First impression: buying a movie from the iTunes Store

Okay, so let's summarize some of the sillier comments...

PixelBender things $299 is too much for a device that sold like hotcakes for more money up until this week. A bit out of touch with the market, no?

LD and Jason bemoan the 4:3 format (which it isn't) despite the fact that the iPod itself is 4:3. Come on, guys, pay attention to the target device!

Iggyfar is concerned that the iPod movies will not be captioned... despite the fact that the iPod is primarily an MP3 player and therefore not really accessible to the deaf anyhow.

Well, it's nice to visit GeekLand sometimes, but I'm glad I don't live here. The cool bits to me are that you can quickly get a movie onto your iPod, which you can then play back on it or presumably via cable/dock on a convenient larger screen. Parents could quickly load up movies for travelling with kids, for playing on hotel tv, car video or on the iPod. Travellers can more easily prep than renting the movie and encoding it. And although I'm a fan of NetFlix, we do seem to average about $5/movie rental, so $10 to have it longer may not be a big deal.

I bought Aliens of the Deep last night and was happy with the quality on my Macbook Pro but want to check it out on my plasma before commiting to a final opinion. I haven't tried other movies but Aiens of the Deep is only in stereo and definitely not any kind of surround sound though Jobs did say the movies had Dolby Surround sound (which could mean a number of things...).

The video is another story. My movie is 640 x 360 pixels or 16x9. It is *not* letterboxed. The movie is encoded at 1,573 kbits/sec and the filename extension is m4v. I do not yet know if additional audio tracks can be added to the container or whether subtitles could be added.

-Berylium

A good question here would be is there a way to convert your current DVD's into iTunes compatable files because with the release of iTV it would be great to not have to worry about DVD's, also can you have multiple iTV's in each home, such as one in the bedroom and one in the livingroom?

I know there has to be a way to rip and encode your DVD's currently using 3rd party apps, but how? I would like to know how to do this because as soon as iTV is released i will have it especially at a $299 price point.

I agree. This is good, but can be better if we can burn the movies to a dvd.

Are the movies available in the UK? We are still waiting for TV shows!!!

I'm curious if everyone buys in. There's no mention so far that those movies can be burned to CD/DVD as possible with the music from the iTunes store. Indeed it looks very much that those movies only go to your screen or your iPod. DRM galore.

Only when I learn that Quicktime Pro the lately version with Mac 10.5 support Closed Caption but I do not see new iTunes not include CC on movie. -_-

I guess deaf are struck with DVD to watch. blah.

It is 4:3. Apple said in their announcement that the movies would be 640x480.

640x480 is standard ntsc resolution, similar to that you get from cable or sattelite. it is a 4:3 resolution, if you watch sci-fi channel you will notice stargate is broadcast in 4:3 with black masks over the widescreen content thus keeping the correct aspect ratio, the problem is watching this on a widescreen HDTV it stretches the people out, and everything is screwed up, the only alternative is clicking the zoom button, but then lines become apparent, atleast on my hdtv.

if itunes store made these movies at whatever res the movie is x 480 it would be much nicer, and smaller as 640 would not be needed as only the pixels from the movie would be needed, and it memory serves, for 640 broadcast matting you would need to take about 260 off for the matte(2.35 res, 120 for anamorphic--whats on tv), so what, 380x480 maybe, making a smaller file, with better compression quality, and it would fill in to the right ratio on widescreen, full frame, projector based displays.

The lack of subtitles is a deal-breaker for me, sad to say... my hearing's just bad enough that it can be quite difficult to make out dialogue in movies. Honestly, it's a sad state of affairs when you can get better subtitle streams through, erm, less-legitimate means than through legitimate download services... -_-;;