It was an epic effort requiring superhuman vision and hearing and, above all, heroic resolve. For in order to download the high-definition version of Superman Returns onto Microsoft's Xbox 360 at the Sound & Vision video lab, I, too, would have to return — and return, and return ...

More on that later. First, let us catapult into orbit and zip around the world counter-rotationwise, faster and faster, till the earth reverses direction, bringing us back in time to where this treacherous story begins.

The setting: Any Metropolis, USA, during the great high-def-disc format wars of 2006. The two battling factions, HD DVD and Blu-ray, are locked in stalemate, each side parading its big, swinging lasers and refusing to give an inch to its opponent — forget surrendering the crusade. Meanwhile, upon an über-sturdy fence sit millions of onlookers, none buying either format till a victor emerges. And over on every tech blog, there's some geek-head declaring, "Let them have their format war. By the time it's all finished, both formats will be obsolete — we'll all be downloading high-def."

Flash forward a few months, and sure enough, HD downloading has become an actual alternative. Microsoft launched its Xbox Live feature late last year, allowing Xbox 360 owners to download games and movies — including select HD titles; Moviebeam offers roughly half a dozen high-def downloads (all pretty much from the Disney family); and Apple's new Apple TV unit is spec'd to allow the playing of 720p video. Meanwhile, of course, some cable providers do offer a selection of high-def on-demand movies (though limited — Cablevision, for instance, has mostly been carrying small films such as the Julianne Moore flick, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio).

Yup, downloading HD sounds like a great disc alternative — in theory, even more convenient than using Netflix. But since when is a Sound & Visioner just about convenience? We want quality. Before hooking up an Ether-anything, we want to know: How will HD downloads look? How will they sound? From spec sheets alone, 720p downloads sure don't match up to the 1080p resolution available on Blu-ray and HD DVD. And forget about flowing any uncompressed audio through those Web pipes — there is none (though 5.1-channel surround is available).

Then there's the matter of practicality. Although it's supposedly easier to download a movie than to go to Blockbuster, just how long will it take before all 0.92 million pixels per frame finally find their way to your family room? And if download quality is indeed subpar now, can it ever match the pristineness of (insert winner of Blu-ray/HD DVD format war here)?

Even Lex Luthor Wasn't This Big a Pain

The first thing I had to do was find out if current HD downloads are a formidable foe to the nascent HD disc formats. Thus, I launched a face-off between two versions of the same movie — one on Blu-ray, the other a download. As I began my testing, Microsoft had just launched Xbox Live, offering roughly a dozen high-def flicks, so I adopted it as our lab rat.

Of the Xbox HD movies, only a few were also available on Blu-ray or HD DVD. I went with Superman Returns and Swordfish — two very different films, though both released by Warner Bros. (recognized for superior high-def disc transfers).

Before the Xbox 360 made it to the S&V lab, the console had a two-day layover at my apartment. That way, I could download Superman Returns onto its hard drive so the console would have a nice full belly upon arrival at the testing facility. Before bed, I hooked Xbox into my cable modem, and, sure enough, by the next morning I found I wasn't the only man of steel in my apartment. Even before any official test comparisons, though, I could see Superman Returns (along with a couple of HD movie trailers I downloaded) was suffering a slight case of Kryptonitis. Watched on my new 50-inch Pioneer plasma, the downloads looked a little soft and not quite as bright as the better high-def stuff I typically get over cable.

Sadly, it would be weeks before I'd be able to see Superman Returns on the Xbox again. Twelve hours after the console started playing that movie in my apartment, the 360 was hooked up in the S&V lab and not performing feats of strength — or of any other kind. An Xbox prompt informed me that my Superman Returns download was either corrupt or expired. True, Xbox downloads do self-destruct 24 hours after you start watching them or after 14 days, viewed or not. But neither was the case here. And once deemed inactive, explained the MS phone support guy, I had no choice but to re-download — though he did credit me the $6 rental fee (standard-def movies are $4).

I started the re-download through the lab's sluggish DSL line, which seemed to be clocking in at roughly 3% an hour. (The fastest it ever seemed to go was 6%.) At this rate, it would take, like, a day and a half to finish.

So, fine. I returned to the lab several days later only to find ... that the movie was nowhere near finished downloading. Turns out this was partly my bad, since I'd set the Xbox to turn itself off after more than six hours of nonuse — though since when is downloading nonuse? Whatever. I resumed the download.

For various scheduling reasons, it was another two weeks before I could get back to the lab. And when I did — relief — the super download was done. Except, again, the movie wouldn't play ("corrupt ..." "expired ... " yada yada yada). This time, the MS support phone guy insisted the movie had indeed expired because I began my download more than 14 days earlier.

And so ... again ...

Superman Returns ... Finally

At last, after three downloads, I returned several days later to find the movie waiting for me. (Well, 94% of it, anyway — enough so Xbox would let me hit Play.) The results were underwhelming. And I'm just talking about my first pass-through, where I compared the download to a mere 1080i Blu-ray signal. As high-def pictures go, the movie — played through the Xbox component-video connection (the console has no HDMI output) looked okay enough. But you sure didn't need X-ray vision to see it paled in comparison with its Blu-ray brother. Right away, there were slight color issues — I saw hints of purple in the Warner Bros. logo clouds and in the opening title sequence that weren't visible on the Blu-ray version. In fact, the color seemed a skooch less saturated in general. Brightness levels, meanwhile, clearly couldn't compete, and contrast levels also seemed below par.

Other observations: The download looked softer than the Blu-ray version (though, considering how grainy the indoor scenes were at the Kent farm on Blu-ray, this could sometimes be an advantage). The download also exhibited macroblocking in some action scenes, such as when Superman rescued the shuttle-launching airplane, while Blu-ray handled them flawlessly. Finally, the download occasionally suffered from banding, such as in the skies when Superman took Lois Lane for a night-fly.

The same comparisons pretty much held true for Swordfish, which looked truly pristine on Blu-ray (and which I managed to download right the first time — though, several days after initiating my rental, it was still only 88% done).

Sound-wise, the downloads did a formidable job in 5.1-channel surround (achieved through a fiber-optic cable, not included with the Xbox) — though still not quite up to Blu-ray standards. Playing Swordfish on disc in PCM uncompressed mode, the sound was a tiny bit crisper than on the download. As for dynamic range, dialogue on the download was a little louder, car explosions a little less room-shaking.

"Download" is a good name for the movie files you get through Xbox Live because they definitely wear you down. Though I can't take a swipe at the very concept of HD downloads, the high-def picture from Microsoft's offerings, isn't as sharp or as bright as from one of my better HD cable channels. I call that a "Not Ready for Prime Viewing Player."

Downloads Down the Road

The Xbox 360's lackluster performance aside, a video download should be able to equal the quality of a videodisc. After all, a byte's a byte.

"There's no technical reason why you couldn't have exactly the same thing," says Andy Parsons, promotion committee chairman for the Blu-ray Disc Association (and also senior VP of new product development at Pioneer). "You could have the image file from a Blu-ray disc, for example, and in theory download that through a broadband port."

Richard Doherty, research director for the technology assessment and market research firm Envisioneering, agrees. In fact, his firm tested the new Apple TV unit and, in 720p mode, found that "it looks better than the average cable-television signal" — which he points out is often too compressed. "In the coming days, people will be realizing, ‘Oh my God — Apple is really shipping quality movies'."

Still, don't get too excited about the possibility of providers piping ultrahigh-quality downloads to consumers. "The problem is it's very rare that anybody's willing to supply that," says Parsons. "It's just so difficult to justify allocating bandwidth for higher quality when you can instead offer more selection if you just reduce the quality a bit across the board."

To make 1080p video and uncompressed audio downloads a reality, "we would need a massive increase in the backbone of the Internet," explains Doherty. In fact, he says the Web could very well come to a halt "if only one family in 10 downloaded just a DVD-quality movie every night, let alone an HD-quality one. The network and servers are not up to routine HD delivery."

But the Internet could have its act together in as soon as five years. Dave Devereaux-Weber, a network consultant for the Division of Information Technology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison — a member of the Internet2 consortium — guesses that by 2011, Internet networks will have new, superfast routers and modules in place that will allow you to download an HD DVD- or Blu-ray-quality movie in as little as 15 minutes. (That assumes, he says, that you wouldn't just want to watch a streaming version.) Of course, to do this you'd need a fiber-optic connection to your home — a service actually available today with Verizon's FiOS system, which offers transfer speeds as fast as 100 megabits per second.

Parsons, meanwhile, says the Blu-ray camp isn't worried about the potential of downloads. The two, he says, can happily coexist. "To me, it's intellectual laziness when people keep saying, ‘All this packaged media stuff is just going to go away and be replaced by downloads. I don't see downloads replacing optical media on the video side any more than they have on the audio side. You still have more than 90% of music sales on compact discs."

Parsons also warns: "If you start building up a significant collection of movies on your hard drive, and your hard drive dies — and that's going to happen — you've just thrown away an awful lot of money."

However you get your high-def content (even if you're willing to wait three weeks for Halle Berry to arrive through the Internet), Parsons reminds you to settle for no less than super. "If you're going into high-def, you really want the best picture you can get. Otherwise, why bother?" And to HD video providers, he says, "If you've degraded it to where it's not so easily discernable from standard-def, what are you selling?"

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