Watching Modern Marvels episode on my iPhone

I bought an episode of Modern Marvels on iTunes for a couple of bucks. It took nearly 2 hours to download to my laptop over a DSL connection. What surprised me (pleasantly) is that it took only about a minute to transfer to my iPhone when I went to sync it up! I guess since the iPhone screen is smaller than the computer screen less data needs to be in the iPhone version.

This bears out since the download to iTunes was about a half a gig but the amount of space taken on the iPhone for the video was much less.

Video Quality
I picked an episode on the Golden Gate Bridge since my dad was born the day it opened (I joke that they opened it in honor of his birthday). I watched it while on the train to work listening to the audio through the ear buds. It definitely helped the time pass quickly. The quality was great. I like how you can tap the screen to show/hide the video controls. I like too how you can move to any point in the video by dragging this slider they have for that purpose. The color and resolution for a screen this size is great. Since you have the whole video downloaded and saved locally, the quality is obviously allot better than a youTube video you might watch on your iPhone.

If your thinking about buying/downloading TV shows or movies for your iPhone consider the following:

• Prices are pretty reasonable.
• Allow for plenty of time to download the item from the iTunes Store to your local PC.
• If you pause a download, and start it later, it will pick up from where it left off.
• Not every episode of a TV show is available to purchase.
• Again, selection of movies is great but not exhaustive.
• Moving TV shows or movies from your iTunes library on your PC to your iPhone doesn't take too much time. My estimate is about 1 hour of showtime equals 1 minute of sync time.
• The quality of the show is excellent.
• Moving to other applications on your iPhone pauses the playing of the video. When you move back to the video you can pick up where you left off.
• Video does take up much more room than mere audio. So be discerning about what you decide to place on your iPhone.
• Don't fill up your iPhone's memory too much or you might experience a performance hit.

Have you purchased video from the iTunes Store and downloaded it to your iPhone? How did you like it?