CEDIA, (a Trade association of companies specialising in planning and installing home cinema), ran some unscientific blind tests on customers to see if people can really tell iTunes HD quality from the real stuff, that is 1080p Blu-ray.
And the results?
Which picture looks better, A or B?
Blu-ray 92%
MP4 8%
Looks like Blu-ray is the real winner, eh? Not a real surprise when you think an average HD movie on iTunes (720p) weighs about 1.2Gb, when a 1080p Blu-ray movie can reach anywhere between 20 and 50Gb (yeah, I know, including a gazillion soundtracks in different formats).
This is one of the thing that often gets overlooked when people talk about the death of disc-based movies: I don't mind watching "House, M.D." in compressed 720p HD (or in crappy divXed SD for that matter), but "The Matrix" in full 1080p with an uncompressed Dolby TrueHD soundtrack is a real experience.
