Because the H.264 encoding takes more time than the MPEG4 but requires less space. All of my previous mp4 files have been deleted and are gonna be replaced by these 640×480 H.264 videos.

In any case, all of this means that it is extremely impressive that the iPod – small as it is – can play this kind of video – and at 30fps too. It is, though, expected that the battery life is (comparatively) poor, because it requires so much horsepower to decode the files.

This is, of course, one of the reasons that the videos available through the iTMS are only 320×240 – much more (especially the HD-quality video for which you yearn) would require, say, a VCR-sized box to decode. Whilst not heavy, VCR-sized boxes are not, I think, what people have in mind vis-à-vis portability. You could fit a really big screen in one though.

And as others have noted, the other issue is download size. If you want 1080i, fine, but be prepared to wait a day for that episode of Lost to download, and to suitably compensate Apple for the bandwidth used in supplying it to you. For, say, a 5Gb download, that’s quite a bit of money.

Finally, and perhaps most obviously, what did you expect for $1.99?

The high CPU usage has almost certainly nothing to do with DRM. H.264 is simply a very CPU-intensive codec; for example, have you tried watching any of Apple’s HD trailers on that 1gHz machine? I’d wager they won’t even run smoothly at all, certainly not at the highest resolutions.

That’s another reason for the low resolutions, by the way: there’s no way the iPod could handle much more than 320×240, and even as it is the battery life while doing so is pretty atrocious. I do agree that Apple should provide higher-resolution video downloads for those who want them, but I have to assume that’s coming soon.

1 – I’m not disputing that it looks good at it’s native res. My complaint is that I don’t intend to have a video iPod (at least not in the near future) but may wish to view these on my powerbook. Watching a 320×240 tv show on my 17″ powerbook isn’t great fun. That was my beef.
I think it’d be nice if the video section of the music store were aimed at everyone, not just video ipod owners. But I understand there are limitations, and whatnot. As Mort Blort said – Myabe offering a higher res for $1 more may be a viable option…

2 – you’re right. Again, I was thinking of all of us who may not want to watch purchased videos on an iPod, but on a computer.

3 – I guess that could be true – but if you’re buying it, and a chunk goes to Disney anyway, give the people what they want/pay for, right?

I’m sure many hurdles remain, and a lot of growing is still to happen. It’ll be interesting to watch this next step in media distrib ution evolve.

I guess I missed where I indicated that I felt I was being picked on. I was wrong. I accepted that, and am appreciative of those who offered USEFUL comments with information to correct my incorrect statements.

I suppose I should retitle and re-edit the story to reflect the true drive behind it – I was dissapointed in the result when I tried it out for myself. It did not live up to the expectations I had. I’ve had some excellent experiences with H.264 compressed video, and have witnessed some others. This was clearly not one of those.