Windsor Smith

What Does Quality Online Video Look Like?

Yes, iTunes is pretty good for watching TV shows and movies (I use it with a Mac mini connected to a regular old CRT-type TV set), but there's at least one flaw: it converts all 480i60 (interlaced, 60 fields per second) source material to 480p30 (progressive, 30 frames per second). This cuts the temporal resolution in half, and can also affect the spatial resolution (depending on how the deinterlacing is done). More importantly, it alters the "feel" of the content; it's especially noticeable with a program like "The Daily Show", which is intentionally shot interlaced/60 to mimic the look of other news shows. Sports programming might also suffer.