“…Given that a typical HD movie comes on double sides of a DVD “” that’s 8GB “” it makes you wonder how long it will take to download a single movie….”

Apple appears to be streaming the HD movie rentals not downloading them to a hard disk.
This way there is never a complete copy of an HD movie left anywhere that could potentially be illegally distributed. This is probably one of the reasons the movie studios agreed to the plan.

The movies are also sized to the alternate HD standard of 1280 x 720p which makes their data size smaller than full 1920 x 1080p which is distributed on a Blu-ray disk.

Time will tell if most people will accept this lower quality as good enough. There are sure to be many pro and con arguments.

You can see Apple’s HD streaming in action by watching the HD version of Steve Jobs recent Macworld keynote speech. Even with a relatively modest broadband connection of 1Mbs it works perfectly.

From the promo in the iTunes Store page: “Every movie you download from the iTunes Store plays at 640-by-480 resolution that looks great on your computer, iPod, iPhone, and TV.” I don’t know what’s harder to imagine — how little fun it would be to watch a feature-length move on an iPod or how terrible 640 x 480 is going to look on your 42″ LCD.

Given that a typical HD movie comes on double sides of a DVD — that’s 8GB — it makes you wonder how long it will take to download a single movie. I’m guessing it will not really be “HD” HD, the way “CD Quality” is with MP3s (apparently, make it 128kb and you’re good to go — unfortunately, I have a Densen power amp coupled to Dynaudio speakers, not an iPod “Hi-Fi”).

Some form of compression has to take place. But the thing is, with audio it’s less of a problem because many people do not have keen ears or high-end audiophile equipment. With video, you can easily see when the quality has dropped, and seeing it on a 42-inch LCD screen or even bigger projected screen will make it even more obvious.

This, coupled with the limited window to view what you have, may come back to bite Apple at a time when it seems to be a bit wonky (what with very vocal criticism of the what-should-have-been-like-manna MacBook Air and all).

“One financial analyst said Apple was doing just dandy, thank you, while another said Apple’s stock has long been overpriced, and was a better buy at $125 per share.”

And if you trash talk the stock until the gullible sell their shares so said analyst can buy at discount……

Consider:

Ebay demand (as you cite)

Motorola tanking

RIMM lowering guidance

Nokia pushing hard on Asia, Latin America to sell units before the iPhone gets in

Nokia buying Trolltech to help juice their pathetic software.

The iPhone is doing just fine, thank you. At current rate (4 M/ 6 months) they could sell 12 M instead of the promised 10 M by the end of this year. I think they’ll exceed even 12 M.

“Would it put an end to the stories that the iPhone is failing fast? Maybe not, but those with a respect for facts above gossip might just sit back and take notice that things aren’t really as bad as they seem.”

The problem is that these people make money by getting us to listen to them. Then they talk to us through the media, which lives on sensationalism. in an election year “Things are OK, really” isn’t a likely headline!