Renting HD movies on PS3

[sgtpeppers]

Has anybody done this? They have some great stuff I'd like to check out. Whats the quality like? How long do you get to keep the movie?

Thanks

[Pepelutivruski4]

not i. i leave it up to torrents :P

does anyone know if these rentals come in atleast DTS 5.1? or any type of surround sound?

[clone]

i tried a stargate movie. NEVER AGAIN. only because it took around 4 hours to download. other than that it ran fine. a little expensive in my opinion.

[Cyorg]

I have twice. Downloads are very slow.

[heathward]

Originally Posted by Cyorg

I have twice. Downloads are very slow.

i really enjoy your posts. they make my eyes open up wide. with all due respect, it has nothing to do with what you typed.

[Marine Mike]

Originally Posted by clone

i tried a stargate movie. NEVER AGAIN. only because it took around 4 hours to download. other than that it ran fine. a little expensive in my opinion.

+1

I rented The Cooler in HD and we had to watch it the next night. Talk about a disappointment!

[Porfie]

I downloaded 10,000 BC to compare it to the blu-ray and regular edition and it took about 2 hours to download. It looked better than the regular version, close to 720p but not blu-ray quality and the audio couldnt touch blu-ray.

[BluHavik]

Originally Posted by clone

i tried a stargate movie. NEVER AGAIN. only because it took around 4 hours to download. other than that it ran fine. a little expensive in my opinion.

I did it with Harold and Kumar 2. Same here never again, took forever to download. I could have walked to the closest blockbuster, stopped for a sit down meal and then walked home. With time to spare in the time it took to download.

[Pepelutivruski4]

Originally Posted by Pepelutivruski4

does anyone know if these rentals come in atleast DTS 5.1? or any type of surround sound?

anybody?

[DrasticPlastic]

one way to find out... download one and see for yourself.

[Pepelutivruski4]

Originally Posted by DrasticPlastic

one way to find out... download one and see for yourself.

F that, i'm not an idiot.

i can die happy not knowing wether or not a service i will never use supplies surroudn sound.

thank you in advance to anyone who can answer my question though.

[Papi4baby]

I rent Xam'D and is very pretty. But is not worth it i think. Too expensive for just a rental, while every other anime you get to keep

[pBLU-RAYs3]

Originally Posted by sgtpeppers

Has anybody done this? They have some great stuff I'd like to check out. Whats the quality like? How long do you get to keep the movie?

Thanks

24 hours once activated for viewing. Quality is like a few day old donut from a donut shop. How hungry are you & can your stomach handle it?

[SkantDragon]

I think maybe the other posters might be just a little inclined to be rough on any digital download service... what with the arguments that they will replace Blu-ray and all.

But anyway... I've used the PSN video download service a good bit. And it's actually very good.

The quality is quite high as far as digital downloads go. They're 720p and roughly a standard DVD worth of data for a typical movie, but since they're compressed with h.264 instead of MPEG2, they can really pull off the higher resolution.

That doesn't mean the video quality compares favorably to Blu-ray, of course. It doesn't. But it can at least honestly call itself HD (unlike some of the other services).

The audio portion of it is not surround sound. It's always plain two channel stereo. No frills there at all. AAC encoded. It doesn't suffer obvious artifacting or anything like that. But there's definitely nothing spectacular about the audio presentation.

How long a download takes depends a lot on the speed of your own internet connection. For me, they're quite fast. But I don't care how long it takes because I just set it to download in the background while I play games and do other stuff anyway (which the PS3 does effortlessly). If you're going to be in a situation where you're going to be waiting impatiently to see the movie, then a digital download really isn't the right answer.

Once you've downloaded a movie, you have 14 days in which to start it. Once you start watching the movie, you have 24 hours to finish watching it.

PSN also offers movies in standard def. And many of those are even offered for sale rather than just rent. However, I don't bother with anything standard def these days.

I do not recommend buying movies for sale on PSN or any other download service. On PSN, the DRM locks them to your particular PS3. You can backup all of your files, games, saves, etc and transfer to a new PS3 if your hardware fails, but _not your downloaded movies_. They will not play on the replacement PS3. Other download services all have circumstances that must eventually lead to losing all of your downloaded movies, too. That's the inherent nature of DRM. DRM protected downloadable content is really only viable for short term usage ie. rental. (And this is the real reason why digital downloads could never replace Blu-ray. Time and technological advances will eat the other reasons before too long, but not this one)

For myself, I don't see the PSN video service as a Blu-ray replacement at all. I only rent HD movies via PSN. And I only rent movies that I'm not interested enough in to buy a Blu-ray of it. That also means I'm not so particular about the video quality of these movies either. So it's not like I'm buying any fewer Blu-rays than I would have otherwise.

I would highly recommend the PSN video store as a replacement for you rental needs. (And Blu-rays, of course, for your permanent buy needs)

[(Fe)Man]

F digital downloads.

[DrasticPlastic]

Originally Posted by (Fe)Man

F digital downloads.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[Marine Mike]

Like I previously posted, it took forever to download and completely ruined my wife and I's evening as we were looking forward to watch the movie the same night we 'rented' it.

What I do forsee happening is going to a movie store and instead of renting a disc, you hand them a flash drive and they upload the movie to it. Now that would be better than digital download, but at the same time, it would just be as convienent to rent the Blu-ray there as its just as convienent.

[BluHavik]

Originally Posted by SkantDragon

I think maybe the other posters might be just a little inclined to be rough on any digital download service... what with the arguments that they will replace Blu-ray and all.

But anyway... I've used the PSN video download service a good bit. And it's actually very good.

The quality is quite high as far as digital downloads go. They're 720p and roughly a standard DVD worth of data for a typical movie, but since they're compressed with h.264 instead of MPEG2, they can really pull off the higher resolution.

That doesn't mean the video quality compares favorably to Blu-ray, of course. It doesn't. But it can at least honestly call itself HD (unlike some of the other services).

The audio portion of it is not surround sound. It's always plain two channel stereo. No frills there at all. AAC encoded. It doesn't suffer obvious artifacting or anything like that. But there's definitely nothing spectacular about the audio presentation.

How long a download takes depends a lot on the speed of your own internet connection. For me, they're quite fast. But I don't care how long it takes because I just set it to download in the background while I play games and do other stuff anyway (which the PS3 does effortlessly). If you're going to be in a situation where you're going to be waiting impatiently to see the movie, then a digital download really isn't the right answer.

Once you've downloaded a movie, you have 14 days in which to start it. Once you start watching the movie, you have 24 hours to finish watching it.

PSN also offers movies in standard def. And many of those are even offered for sale rather than just rent. However, I don't bother with anything standard def these days.

I do not recommend buying movies for sale on PSN or any other download service. On PSN, the DRM locks them to your particular PS3. You can backup all of your files, games, saves, etc and transfer to a new PS3 if your hardware fails, but _not your downloaded movies_. They will not play on the replacement PS3. Other download services all have circumstances that must eventually lead to losing all of your downloaded movies, too. That's the inherent nature of DRM. DRM protected downloadable content is really only viable for short term usage ie. rental. (And this is the real reason why digital downloads could never replace Blu-ray. Time and technological advances will eat the other reasons before too long, but not this one)

For myself, I don't see the PSN video service as a Blu-ray replacement at all. I only rent HD movies via PSN. And I only rent movies that I'm not interested enough in to buy a Blu-ray of it. That also means I'm not so particular about the video quality of these movies either. So it's not like I'm buying any fewer Blu-rays than I would have otherwise.

I would highly recommend the PSN video store as a replacement for you rental needs. (And Blu-rays, of course, for your permanent buy needs)

Or you could just get netflix and always have a movie that you don't want to buy on blu. 3 at a time is around 20 bucks a month, so that is like 3-4 rentals a month from the PSN.

[sgtpeppers]

Thanks for the answers everybody. I may try it for a couple movies. They have HD movies not available on blu ray yet so thats why I'd want to use it. I wouldnt use it to download a movie I can get from Netflix.