So there's a new version of iTunes out. *yawn*

They say:

Every movie you buy from the iTunes Store downloads at near DVD-quality 640-by-480 resolution that looks great on both your computer and your iPod.

Excuse me? Sorry... time for a rant.

Near DVD quality... 640x480? What planet do these people live on? This sounds awfully like the garbage we've been fed for years - "128Kbps is CD quality". No it isn't. It's a long way from being CD quality. CD quality is a 40MB WAV extracted directly from the CD, not a highly compressed 4MB MP3.

I'm not sure how big these near DVD quality movies are, but since DVD movies are usually somewhere in the region of 8GB, I really doubt they'll be anything over 500MB or they'll take too long to download. So the question is... why would you want to pay £12.99 (or thereabouts) for a highly compressed DRM-ridden copy of a movie when you can download REAL DVD quality movies for free with no restrictions.

I am fed up with the movie and music industries foisting their bad quality and very restricted wares upon us, and then charging us ridiculous prices, when we could go and buy a CD or DVD from a store and avoid all the added compression and DRM, or just snag it from the internet (for free).

We're constantly being told that downloading is stealing, and that we should be paying for what we consume. Give us what we want, at a good price, and we might actually pay for it. Don't charge us stupid prices for DRM-ridden crap.

Hell, don't even give us free stuff filled with DRM. Sky's skybybroadband service springs to mind. You have to be a Sky customer, so far so good. You have to install software onto your PC, ok not a problem. Now the downsides, the movie you download only works for about 2 months, and cannot be burned or transferred from the PC it's downloaded on. Not very useful if you've got more than one PC and want to view it on one connected to a TV instead of a monitor. I never leave my HTPC turned on 24/7, that's what my server is for. If I downloaded the movie overnight on my server I'd have to use the server to watch the movie. Sorry, but that's incredibly dumb.

Also your PC becomes part of a p2p network called Kontiki and your bandwidth is used to distribute the movies you've downloaded from Sky. Not good if you're paying for monthly traffic usage! It all happens in the background, without your knowledge. And even if you uninstall the skybybroadband software, Kontiki remains on your system, continuing to use up your precious bandwidth. I had to use Google to find an uninstaller (from the BBC actually).

Ok... I think that's enough ranting for one day.