I had heard rumors that Apple was getting ready to sell movies on the iTunes Music Store. Tonight I was excited to find that those rumors were correct. For $9.99, I purchased and downloaded the first full length movie available. It is "High School Musical" by the Walt Disney company (of which Steve Jobs is now the single largest individual stockholder, but I digress).  
 
My children absolutely LOVE this movie. Whenever it is on, the entire family has to gather around the tv and watch it. Well now, thanks to Apple, we were able to download the movie and we will have the opportunity to watch it whenever we want. This blog will document the entire experience. 
 
I started the purchase/download at 6:48 PM and it completed at around 7:10 PM. The file size was 487 mb. I have 5 Mbps cable at home and I found the download time to be very reasonable considering that we were getting a full length movie that was 1 hour and 40 minutes in length. 
 
Once the download completed, I used the Mac Mini remote control to put the computer into Front Row (Apple Computer's media center software). We began to play the movie.  
 
I can summarize the experience very easily...my children were glued once again to the television watching their favorite movie. : ) Read on for the geek review. 
 
The vast majority of the movie was very easy to watch so long as the action wasn't fast paced on the screen. There was minimal artifacting going on, and the picture quality was very good for a web-delivered video being played at full screen on a television. Like I mentioned previously, the only times that noticable artifacting occurred, was during action scenes with a lot of fast movement. During these scenes artifacts and anomalies were somewhat noticable, but never to the point that I wasn't caught up in the movie. 
 
Overall, I think this is going to be another home run for Apple, and I can't wait to see what the future will bring. 
CH