Well after hours and hours of angst over which option to choose, I went with Amazon to watch American Pickers. I took the $2.99 HD option.
HD? Really?
I have a brand new 23' LED LCD screen on my desk where I watch pretty much everything and it's hooked up on the HDMI and runs 1080p mode.
Amazon, when I made the purchase told me that it would cut the picture quality down from HD if it THOUGHT I was having connection problems.
I have TWC Road Runner and it's pretty darned fast. Like 10 or 12 megabytes a second or however that goes. I can't keep it straight that MB, Mb, mbs, mb/s, kbits stuff..
It's FAST.. Plenty fast. I was already prepared to get MAD if they choked it down while I was watching!
So I did all the clicking and agree here stuff and my show came on.
HD? Not so much.. It told me that it was running it at 2500 kbits and 720p.. It also said "Connection speed: HD" Oh really? Since when did HD become a connection speed?
It also appeared to be from an interlaced source. I believe that has to do with old school picture tube stuff and shouldn't be used in an environment where it's all digital and LCD/LED displays.
So there was a lot of this severe "rippling" effect when the camera would pan, that was annoying but wasn't a real deal breaker. I would have expected better though.
The bonus was that it filled my entire screen! The picture was reasonable decent, all things considered. On shots where the camera was still for a few seconds (rare) it looked pretty good.
It didn't even come close to comparing in quality to a PBS HD broadcast but it was somewhat better than what I've ever seen before for anything from or on the History channel.
I ended up choosing Amazon over iTunes because I absolutely DESPISE iTunes with every fiber of my being. I hate that application with all my heart and soul.
iTunes is the worst, most ill behaved POS app to ever exist. I love Apple products, I hate frickin iTunes. I have nothing good to say about iTunes. Every time I have to use it, it puts me in a FOUL mood.
iTunes is confusing to use and it wipes out photos and data on your iPhone. iTunes erased irreplaceable photos of my deceased best friend from my iPhone that are now gone forever and I'll never forgive Apple for that.
I wish someone would come up with an app to directly replace iTunes. And I mean for the purpose of connecting too and interacting with your iPhone. Backing it up, managing files, putting music, photos, videos, etc too and from it..
Anyway, I'm off topic so I'll stop my hatefest on iTunes now.
At least I got to watch American Pickers.
I'm going to take my time and research all the options to subscription TV I guess.
Netflix is not an option. What a joke that is. Boooo....
Amazon / iTunes: You can get current episodes of shows but it's expensive.
Cable: POOR quality.
Dishnet: The 211k tuner sound good. I want HD and I want to record. No contract sounds good too.
Directv: Too much sports, requires contract. No deal.
H2H: Don't know anything about it just yet. Still looking into it.
Chances that I'll make a decision on anything in the next three months? Slim to none.