Video Quality: What $1.99 will buy you

Has anyone had problems with the video on itunes being slow and delayed? I downloaded the first show of season 2 of Lost and although the video quality is good it is still like watching a slide show with dialogue. I have high speed internet and other videos like movie trailers play just fine. Can someone give me so pointers? Thanks

dude, tv resolution is only 720x576 (at least in pal) and not as huuuge as 1280x854 as your trying to watch it, a normal tv signal in fullscreen on a modern computer monitor will be scaled to at least twice the size and look odd too... take it easy what do u expext, high definition???? its only ment to be seen fullscreen on the TV in 720x576.... even a dvd looks ugly fullscreen on a big computer screen....

My new ipod hasn't shipped yet, but I think the tv out connector will offer some interesting possibilities. I've been playing with the sony locationfree player for psp, watching streaming video from my pinnace showcenter and dvd's from a panasonic drm80h is quite watchable, I suspect that I should be able to connect the ipod in much the same manner. we will see.. watch my website www.distributed-home.com for details in the next few weeks.

Well, all of you are very lucky if you can pay for and download anything at all from Apple. I just tried to do the same, and since I live in the Netherlands and don't have a US addressed credit card I am SOOL!!! I really get fed up with reading about all the nice new things available, but not available outside the US. A WORLD WIDE web is somewhat of a joke. We can look but not buy to download. Let's see, where's my Limewire app....

amen #44 geez.... I thought the comments sections was like engadgets, one continuous page. Someone got to jake before me. Takes the wind outta my sails... It would be GREAY if the new ipod dock could act as the IR receiver for Frontrow and If they integrate my Eyetv into there too...... I wouldn't be able to throw my money at apple fast enough.

Wow Jake, you might wanna research what you say before calling your parents retards. You might wanna actually TRY IT OUT before insulting 320x240. Don't you know it has feelings too? Standard TV sets are usually 640x480 and mainstream is not a HDTV set. So 320x240 doesn't really look THAT bad on a standard tv set. Now if you plug that into an HDTV , thats a different story. Its about VHS quality which is watch-able. Its around VCD quality at a fraction of the storage. 200mbs as opposed to 600-700mbs VCDs. I actually did DLed Lost ep 1 from ITMS and have it on my mac mini output to my tv. To tell you the truth, it ain't half bad. It isn't great, if I go close to the screen I can see artifacts. But I'm watching from 10 feet away on my couch. At that range the artifacts are for the most part unnoticeable. I was kinda impressed. I am with you on wanting higher resolutions from ITMS. 640x480 ( near DVD quality ) sounds good to me. But bandwidth cost for something like that would most likely cost a lot so.... don't expect cheap at that resolution.

"I mean, torrented TV shows can be hard to find at times and they often have things like the local TV stations insignia emblazoned along the bottom of the screen or the latest thunderstorm warning. Also, they are usually a bit larger than 198MBs and recompressing them can take time." 1. I don't think you have looked. There are hundreds of places you can find TV shows. 2. I have never seen a local TV insignia, let alone a "thunderstorm warning." That is simply ludicrious. Those things get edited out if they are there at all, which they are not. And even if they were, the episode would be removed and replaced by a better quality version. 3. Larger? On average a one hour tv show is close to 250-300 megs. And this is PDTV or so. Oh, and it is a much higher resolution. Alternatively, HR.HDTV (High Resolution High Definition TV) are also available, to the tune of 700 megs. I doubt you'll ever see these on iTunes.

Did someone connect a new iPod to a TV set and played a movie bought from iTMS? How does it look on TV?

In RE 48: I have looked at files encoded to about these specs** on a "Home Theater" (42" DLP HDTV Monitor to be exact, via D4->Component conection from IO-Data link player, as well as something else I can't get into here...)in 480i and 480p (you know, what most tvs now do?) and it looks like TV. Computer displays are *much* higher res than TVs are, unless we are talking 720p/1080i/p...which the iPod doesnt output. People keep forgetting the whole "Plug iPod into dock with remote, connect to tv, enjoy the smallest, coolest 'Media Center' around" aspect of this. **320x240 MPEG4 video at 1100kbps, and 480x272 and 1100kbps. Could not use AVC (god i wish i could have, so i added 1/3 bitrate to typical apple download to approximate AVC-ish quality)

For those of you looking for better quality, you really should go back and look at the file size for this mutha - 198MB for 320x240. Unless you've got a T1 connection, I wouldn't start looking for 1080i any time soon. Also, remember the intent is for the iPod's 320x240 screen, not for your home theater. If that's what you're after, buy the DVDs when they come out. Personally, I think $1.99s a steal when you have a DVR or TiVo mishap and don't want to wait an entire syndication sequence to catch what you've missed. Now, If we can just convince Apple to make a TV tuner/IR remote firewire box so everyone (not just new iMac buyers) can enjoy Front Row (with the TiVoesk goodness I'm implying), I'd buy a mini in a heart beat.