iTunes Movies: Better Than Expected!
Since the release of movies on iTunes I have been putting off giving one a try since I really did not have high expectations for the service. Having read all the negative reviews of Amazon’s service and checked out some of what Google Video had to offer I was not impressed. None of these services gave me the “warm and fuzzy” with full length movies that I hoped for and the prices always seemed unreasonable. When iTunes introduced movies I was somewhat reluctant to give it try since the quality of the TV shows (in my opinion) was still lacking and the selection was limited.
Since I was home with a few hours to spare I decided to give the movie “Cars” a try since it looked interesting and I figured it would be a good test of the quality of movies provided by the service. The purchase was exactly the same as buying an album (with the extra “are you sure?” pop up) and I must admit that the download of the 1.3gb movie file did not take nearly as long as I had expected, arriving in about 1.5 hours on my Verizon DSL connection.
Like I stated above, my biggest concern regarding all these movie download services was the quality. How would the picture look on my 100+ inch projection screen? Would the quality of the sound be acceptable? Thankfully my initial fears were quickly dispelled and I am happy to report that my experience was top notch. Once again Apple has exceeded my expectations and made me yet another satisfied customer. The picture quality in the movie was superb, clear and with no visible motion artifacts. I was able to compare the movie side by side with a DVD and could not tell the difference. Sound was also very good but not in Dolby 5.1 format, which for me was not a huge deal but would have been a nice touch. Perhaps the high quality audio could be offered later as the service matures.
Overall I was very impressed with the quality of the movie I downloaded from the iTunes movie section, the quality was right up there with what I was used to with the DVDs I have purchased recently and my only complaint might be that the audio was not in Dolby 5.1 format.
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