It is my understanding that they limit the quality of the digitally downloadable episodes (tho apparently the actual screen size and compression rate vary).

Here's a side-by-side.

I don't know what the technical word is for it, but the techniques used to upscale an image, especially video, have gotten much better than they used to be. Just something I've noticed and wondered about.

But even DVD resolution would have to be upsized on a 1280x1024 display, assuming that you intend to maximize the image. I notice that the linked article from the previous comment is comparing it to a bittorrent download. But many of those are even better than DVD, as they're converted from hi-definition sources. The writer of the article linked in the previous comment says:

In any case, my only gripe about it is it’s puny size. 320×240px(208 megs) is just too small.

But that's the native size for NTSC video. It makes sense for Apple to distribute the image at that size, most especially for the iPod. However, most broadcast TV shows are now in video at high-def, meaning that they could distribute these shows for iPod use at much higher resolutions.

By the way, in my opinion $1.99 for a single TV episode is far too much.

Anyway, it also depends upon your monitor. If you are using a CRT, then you would get a good image if you switch down to NTSC resolution. If you have an LCD that upsizes, then changing resolution downward will not help, probably.

So, because compression artifacts are more noticeable at high reslolutions, it's gonna depend upon the quality of the compression, which we can probably assume is pretty high. Then the quality of your decompressor and upsizing algorithms in your software will matter the most.

My experience in compressing anything to that resolution and then watching it on my LCD monitor at 1024x768 is that it doesn't look that good, but it's not terrible. It looks fine on regular NTSC video, though, and I've used that res to make vcds.

It's going to look absolutely horrendous at that resolution. I bought a music video from the store, and on my 1024x768 monitor it looks like utter junk at even half the screen size.

As an added bonus, it'll probably be choppy as hell.

In any case, my only gripe about it is it’s puny size. 320×240px(208 megs) is just too small.

But that's the native size for NTSC video. It makes sense for Apple to distribute the image at that size,

No, NTSC video is usually 720x480. I know because I make graphics for broadcast over TV all the time.

Damn you bit torrent... why must you conitnually restart my computer! I need to see Lost season tttttwwwwwooooooo!!!!!!!

Thanks for the info guys.

No, NTSC video is usually 720x480. I know because I make graphics for broadcast over TV all the time.

Some googling shows that we're both wrong. Your resolution is the familiar DVD resolution that turns out to be the NTSC Digital version. Analog broadcast TV uses 525 anaolog signal scan lines—the full image in the signal includes overscan area, both vertical and horizontal, and in practice the final resolution for an NTSC broadcast analog signal works out to be about 480x440.

For the purposes of this conversation, where there is access to either the digital NTSC signal (which is not the same as high-def, by the way) or to digitize a high quality analog signal, your resolution of 720x480 can be considered "native". So you're at least half right.

I'm not even half-right because 480x440 is significantly higher resolution than 352x240. I had always thought that 352x240 was NTSC because in the past that was always the maximum resolution for the TV display of a digital image. And in my opinion, 352x240 is about as good as a typical broadcast analog image. As I've said, I've encoded VCDs at the resolution to save space, and they've not looked terrible.

Anyway, I still think that with good hardware and good algorithms, 352x240 scaled up to a bigger portion of 1280x1024 might look okay.