I bought 3 movies on Blu-ray today, Blue Velvet, Drive, and The Tree of Life. I got a complimentary Amazon Instant Video rental of The Tree of Life while I wait for these movies to be delivered (probably a week or so since I picked the free/slowest shipping option, and Drive isn't going to come out for a few more days). I just happen to be a massive Terrence Malick fan, and he makes just the type of movies that take full advantage of a home theater, with considerable attention donated towards visual artistry and photography and audio quality. I followed the link to my movie and tried it out. It hit a cap of 480p right away and never rose above it. I discover that I have to run it directly through an internet HDTV or own a Roku device or Tivo bullshit and must register the device to get HD quality. In short, I can't watch what is probably the most beautiful movie of the past year through this service at a resolution higher than 480p unless I buy yet another device just to accommodate this stupid service (that will NEVER happen, I assure you). So amazon is off my list of potential alternatives to netflix. It's no good to me if I can't get HD quality. How lame.
I've been saying all along that this kind of thing is why people download movies illegally. The legitimate methods of digital distribution suck. You could have downloaded all of those from bit-torrent and had DRM free HD copies you could have played on anything. Instead you did the right thing and paid for them, but got shafted.
I still want them on Blu-ray for the audio quality, as I value sound as much as image quality, but the free "gift" rental for my purchase was useless. I'm not even going to watch it until the disc arrives. I wouldn't visit a museum wearing a welder's mask, and I'm not going to watch The Tree of Life in SD.
You can scroll the cursor over the bottom right corner where it says "connection." It will display it.
I'd gotten my Arrested development up to 720p on Amazon Prime... it's usually 480p though, not sure if it ever goes to 1080p or Arrested Development itself only goes to 720p. But again, most are locked at 480p.