SD versions of HD iTunes Store movies improve in quality
13. Nov, 2009 
2 Comments
It seems like some SD versions of iTunes Store HD films got a quality bump. In May 2007, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was 1.64GB with a 1632Kbps bitrate and 640 pixel resolution. Now when purchasing the just-released HD version, the extra SD version that comes along for the ride is 2GB with a 2020Kbps bitrate and 853 pixel resolution.
Post Author
That’s why I would never buy video downloads. The quality can be such a huge variable. It’s not like they’re upfront about it.
DVD are variable too – often bonus content is compress more heavily ‘to fit’ – if you look at dvds of the 90s they fit into 4GB discs, now they are fit 8. Electronic distribution doesn’t have those ceilings. And codecs(compression methods) are improved all the time so a bit-rate used in 2015 codec could be 3/4 or half that of todays 2009 files and even better resolution & quality.