Question...

Which version is better HD or BD? Im asking cause I've been thinking of buying HD movies from Itunes.

Usually, the physical copy is better but it's a YMMV situation. As I recall, AVSforum constantly has threads comparing the different streaming options of shows/movies to any available BD counterparts.

Video, if you have a super flawless connection, is the same, but the audio is where physical Blu-ray is tops.

For most modern tv shows, so far I've found the bluray versions (if available) are somewhat sharper and "less noisy" than the original HD broadcast versions.

Go with the BD every time for optimum quality. Well, I'd say 99 times out of 100, anyway.

uhh... no. I mean, sure, both can be "1080p" but that doesn't mean both encodes are equal. In fact, they're never equal unless the studio is totally lazy and uses that streaming encode on the BD (I'm looking at you, Mongrel Media...).

This.

Is there a list of Mongrel titles which are known to be lazy streaming encodes?

No. I should be clear that it's just a suspicion I've had for a long time because their BD encodes don't look as good as I believe they should, they typically leave off any type of lossless audio that appears on US or UK releases, and they're almost always on single-layer discs.

I should have made that clear. I didn't mean to imply that they ARE doing that with their titles, just that I own a number of their discs and they... suck... compared to their US/UK counterparts, so it seems very much like that's what's going on. Something's not right with whatever they're doing over there...

The only way to know for sure would be if I could tell what the Netflix "Super HD" encodes are, and compare them to the BDs, but... I'm not sure how to get that info from a Netflix stream...

HD streaming virtually never beats out the Blu-ray, ever. Anyone arguing otherwise has little conception of picture quality. Once in a great blue moon you'll find a streaming transfer that uses a different, more appropriate color grading or something.

On that subject, is the Vudu version of Aliens teal-washed?