You might also consider reading Google 411 or 2007 Christmas Card.
iTunes download vs. DVD
Last Friday night Hale’s school hosted a family movie night showing Ratatouille, a charming movie about a tiny rat chef. I was out of town, the kids were sick, and it just didn’t work out for us to go. Hale was a little disappointed, but with a sick family and me out of town there wasn’t any way to go there (or anywhere) and have an enjoyable experience. So we compromised.
I’ll interject here in the story that I have always opted for DVD or CD options over just downloading the equivalent online because of the “secure” feeling of having my movie or music on a physical platter instead of in my computer where a bad hard-drive or inadvertent keystroke could prevent me access to this thing I purchased. And of course the pretty packaging and occasional DVD extras were nice. The reality is that the packaging gets torn up quickly in our house and the DVD extras get watched once, so they are really of negligible value. And did I mention that DVDs get scratched to the point of worthlessness?
And so I talked Jill through the purchase of Ratatouille through the iTunes Music Store and subsequently through the transfer of the file to our AppleTV. It took 3 hours to download the 1.27GB movie over our DSL line and what we ended up with was a 640px x 268px H.264 compressed MPEG-4 video that looks fantastic. It cost $12.99 — $7 less than Amazon but is without the following:
Deleted scenes, All-new animated short: Remy & Emile in “Your Friend the Rat”, Fine Food & Film, Animated short film: “Lifted”
Missing those things doesn’t bother me. And, most importantly for the situation we found ourselves in, Hale got to have movie night after-all without having to take sick kids out to the store.
written by Kevin in our family, web stuff