Downloads of one giant file are less reliable - more of a chance someone will download 5GB and then have to start over because of corruption. Torrents aren't much better; I downloaded some 25 GB video of a train in Norway and 90% of it is unviewable.

The best way to do this would probably be a multi-part rar.

> Torrents aren't much better

If your torrented video was corrupted, it's because the original file was corrupted. Your torrent client would have thrown away anything that's different from the original.

> The best way to do this would probably be a multi-part rar.

They already offer multiple-file downloads. The compression algorithm isn't going to change the fact that multiple concurrent downloads fail.

rar is often employed more as a packager than a compressor. For instance, if you have a 5 GB file to offer for download, you split it into 7 parts with rar and offer it as a self-extracting .exe, like they are doing here for instance http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11575

As for the file being corrupt, I suspect something else may have been going on, such as bugs with torrent clients. I don't know why the original source file would have been corrupted, as it was supplied by the maker of the film.

Well, if it's coming from more than one source (multiple trackers) it could rather simply have been tampered with.