Uncovering Unaired Star Trek Episodes on iTunes: The Surprising File Size

[jtbell]

Last night I discovered that some of the newly remastered Star Trek (original series) episodes are available on iTunes. I've been watching and recording these from TV for the past year, but iTunes has the original uncut versions (c. 50 min) whereas the currently broadcast versions have been cut to about 43.5 minutes because TV stations show more commercials than they did 40 years ago.

So I decided to download one of the episodes from iTunes to see what was cut out for broadcast. Here's the catch: I use a dialup modem connection here at home. So I knew this would take a while to download, but I couldn't see anything in iTunes that indicates the actual file size. (Maybe there's a way to find that out, but this is my first experience with buying something via iTunes so I may have simply missed it.) I figured, what the heck, I'll just let it run overnight.

So I ponied up $1.99 from my credit card account, started the download, and then saw the file size in the status bar: 486 MB!

Fortunately iTunes can pause and resume downloads. I got about 80 MB downloaded last night. It was late when I started, so I can do better tonight, tomorrow night, etc. Another three or four nights should do it.

If I download another one of these, I'll do it at the office.

 

[larkspur]

Are you not able to get high speed Internet service in your neighborhood?
Just curious...

 

[chroot]

For that price, you'd be better off just buying the DVD box set.

- Warren