself, but was curious what you thought.

Regards

[Rusdude]

Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

You know, the more I think about this the more it hit me that this guy just reveals how much of a group of hacks they are at Gizmodo. I mean, come on, who is going to actually measure the performance of something and leave the setting at "automatic"? I don't think Consumer Reports would even be that stupid. Wouldn't you want to step through everything and make sure it is set up to be as best as possible?

While, I am all for proper testing, tech bloggers (Giz, Engadget, etc.) don't usually do in-depth reviews and are not, by design, 100% objective. However, we should ease up on Wilson. From his email to me, it seems he means well.

Even if his settings weren't correct, perhaps we need to view this as an opportunity to improve (just like HDMI situation in other post). Perhaps, any time someone tries to play 1080p video over lesser connection, a message could pop-up saying something like "You are about to view 1080p content, but Vudu output is set at ____. If you'd like to change setting click CHANGE OUTPUT. If this is correct, press IGNORE. If you'd like to not see this message in the future, press ALWAYS IGNORE".

[NA9D]

Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

I'm willing to rent both movies and take a picture with my camera. I bet I can show better quality differences...

[steveybaby]

Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

I'm seeing the giz review get posted all over the web and the responses are mostly "yeah - im not surprised" type responses. It's pretty annoying - as those people haven't even seen a vudu in action and are commenting on something they know nothing about based on those pathetic screenshots he included.

Are any vudu users able to hook up into a capture card to get accurate screenshots? I'd happily contribute a few dollars towards someone re-renting Transformers in SD and HD to get an official comparison posted and correct this guy. If we want to do this properly I'd want to see side by side comparisons of VUDU SD/HD, DVD, XBOX live download.

Aaron - you have a lot of kit and have access to all these version - is it something you can do?

[NA9D]

Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

You know, the more I think about this the more it hit me that this guy just reveals how much of a group of hacks they are at Gizmodo. I mean, come on, who is going to actually measure the performance of something and leave the setting at "automatic"? I don't think Consumer Reports would even be that stupid. Wouldn't you want to step through everything and make sure it is set up to be as best as possible?

[Rusdude]

Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

Agreed. We need to know his "automatic" setting. However, if he simply sets the output to 720p or 1080i or if his TV supports it, 1080p/24, and then re-does the test, he will see a difference. We need Russdude to ask him to do this. Then he needs to correct his writeup.

I emailed him some of the responses and, again, invited Wilson to come discuss things here. I mean, I have no influence on Giz writers, so relaying messages through me doesn't mean he will respond to them.

P.S. It's "Rusdude" (one S) or Ivan.

[NA9D]

Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

Agreed. We need to know his "automatic" setting. However, if he simply sets the output to 720p or 1080i or if his TV supports it, 1080p/24, and then re-does the test, he will see a difference. We need Russdude to ask him to do this. Then he needs to correct his writeup.

[aaronwt]

Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

It's very possible his set doesn't accept 1080p/24. So he was probably running at 1080i and taking a photo like Volker said would only potentially capture 1/2 the actual image since it's interlaced.

So yeah, write him back and ask him to do the tests using an actual HD setting of something like 1080p/24 or 720p.

We still need to know what is automatic setting is. If the difference he saw was so miniscule my guess is that his automatic setting is 480i/480P.
That would explain why he can't see much of a difference between the two. Because in my setup the difference is very obvious and I know my output was set to 1080i.
Even that radar sceen part. The text at the bottom of the screen is absolutely unreadable on the VUDU SD version. But in the HD version it is clear and crisp and easily readable. The Xbox Live HD version is clear and readable but not as sharp as the VUD HD version.
The clarity on the text is directly related to the resolution.
if he looks at that scene in the automtic setting and can't read the text at the bottom of the Radar screen, his output is definitely only 480i or 480p.(or he has poor eyesight if it is an HD resolution)

[NA9D]

Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

It's very possible his set doesn't accept 1080p/24. So he was probably running at 1080i and taking a photo like Volker said would only potentially capture 1/2 the actual image since it's interlaced.

So yeah, write him back and ask him to do the tests using an actual HD setting of something like 1080p/24 or 720p.

[aaronwt]

Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

I got a response back from Wilson, author of Giz's post (I emailed him and asked him to post his set-up here). Here's what he said:

So it was set to automatic? For all we know it was outputting 480P/480i. I know if I run my VUDU through my Algolith Flea it thinks automatic should be set to 480i/480P even though the box can accept up to 1080P24.
So he needs to tell us what the actual output resolution was.
I know in my comparisons using 1080i output, there is a big difference between the VUDU SD and HD version. You can't confuse the two. Yet with his pictures, which also cause problems, they look similar, plus they aren't even the same frame of the movie..

So basically his response doesn't tell us much. We need to know the actual resolution that was being output for the SD and HD VUDU versions, and the output his HD DVD player was using.
Saying it was in automatic mode tells us nothing, only that the output resolution could be any of the 5 resolution choices.
the Plasma model would be nice too. Then we could at least find out if the model accepts 1080P24 input. If not then we know for sure the resolutin being ouput was not above 1080i, and if it was 1080i pausing it decreases the resolution even further since it can only show one of the two video fields when paused on interlaced output.

I wish I could post on Gizmodo but I signed up along time ago and all is says is my comments will be posted when my account is approved, but it's never been approved. So even comments I made last Summer have never shown up.

[Rusdude]

Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

I got a response back from Wilson, author of Giz's post (I emailed him and asked him to post his set-up here). Here's what he said:

Hi Ivan - I had the Vudu plugged directly into a Panasonic 1080p
plasma. We're not talking about a complicated rig here. Just a direct
connection, with the Vudu set to Automatic. I plan to do a more
extensive test soon, and compare Xbox 360 and Apple TV downloads, too.
I find it rather hard to believe that someone's download experience
was close to HD DVD, especially with an expensive set up.

Even Vudu understands this issue, that the instant delivery causes
significant quality loss -- the philosophical question for Vudu
engineers is "what's the tradeoff?" As you can see in the comments to
my piece, some people want slow overnight downloads of the best stuff,
whereas others want instant gratification. In today's broadband, it's
going to be a pretty solid dilemma for a while.

W

[NA9D]

Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

I would suspect that each pixel is more than a bit. After all a bit will just specify on or off but a pixel has color, intensity, etc.

This is true. I don't know about the intensity, but since say a plasma is made up of three individual color tubes: red, green and blue, you could say that each pixel represents 3 bits. Now, I'm not sure if there is an intensity control for each individual color in the pixels, but if we are assuming it's on or off, then yeah, we could multiply the bit rates *3. However, there may be some intensity differences as the shading and blending of colors requires more depth than just on or off. So it's probably even higher.

Now, video is somewhat compressible, particularly from frame to frame with using the same background and given that the Vudu uses variable bit rate, the compression efficiency with some scenes is better than with others.

[aaronwt]

Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

Its http://digg.com/ or direct to the article:

http://digg.com/hardware/Vudu_Test_C...wnload_Worries

Digg gets a *lot* of traffic - it is the 26th most popular site in the US.

I reposted my comments from here at the Digg site, since they never publish any of my comments at Gizmodo.