The Rental period for PSN rentals is 48 hours once viewed and 2 weeks availability if you do not intend to watch immediately, compared to 24 hours and 1 month for Apple TV.
PSN HD titles are compressed 1080p files, while Apple TV is compressed 720p. The file size of a the same title is 6.5GB on PSN vs. 1.9GB on Apple TV.
Currently Apple TV has way more titles compared to PSN, but as hugh has stated, give it some time and I'm sure PSN will be comparable.
I rented Shutter Island in HD. I pressed download twice when the screen didn't change to indicate that it was actually downloading, and was concerned that it may have downloaded the same film twice, since my screen indcated a download in progress and one waiting, both Shutter Island. However when the download completed about 3 hours later, only one copy was there, with no waiting second download. I didn't start the film till the next day. I was concerned about watching while downloading, because I had run into some problems on an Amazon download when i was in the US. Lots of skipping and stuttering when watching while downloading.
The quality was fine. Definitely not as good as blu-ray, but totally acceptable. Sound was OK as well, but I don't recall very much rear channel stuff. All in all a good experience, and I will certainly rent again.
Watched Alice in Wonderland in HD last night. Was fine except for the fact it defaulted to stereo. Had to go into the audio options and pick the other track,
The Rental period for PSN rentals is 48 hours once viewed and 2 weeks availability if you do not intend to watch immediately, compared to 24 hours and 1 month for Apple TV.
Uhh, there is an Xbox Live video store in Canada as well, been around for a long time now.
There is however no purchase option on Xbox, however, since PSN's is only for the SD movies right now, I consider it a useless feature. It would be nice if they both had the buy option for HD content.
I agree. No option to purchase HD is a bummer although the movie is locked to that one device. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Perfect scenario for managed copy. (comon, make it happen!)
As a side note I rented a movie (HD) last week and was overall pleased with the result.
Some things I liked:
Easy to navigate through the store and purchase your movie. I had to add money to my wallet first which showed up instantly on my account.
The picture quality was quite decent. Not as good as Blu-Ray but the file was a hefty 5.5G (for a 2h movie IIRC).
The download was fast, easily maxing my DSL connection for the duration of the download.
Some things I didn't like:
I had to wait 30 minutes before I could start watching. This is actually not Sony's fault, it's simply because of the file size and the speed of my Internet connection. My download is capped at 5Mbit/s (on my router using QoS) which translates to 625KBytes/s. The 5.5G file takes 5500/0.625/60=147 minutes to get to my PS3 which means that for a 120 minute movie I have to wait at least 27 minutes to have buffer-free watching... I wish I could get faster Internet, come on Bell! On a more positive note, no issues starting the movie while its still downloading.
I couldn't get the audio to work properly. There seems to be 2 tracks in the file, one is AAC and the other one stereo. The AAC is 5.1 but since my receiver does not decode AAC the PS3 seems to simply downmix it to stereo. If anyone has a suggestion I all ears. Do I need to get a new receiver?
All in all a pretty positive experience. The audio is really a bummer though, I hope I can find a workaround/solution to this.
I couldn't get the audio to work properly. There seems to be 2 tracks in the file, one is AAC and the other one stereo. The AAC is 5.1 but since my receiver does not decode AAC the PS3 seems to simply downmix it to stereo. If anyone has a suggestion I all ears. Do I need to get a new receiver?
It's an older Yamaha model (from over 5 years ago), can't remember the exact model number (and I'm not home right now). It doesn't do HDMI and the PS3 is connected to it using an optical cable. It definitely does not decode AAC.
I was hoping the PS3 could convert it to something my receiver can decode, but leave it 5.1... I think it does that with other codecs like DTSMA.
I like the idea and implementation of this on PSN but, and this is a big 'but', there is no way that this will work for me in terms of bandwidth usage. We rent around 4 movies per week (BD mainly) from our local store. The price is comparable on PSN but the fact that each movie will chew up 5-6 GB of my monthly 60 GB allowance (Cogeco) is just not on. I cannot see how this media delivery method will ever catch on while cable and telco companies are limiting users to such paltry bandwidth caps. Even 200 GB per month (like Comcast in the USA) would mean this would be a much more manageable option.
I don't think the PS3 "converts" DTSMA to anything besides PCM. If you are using optical, it just sends the "DTS" part of DTS-MA (it is a subset of the full signal which can be easily picked out). If you do convert to PCM, you will only get 2-channel PCM through optical (optical can't handle 5-channel PCM)
Similarly if you have the PS3 convert AAC to PCM through optical, you will only get 2 channels.
The biggest thing that irks me is that most newer movies are only available for rent for a short period of time. They come on as rental for one to two months and then you can't rent anymore. iTunes does that a lot and I know it's not iTunes' fault, but it's very frustrating. I bought a PS3 this weekend and already I find the same thing on most new movies.
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