Could HD Content Be Coming To The iTunes Store?

Posted by Eddie V.
September 3, 2008

Update! - Could Kevin Rose have answered my iTunes HD TV Show Dreams? Head on over to his site to read about what’s new in iTunes 8!

[theaftermac.com] Chris Marsden over at the site The After Mac is speculating that HD content could be coming to the iTunes Store. As we all know HD content has been available to Apple TV users since late February of this year. Marsden points to a recently released new decoder that is visually lossless and provides uncompressed HD quality at SD data rates, which he claims means HD quality in a smaller file size, eliminating one of the biggest obstacles to why there isn’t HD content in the iTunes Store to date. I am the least educated person in the way of video decoders, but if this speculation has the smallest chance of being true, this could pave the way for not only HD Movies but HD TV Shows as well. Anyone in the know have any thoughts on this new decoder theory?

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Comments
Comment by Galley on September 3, 2008 @ 9:09 am

The MPEG-4 encoder that Apple uses is already twice as efficient as MEPG-2 that DVD use. Uncompressed HD quality at SD rates sounds implausible.

Comment by kaembo on September 3, 2008 @ 10:17 am

Don’t think so. HD is not available to PCs via iTunes, because of the lack of a HDCP-Copyprotection.

The ATV has a HDMI output with HDCP, that’s why it is allowed to play HD-Content.

Regards,
Kaembo

Comment by Jeff on September 3, 2008 @ 3:48 pm

The decoder mentioned is for production and it creates extremely small files in production. It is much larger than h.264 and not practical to deliver files with. It’s is 6-10 times smaller than uncompressed but h.264 is much smaller.

Also please not that the Kevin Ross quote says download - not buy (Im leaning towards HD is only available via subscription).

Comment by Keith Foster on September 3, 2008 @ 6:57 pm

This might be the first sign of Apple TV / Mac Mini hybrid. Kevin also said something about HD visualization; granted, most monder computers have no issue with HD content. This sounds, to me, Apple had the Apple TV in mind with iTunes 8.

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