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Sony Begins Selling HD Movies On Its PSN

Posted by Soulskill on from the pants-and-cheeseburgers-to-follow dept.

itwbennett writes "Sony on Tuesday 'rolled out the ability to buy HD movies from the PlayStation Network,' writes blogger Peter Smith. Sony claims they're the first service to offer HD titles to own from all six major movie studios. Smith runs the numbers on 'standard' pricing for titles ($19.99 for new releases; $17.99 for older movies), file sizes (ranging from 4 GB for Zombieland to 7.5 GB for 2012), and resolution (720P as far as he can tell)."

1 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. You religious nuts and your magic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    A good upsampling DVD player - functionally, giving you 720p quality on a "50 1080p" screen - at a normal couch distance of 10 feet will be nearly indistinguishable from putting the blu-ray disc in. That's reality.

    Ok, if we accept the science fictiony idea that 480 lines of information can be turned into 720 lines of more information, then -- wait, I just realized, this isn't really science fiction, because science fiction tends to just talk about technology changing, not mathematics changing (e.g. in the future pi is 4.2 and information can be created from nothing). So.. as I was saying, if we accept the magical fantasy where elves inside a box can watch 480 lines of information and interpret the scenes and redraw them in real time as 720 lines of information, then what you're saying is nearly correct. The differences between the elves' drawing in 720p vs 1080p at 10 feet, will be very small.

    So I guess you're right. But your premise contains elves. In the real world, the differences between DVDs and even 720p files, is staggeringly obvious, even on my 27" 720p TV. On a 50" 1080p screen, the difference between a DVD and a 1080p, would be at worst no less staggering, and actually, pretty goddamn noticable.