Yes, lots of people have been asking for it and yes, it’s taken us a little while to get here, but LOVEFiLM Instant titles are now available in High Definition. At no extra cost.
There are around 900 HD titles as we go live on 30th May – roughly 200 films and 700 TV episodes – and we’ll be adding more to the roster all the time.
Films in HD include those with an epic sweep, like The Way Back and Apocalypse Now; as well as LOVEFiLM Instant favourites like RED, Attack the Block, Eclipse and Gnomeo & Juliet.
TV episodes in HD include beautiful documentaries like Planet Earth and Human Planet; as well as long-running sagas like LOST, Ghost Whisperer and Robin Hood.
How can you tell if a title is available in HD? Well, it will be clearly marked with an ‘HD’ badge on the packshot and on that title’s main page. And we’ve gathered some of them together into collections like Beautiful Planet and Family Fun.
HD streaming will be available on the Xbox 360, on TVs & Blu-ray players from Samsung and LG, and on PCs & laptops (Windows and Mac).
We’re working hard on bringing HD to Sony TVs & Blu-ray players, and to the PS3™ – which is already streaming in higher than standard quality (though not quite HD at this stage) – and we don’t currently have studio rights to stream HD on iPad.
| Device | Maximum Resolution |
| Xbox | 720p |
| Samsung TV/Blu-ray | 720p |
| LG TV/Blu-ray | 720p |
| Desktop (PC & Mac) | 1080p |
You’ll need a minimum internet connection speed of 3 Mbps to watch HD 720p; and a minimum internet speed of 12 Mbps to watch HD 1080p – but don’t worry, it’s all automatic.
Because all internet connections can vary in speed, our service automatically selects the best video quality for uninterrupted viewing, switching seamlessly between full HD, lower HD, or standard definition, dependent on the bandwidth available.
If you can, use an Ethernet cable rather than Wi-Fi to stream to get the best quality of playback.
And it’s worth checking your monthly data allowance with your ISP (Internet Service Provider) – watching 2 hours of HD content at 1080p will consume about 10 Gigabytes of data.
We’re as committed as ever to providing our customers with the best quality in viewing entertainment, so we hope you enjoy LOVEFiLM Instant films and TV episodes in HD.
You can find more info and our HD FAQs here…
Ben Lavender, Digital Product Director
Will HD come with 5.1 sound?
Not at this time.
Not much content at launch, but it’s good you’ve finally realised that HD streaming is essential. A few questions though:
1- When are you going to fix the black levels in your Xbox app? It’s Microsoft’s bug admittedly, but they rolled out a fix to developers many months ago now. Netflix updated their app shortly after with the fix, as did a few other apps (Zune, iPlayer) but LoveFilm’s app still has horrible washed out black levels. It can’t be that hard to push out an update. Please hurry up. Your business is video, so you surely can’t be happy with the broken colour space on Xbox.
2- Why is it only 720p on Xbox? If you’re going to go HD, go HD, no half steps. 1080p please.
3- Will the streaming back catalogue be upgraded to HD? Or only new additions?
1 – Black levels. We’ll investigate this.
2 – Xbox currently only supports 720p.
3 – We’re committed to offering the best HD experience to customers. We’ll be increasing our catalogue as quickly as possible. Our immediate focus is new additions and high demand titles. We’ll certainly look at back catelogue over time.
Any updates on when this will be available on Samsung TVs?… Checked mine just now and there were no updates available for the app, and RED wasn’t “clearly marked with an ‘HD’ badge on the packshot and on that title’s main page”
No app update is required on Samsung TVs. Please can you restart the app an see if Red is marked with and HD badge. It might be a cacheing issue.
It’s been a long wait, so thanks for finally going HD. I’d like to know when the Xbox app will be updated though, to fix the washed out black levels. Netflix pushed out the Microsoft black level fix months ago, so you guys need to do the same.
We will investigate this
Any chance of 5.1 surround sound in the near future?
We’re investigating 5.1. Watch this space.
It’s very nice that you are now doing HD, but when will you start supporting streamed films with 5.1 audio? There are “other” streaming services that support this and this is the primary reason why “Watch Instantly” is only of use to me to entertain the kids in a quick instant.
Glad to hear you’re going to address the black level issues on the Xbox, it’s a major flaw with your current Xbox service.
On another issue, I think you need to work on sorting and recommendations in your apps. Netflix encourages people to rate everything, thus making their recommendations more accurate. It isn’t possible to rate anything at all on your Xbox app, nor does it recommend anything. Finding TV shows is even worse, again, look at how Netflix does it. Netflix sort shows nicely by series and it queues up the next episode instantly once you’re done watching the current one.
That said, Netflix has a bizarre limit on how many titles you can browse in their apps (only through a PC or iOS/Android device can you see everything they have), so I wouldn’t copy them too directly.
As for your HD, having watched a bit of it now the quality looks pretty nice – on a PC -, but I’ll wait for the Xbox black level fix and 5.1 audio before watching much of it. Oh and as for 1080p on Xbox, Microsoft’s Zune app on Xbox is 1080p, and according to Netflix, they’ll be 1080p on Xbox too this year.
Any plans to bring LOVEFiLM Instant to Panasonic Viera Connect, so I don’t have to switch my PS3 on?
I too would like to know if there is any plans to host on Panasonic devices.