For TV shows, I would love to have 720p, as that is the native resolution of my TV anyway. Currently I pretty much tell my Tivo what I want, and come back a few days later and watch it. This would seem to work great with iTune’s “buy the whole season and download when available” model—particularly if it could be made to do the downloads late at night or during the day when I am at work.

It’s less appealing for movies, as I tend to watch movies exactly once. The iTunes price point is not appealing compared to Netflix when you don’t care about keeping the movie. I’d love to have HD movies, but as long as a download costs considerably more than a rental in a similar resolution, it doesn’t work for me.

All that being said, the only thing keeping me from buying an AppleTV is the fact that I already have a Mac Mini connected to my home theater.

I simply won’t buy an ?tv until 24 is available in HD on the iTunes Store.

[…] Merlin Mann says: The problem, as many folks have discussed at length, is that the file size for HD movies, in particular, may be prohibitively large for the garden-variety home broadband user. […]

I regularly download 720p content with my Xbox 360, and while the wait is annoying, it’s well worth it for the content I get. If Apple could figure out a way to let me automatically download TV shows and podcasts in 720p while I’m at work, so I can watch them when I get home, that is a service I would use. As the iTunes store is, offering 480p video is just not enough. The TV shows, and especially the movies, are way too fuzzy to try to watch on a computer screen, or on an HD screen.

1080p video, while preeety (seriously, have you downloaded those Planet Earth torrents?), is not really required, and the download time is unacceptable for a show like Lost or a podcast.

I own an HD LCD TV, with a mac mini hooked up to it, so I have HD as an option, but I really don’t find myself needing HD content so badly that I’m going to want to pack hard drives full of it. I like the Netflix model as well, primarily because I can get stuff I want to see, watch it, and then send it away - no storage issues, no wondering whether I really wanted to have season 4 of “Blossom” forever). If I really, really want something forever, then I’ll buy it.

While I don’t really care for the subscription model for music services, I like it for TV and Movies. For music, I really like to listen to things over and over again, but for TV and movies this is typically not the case. For video stuff I really just want to watch it and move on to the next thing. You can put me in the column that would like a subscription download model with a cue, similar to Netflix’s DVD rental service. I would be more than happy to have one video leave as the other comes in, saving hard drive space. I imagine, within this model, you could also have a “buy” option for the times you come across something you really, really want.

Hey,

I would download HD content from iTunes store on a RENTAL plan. If I could RENT movies, just like my Blockbuster Online account, and put some in the Queue that could download after I turn in my other movie, and it could start streaming after a half hour or so of downloading then I would TOTALLY get HD from iTunes. Purchase model isn’t realistic in the movie industry. I watch a typical movie maybe once or twice if it’s really good, but after that it just gets old. If I buy a movie, that means it’s really good and I want to watch it over and over, but it’s rare that I actually buy a movie. Also, I don’t have the disk space to continually hold video content, so a rental model would limit you to the few gigs the movie you are currently watching takes up.

Thoughts anyone?

Hey Merlin,

I share your view on the potential benefits of the Apple TV for small independent producers. We’ve heard Alex Lindsey mention this on his podcasts. Our site, http://www.hungryflix.com, provides downloads of indie films. we are very excited that now with Apple TV we can move directly into the family room. No more fighting for a distribution deal to get one or two copies of the DVD in Blockbuster.

Here is a sample clip of moving content to Apple TV, click the play trailer button: http://www.hungryflix.com/view_media_movie.php?mid=479

Here in Ireland there’s one provider that provides 6Mb broadband at an anyway affordable price, but the problem is my monthy home bandwidth allowence is 40GB. I am subscribed to a lot of podcasts and I don’t want to get cut off, so HD downloads aren’t possible here for people like me.

I downloaded an HD episode of CSI to my Xbox 360 as a test a few months ago. It took around an hour and a half to download the episode. It looked really good, as good as over the air HD.

I don’t see myself buying much video from iTMS, between my Tivo and Netflix I get all of the TV shows & movies I want to see. That may change when Apple releases their widescreen iPod :).

I published a poll about that topic on my website: http://meckimac.com/drupal/node/33

The question was: How much would you pay for HD movies in the iTunes store?

The resulsts so far are quite interesting as it seems that people are not willing to spend more money for HD than for the current 480p movies…