Yeah, I don't remember them looking/sounding so choppy. And the download looks as bad as the stream. I googled "sicp videos highres" and there's torrent on piratebay that appears to have larger video files.
The videos from the MIT site have always had choppy audio. Since they are Creative Commons I've sometimes contemplated creating a more modern version -- a project where I copy the text and programs word-for-word, then perform a screencast of the lecture myself with a more controlled audio setup. I might also change the language on the chalkboard but I imagine that would garner me more hate than love.
What would be interesting is to create an interactive lecture that uses the content and examples from the old Sussman lectures but presents it in a cleaner (text based/vector graphics) way with an interpreter built right into the lecture page.
