With most studios participating in Movies Anywhere, I generally don’t pay a lot of attention to where I buy streaming movies nowadays. But Top Gun Maverick is Paramount, and they’re not participating in Movies Anywhere, so I am faced with a choice.
All the major services seem to support 4K, UHD, Atmos, etc. And they pretty much all support downloading on tablets/phones for watching on planes, etc.
So wondering if there’s a visual quality difference between Apple, Amazon, Vudu, etc? Any reason to choose one over the other? (I know Microsoft’s been pretty much at the forefront of video quality, but I don’t want to lock more movies into their ecosystem – see MSN Music, Zune, etc…)
I usually notice the best quality on Apple’s services, which I primarily use on a Fire TV Stick 4k. Though I’ve heard that you get even higher bit rates and quality if you get an Apple TV streaming device.
From watching videos or reading comments by people who can pull up the actual bitrate while watching, along with pals who worked at both MSFT and Amazon video player teams, the general accepted answer for “best streaming quality” is playing from the Apple TV app on an Apple TV 4K.
If I’m looking to semi replicate Movies Anywhere for a studio that doesn’t support it (Paramount, Lionsgate, A24, etc.), I would buy it on Vudu. Vudu’s quality isn’t as good as native Apple TV app on Apple TV hardware, BUT, Vudu basically has an app for every device – I can use my Vudu account on my Apple TV, my LG OLED, my XSX, my PS5, my phones, my tablets and my laptop. I think my Switch is the only device that doesn’t have a native Vudu app. I’ve also logged into my Vudu account on a cousin’s Roku.
So, what looks best? Apple service on native Apple hardware. But what gets me kinda close to MA-style “I can watch this wherever I am?” Vudu.
Apple TV has an app pretty much everywhere too. Except PC. If we’re talking buying movies rather than streaming subscriptions, I would say Apple, if only because of their history of upgrading purchases to 4k.
Another vote for Apple TV. I compared Blade Runner 2049 disc to the streaming version and couldn’t tell a difference at all on a 65 inch set. I’m also subbed to the iTunesMovieDeals subreddit, since lots of the movies I buy on there for $5 are automatically upgraded to 4K down the line.
Couldn’t really find any more recent thread on the apple tv hardware, so I’m trying this one.
My apple tv remote (newer silver version) just started acting up. The touch pad part won’t work at all and the buttons around it only work a few times then the highlighted app scrolls all the way to the right and stops. If I reboot the apple tv I can get the touch screen to work but instead of selecting the app when pushed it goes to ‘edit home’ like you want to move the app and even if you move it you never recover actual use of the touchpad and the whole thing with scrolling to the right and stopping starts again.
I’ve tried rebooting the apple tv and rebooting the remote. I see this exact issue when I google, and it started last fall with the ios17 upgrade, but no actual fixes.
So if anyone has seen this and fixed it please let the rest of the hivemind know.
