Those interested in looking at alternatives to Virgin Media's FilmFlex HD selection (currently just 28 movies) should check out Afront's blog and a comparison of UK on-demand HD movie providers, comparing Virgin Media with Xbox LIVE Marketplace, BT Vision, and Sky Anytime. The one he's missing is the Apple TV service, which, although limited currently to 720p, is the cheapest option per movie (£4.49 for HD, £3.49 for SD) and also offers a wide range of US TV content in High Def including all four series of Battlestar Galactica, all five of Lost and others of similar quality. I'll put together a longer post on AppleTV in the next few weeks, but in the mean time please check out Afront's post if you're interested in alternatives.
February 11, 2009
Alternatives for HD movies
Those interested in looking at alternatives to Virgin Media's FilmFlex HD selection (currently just 28 movies) should check out Afront's blog and a comparison of UK on-demand HD movie providers, comparing Virgin Media with Xbox LIVE Marketplace, BT Vision, and Sky Anytime. The one he's missing is the Apple TV service, which, although limited currently to 720p, is the cheapest option per movie (£4.49 for HD, £3.49 for SD) and also offers a wide range of US TV content in High Def including all four series of Battlestar Galactica, all five of Lost and others of similar quality. I'll put together a longer post on AppleTV in the next few weeks, but in the mean time please check out Afront's post if you're interested in alternatives.
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4 comments:
Thanks Nialli, I'm looking fwd to hearing more about your thoughts on the Apple TV. I expect its PVR abilities won't match the Virgin Media V+ box (which I reckon is the best PVR available in the UK), so the £200 investment would primarily be for renting HD content.
Apple TV doesn't have any PVR capability, so it's literally a box for pre-recorded movies or TV, your music, home videos or pictures. In other words, it's an iPod for your TV. The V+ beats it hands down, but if you were desperate for HD it's somewhere else you can go. It's an expensive piece of kit with limited capability - Apple needs to evolve it or kill it.
Apple got slated a lot in the past for it's quality, as did the UK version of live for lack of content. When it launched the microsoft's american version was so much more generous.
I'm a big Apple fan (and professionally one of their biggest global customers) but I struggle with the AppleTV in its current form.
Quality-wise though I've watched Ratatouille on it in HD and thought it pretty astonishing for 720p.
Pricing in the UK, as with everything on iTunes here, is a rip off compared with US.
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