I agree with Bryan Chaffin of The Mac Observer:
There are DRM restrictions for videos, not too surprisingly. I do so loathe DRM.
Frankly, 320 x 240 is a crappy resolution for a music video I am paying $2 for. It's great for an iPod, but on a Mac? Completely lame.
I actually don't think that's too awful for music videos, but TV shows it's a joke. Gimme a break. It seems like Apple hacked this together just to get people to shut up about it. It's a worthless implementation as far as I'm concerned.
Does anyone know what format these movies are in? I mean file format, not video format. Are they bastardizing the mp4 standard with proprietary DRM (again)? I think this could be very bad for H.264 and MPEG4 from a PR standpoint, just as the iTMS is bad for AAC. People assume that all AAC audio is locked and proprietary, which is nonsense. I don't want H.264 to get that kind of rep.
I find it interesting that the iPod has a 4:3 screen. That makes it seem like they're not gearing up to create an actual movie store, but are instead focusing on TV content. And even TV content is becoming widescreen with the slow rise of HDTV.
I am very unimpressed. I'm not paying $2 for a 320x240 TV show.