Welcome to 2012, where 1.6 GB doesn't actually seem that bad.
It seems that direct download has seen a resurgence over the past couple years relative to torrent. For example, for plenty of Linux distros, you have to hunt a little longer to find the torrent link, but the direct download is a pulsing button.
I think professional CDNs can deliver large files to a lot of people without choking bandwidth or crushing servers. And they give you more control over how long the file is available, maybe some statistics on who's downloading it etc. What I really can't understand is why they zipped a H.264 video, it turns out slightly larger!
