Buying Movies for Download

  • Thread starter Thread starter Danoff
  • 6 comments
  • 1,038 views
Danoff

Danoff

Premium
Messages
34,421
United States
Mile High City
Recently I have ripped all of my DVDs onto my HDD on my HTPC. This is my primary mode for watching movies at this point - and it has gotten me to seriously consider buying movies as a file directly. This is especially tempting given that I don't have a blu-ray player, and have some films that I'd like to see in higher resolution. If I could buy these movies directly, I could save the cost of the blu-ray player.

I've checked out Amazon.com's "on-demand" video service, which allows you to purchase and download HD digital copies of movies. The only problem with this is that I apparently cannot view them without using a special amazon player, which sounds like a major headache. I'm also guessing that the player goes online and checks amazon to make sure I have the rights to view it - which means I'm relying on the existence of amazon.com and the status of their digital rights server for the remainder of the time that I own the file. Not particularly appealing.

Itunes also sells movies, but I've had some difficulty finding details about what format it gets downloaded to, how difficult this format is to deal with, and what kind of quality you get.

So, if anyone else out there has some experience with any of these services (especially itunes) or has found something that works, I'd love to hear about it. I'm eager to avoid the middleman and purchase what I want directly. Buying CDs just to rip them to mp3 was annoying. Buying DVDs just to rip them is even moreso.
 
That won't be possible because almost all music and movies you buy legally and download will be loaded with DRM. It would be best to get a blu-ray drive such as this LG drive because it comes with the software for you to watch blu-ray movies.
 
Most buy-to own and on-demand HD movie services are also a long way from the quality of a Blu-ray.

They may have the resolution, but almost always lack the bit-rate (in both audio and video) to be a comparable quality. Some I have seem are not much better than a well up-scaled DVD, which to me defeats the object.

Personally given the quality difference, the DRM hassle and ever reducing cost of BR releases I'm sticking with physical media for HD.


Regards

Scaff
 
Yea, I'm seriously picky with image quality, and I imagined given the file sizes that they advertise that the end product was going to be insufficient. I suppose I'll just have to keep ripping DVDs and shoving them in a box never to see the light of day still. It's a shame that we still have to wait on this one. You'd think the movie industry would have watched what the recording industry went through.
 
Any digital thing you buy from Amazon is not actually owned by you. For whatever reason, if they decide to pull the plug on your account, all of your digital purchases bite the dust as well.

Naturally, I'm against the purchasing of digital media when it's available as hard property. I'd say get the hard copies. Some of them even come bundled with a digital copy. At least The Dark Knight did that.
 
I completely agree with Scaff on the bitrate issue. While low quality, 2-channel audio is acceptable for watching movies on Netflix, it's not an acceptable format for a movie that justifies a purchase. Sadly, at present, I'm not aware of any legal means that address your requirements satisfactorily, short of Omnis' digital copy, but that also requires you to purchase physical media and only provides a stereo soundtrack.
 
There currently is no LEGAL way to download proper high definition movies with proper sound. I do however have well over 2TB of HD content, mostly Blue Ray rips, the odd one from other sources. I would definately recommend buying a Blueray drive for your HTPC, as long as it has a good processor for decoding/ripping.
 

Latest Posts

Back