[Stan Welks]

Has anyone tried renting either SD or HD movies through iTunes?

How is the quality? How long did it take to download the movie?

Thanks.

[Brian McHale]

I've rented one HD movie: Batman Begins. I thought it looked great, but I don't have Blu-ray for comparison. It definitely looked better than DVD. It only took about two minutes before it said it was ready to be viewed (it showed 2% done at the time). It took about 100 minutes for the complete download (I watched it later). The download time is going to depend heavily on the speed of your internet connection. I've got Roadrunner cable, and it's pretty fast (don't know how fast, though).

If you want to do more research, there's a forum over at MacRumors dedicated to AppleTV:

Apple TV - Mac Forums

[Lew Crippen]

The SD rentals are fairly good—better than most broadcast TV and almost as good as good DVDs. I consider the HD movies to be more or less about as good as satellite HD and not as good as Blu-Ray.

I don’t worry about the download time, but if what you want is to decide to watch a movie after dinner and start right away, you will be disappointed unless you have a pretty fast internet connection.

One thing I’ve noticed is that you can’t expect movies to stay around forever. They seem to come and go without any pattern I can discern.

[David_SG]

I've got Fios. Rented several HD movies. Takes less than a minute before it's ready to go - pretty much works flawlessly. I don't think the picture is as good as a movie on HBO high def (again, on Fios). But a little better than a regular DVD. Technology is definitely ready for primetime - assuming your internet connection is good. Now they just have to work on the content availability.