Apple gets sued for serving HD videos to incompatible iPhones

This could get rather ugly. Apple is getting sued for what the Florida attorney Scott Weiselberg says “being tricked into spending $1 more to rent an HD version of the movie, Big Daddy”, only to realize later that his iPhone doesn’t support HD movie playback.

The filing states that if Apple can detect whether a device can play HD content or Standard Definition (SD) content only, Apple wanted to make extra money by selling the higher priced HD versions.

In the legal notice, Weiselberg says, “its deceptive business practice of charging a premium price for the rental of HD content programs to consumers on early versions of Apple devices that Apple knew could not play HD content”.

Lawsuit against Apple: You can read the complete filing here

Incidentally, HD video became the default option as far back as iTunes 8, both for movie downloads as well as rentals. However, if we look back at the devices, the first three generations of the iPhone and the video playing iPod Touch did not support HD video playback. It would be interesting to see how Apple responds to this point, and whether it even considered the existence of these devices or not, at the time the HD default was implemented.

While the notice doesn’t mention any particular numbers of duped customers or similar downloads on SD only compatible devices, Weiselberg says that Apple violated consumer protection laws and should compensate him and all of the others who needlessly spent the extra buck for an HD version of the movie or show that they wanted to view.