I haven’t jumped on the HD bandwagon yet. Here’s Why.

Subjective Quality

One of the reasons that I don’t use Blu-Ray or choose HD when purchasing from iTunes is that I don’t need it. 480p, that is full-resolution, progressive-scan, DVD-quality, is good enough for me. My television is only 33 inches diagonal. Its widescreen and LCD and all that HD goodness. It’s also full 720p, not that almost-720p 1280x800 nonsense. 480p looks damn good on it. 720p looks better. I can see the difference, but only when I’m looking for it. (Music Videos are an easy way for me to compare since I have both 480p and 720p versions of a few. The difference is apparent, but only when looking for the difference.)

At the end of the day, 480p looks good enough.

AppleTV

720p

I use an AppleTV. This is my AppleTV. There are many like it, but this one is mine. I don’t “hack” it, either. It runs stock, Apple-supplied software only. (I have upgraded the hard drive, but that’s not a “hack” in any real sense.)

The AppleTV happily plays 720p25. Movies, generally shot at 24 fps, play just fine in HD on the AppleTV (@ 720p24). PAL-formatted TV Shows (and other PAL-formatted content) also play just fine since PAL runs at 25 fps.

Unfortunately, American TV runs at 30fps. The AppleTV doesn’t play 720p30. For some unfathomable reason, content which is not, never was, nor ever will be produced for television broadcast, will invariably appear at 30 fps if produced in the USA. Thus, this content won’t play in HD. (Actually, it won’t play at all on the AppleTV, but I’m assuming that I’d be able to get it in 480p (or 540p, see below).)

While this sucks, and I would likely purchase a new AppleTV should Apple opt to release (significantly) upgraded hardware, that’s the way it is.

So, some 720p content plays. That’s a recipe for frustration. While movies should encode to 720p24 just fine, some won’t. The result will be that I’ll have to re-encode, wasting much of my time. Or, I’ll have to instruct my encoder to hit a ceiling at 25 fps. That just bugs the frak out of me. I do not want to mess with framerates. That’s a quick way to run quality into the ground. Either way, I’ll end up with some good-looking 480p content, some “great”-looking 720p content, and some not-great-looking 720p-ish content. That would then lead me to become even more desensitised to the quality of the video and might very well leave me indifferent to high-versus-low quality, meaning that I might not notice when something worse than 480p makes it into my library. That, or it’ll drive me nuts (more likely).

540p

The AppleTV will play 540p at 30 fps. I could just encode HD video to 540p, thus solving my problem with 720p. However, now I’m no longer in magical-HD-land, but I’m above SD-lan, so I’m somewhere in in-between land. Depending on how I deal with 720p30 content, I might end up with good 480p, better 720p, and in-between 540p. Again, leading to the mixed-and-matched frustration I just mentioned.

This might be a viable option, but seems like an awful lot of work for a minor increase in resolution with compromise baked-in from the get-go.

iPhone/iPod touch/iPod classic

The iPhone and iPod touch both play 480p content just fine. While Apple’s official specifications seem to indicate that they are limited to 640x480, this is not true. Anything 480p (widescreen or 4:3, including anamorphic) will play on any iPhone or iPod touch.

The iPod classic will even play 480p content, but will squeeze it to 4:3 somewhat unceremoniously (by basically ignoring the anamorphic settings). I haven’t tested this in a long while, so its possible that the iPod classic isn’t as flexible as I recall. Its definitely close though. (By close, I mean that it will play 480p, but perhaps there are other limitations that make it somewhat incompatible with the 480p on the iPhone.)

I very much like having the ability to put my media anywhere I like. I like to be able to bring my Podcasts and TV Shows, and even a movie once in a while, with me wherever I go. Admittedly, I don’t do this much, but I do do it sometimes and I value the ability to do so. I would, of course, still be able to bring all my 480p media with me, but the new 720p content would fail to sync. Having to check if something is 480p or 720p before deciding if I want to bring it along for the flight will most likely end in frustration for me and my wife, who is more than happy to ignore any technical explanation I offer as to why Dexter won’t sync.

Now that I think about it, my wife does regularly sync our media to her iPhone, so really this isn’t just a vehicle for frustration but is, in fact, a show stopper.

Ripping & Encoding

Until recently, it wasn’t entirely clear that reasonably full-featured ripping/encoding solutions were available for Blu-Ray. While I’m as able as the next guy to recompile my linux-kernel with the appropriate drivers and more than capable to step through the Blu-Ray debugger in order to grab decoding keys, it just seems like an awful lot of work for what I’ve already explained isn’t really all that compelling to begin with.

Nowadays, of course, there are much simpler ways of ripping and encoding from Blu-Ray, but they’re still not as streamlined as for DVD. For DVD, most tools can read directly from disc and encode directly to H.264. Tools like HandBrake don’t do this themselves, but are designed so that you can add one plugin to do that actual DeCSS work outside of HandBrake itself. Its about as simple and Mac-like as you can get.

Blu-Ray, to my knowledge, requires a three step process. First, rip. Then, extract. Finally, encode. The rip itself can be done with Mac BluerayRipper Pro. Once that’s done, a somewhat-shady but nevertheless reputable MakeMKV can be used to grab a given “title set” (a single movie or single featurette) into a single file. (I think that MakeMKV can read directly from the disc, if necessary.) MakeMKV, thankfully, doesn’t do any encoding at all. It merely copies the data into a new container package, for easy access. Finally, HandBrake will happily encode H.264 from the MKV container into a nice MP4 wrapper.

For DVDs, I use RipIt to get a DVDMedia bundle, and then HandBrakeCLI to encode. (As mentioned above, HandBrake can read directly from the DVD if VLC is installed.) I’ve written a set of small scripts which make this amazingly painless. I’d have to either expand or replace those scripts for Blu-Ray, again seemingly much work for seemingly small profit.

1080p

My TV doesn’t show 1080p. My AppleTV doesn’t play 1080p. My MacBook Air doesn’t show 1080p, and likely couldn’t play it anyway (or at least not very well). My iPhone doesn’t play 1080p. My Blu-Ray — wait, I don’t have a Blu-Ray player.

Conclusion

In short, its just not worth it for me right now.

In the future, however, I’m sure that I’ll jump on the HD bandwagon. Its just a matter of time. 720p and 1080p seem to have gained popularity at the same time and are often confused with each other (since both are referred to as “HD”). I’m thinking that once its clear what format content will be available in (1080p), and that such content is high-quality, I’ll flip the Blu-Ray switch: buy a new TV, buy a new (upgraded) AppleTV, buy a Blu-Ray drive, buy Mac BlurayRipper Pro, rewrite the scripts, and start encoding to 540p — oh, wait.

HD is an expensive project.