HD Video Now Available On The iTunes Store

Apple has finally released HD content on the iTunes Store. The first HD videos are actually podcasts from the Washington Post shot in 720p high-def. This means now you can stream HD content from the iTunes store from you Apple TV. The question is, is it worth it?

The folks over at Crave already downloaded a couple of these podcasts and watched them on their 42-inch plasma TV. Although the video was an improvement over the previous content available from iTunes, they weren't exactly impressed. They were able to pick out false contouring and solarization artifacts without trouble.

The problem lies in the fact that the bitrate is less than half of that of a standard DVD. And to paraphrase Uncle Ben "with great quality comes great file size." Basically, if you're looking forward to this great content, you're going to be downloading for a little while. The 8.5 minute podcast they downloaded was over 250MB in size. That's about the same size for your average 30 minute tv show. Just imagine how long you'll be downloading a full HD movie if they start selling them. Still, it's good to see that Apple is starting to make HD content available.

HD video podcasts come to iTunes–and Apple TV [via crave]