HD WC Movie Available for Digital Purchase! (September 25, 2012)

[ChrisReid]

After more than thirteen years waiting, there's finally a convenient way to buy the Wing Commander Movie in high definition! There's been an HD broadcast that's occasionally aired for some time, and in just the last couple years, the movie became available to digitally rent in HD. Several companies have now simultaneously launched a digital HD version that can be purchased.

iTunes and Amazon.com lead the pack with a 720p version is available for $14.99 and $16.99 respectively. Amazon has encode the film at a slightly higher 5000 kbps bitrate (4 GB total), while the Apple edition clocks in at 4043 kbps (2.9 GB). Vudu also offers a 1080p version for $13.99, although it appears that this edition can only be streamed, so the compression may be somewhat more of a factor. Via each service's respective partnerships, owners of the movie can then view on their computers, televisions and mobile devices via the associated app for the XBox 360, Playstation 3, tablets and so on. Note that an HDCP-compliant (such as HDMI) connection is required for viewing the HD edition on a computer/certain devices, and the specific hardware that each service supports varies, so be sure to double-check what you're getting.

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The new iPhone 5's 1136x640 resolution screen is an almost-perfect fit for the 1280x546 video from iTunes! Here's a handful of screenshots of the movie upscaled to the iPad 3's native 2048x1536 resolution.

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We're still anxiously awaiting a Blu-ray release, but until then, it's wonderful to have an HD Wing Commander in both my pocket and on my big screen!

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Original update published on September 25, 2012

 

[AD]

This is awesome, but several of these are US only such as amazon. Looks like iTunes is the place for international WC fans

 

[Rylex]

I would like to see WC Academy HiRess episodes downloadable using iTunes!
Does anybody know if this is planned in the future?
That's the problem with region 2 DVD and PAL. You can't buy Academy from amazon in Germany - except from the US store.
And if you do that it would not work - you would need to completely recode the DVD to PAL and 25fps.
An Europe Academy DVD would be nice - or like I said an iTunes download!

 

[ChrisReid]

Unfortuantely there's no current plans to take Academy DVD any further than it already has. I do notice Amazon has run out of stock, and is running low on its current shipment (with more on the way). I order another copy ever time I see them run out so they keep buying more.