19 comments by 6 or more people

1. You're such a gadget freak…again.

   12 Oct 2005, 21:02

2. Steven Carpenter

   I know, but look at it; it's so lovely and clever, and available in black. The new dock is cool too, with the option of being able to fit my Nano with an adaptor and control it with the new remote.

   12 Oct 2005, 21:07

3. Chris May

   But…but… video ? on a 2"² screen? what's it for?

   I think I must be getting old. Anyway, you could get a nice pair of wheels for the same money.

   12 Oct 2005, 21:26

4. Steven Carpenter

   Watching video! On the move! So you can walk into things!

   The new dock has a video out for TV connection though.

   £1.89 for a music video on iTunes 6 – not sure of a compelling reason for buying music videos. First rich kid I see playing the Crazy Frog video gets his new iPod stamped on :-)

   12 Oct 2005, 21:34

5. 2.5"! It's not a fantastic size (I wouldn't sit in my room watching a film on it), but you can take it anywhere and link it to a TV when you get there – sorted. And if you have a long rail commute every day, you can happily sit and watch an episode of some TV show (until you get mugged because you were so intent on your lovely new toy).

   12 Oct 2005, 21:39

6. Steven Carpenter

   No word on the quality of the screen either yet; it's going to have to be very nice indeed to beat the PSP's (although not having 5 stuck pixels and gluing the screen in straight would be start if my PSP is anything to go by), plus it's not widescreen. The new form factor is nice – somehow makes the old iPod look immediately dated, which presumably was the point.

   12 Oct 2005, 21:49

7. Tom Abbott

   I think the distribution channel is the story here, not the iPod Video.

   13 Oct 2005, 08:51

8. Steven Carpenter

   What interests you about that Tom?

   13 Oct 2005, 09:05

9. John Dale

   The trouble is, I think, that the screen is 2.5" and 320×240. This isn't ideal for several reasons:-

   1. It's not wide-screen
   2. It's not even close to being class-competitive; the Archos AV500 has a 4" LCD at 480x272 pixels, and the AV700 has a 7" LCD at 480×234 pixels.
   3. The videos that Apple are selling via iTunes have been encoded at 320×240. This makes them small, of course, but also means that they are completely unsuitable for watching via the TV out. In general, the two equally poor choices are, encode at 320×240 and make it unusable for external viewing, or encode at a higher resolution and burn through disk space, plus suffer the artifacts of realtime down-sampling.

   I also note that the device can't record. My view might change when I see one, and it turns out to be lovely and slim and glossy, I guess, but right now it doesn't seem to me to be competitive with the Archos range or a Creative Zen Vision or somesuch.

   13 Oct 2005, 09:19

10. Steven Carpenter

    The video capability does seem to be rather poorly thought out. I'm more interested in the 10GB capacity increase and the new form-factor. Shame that the battery life hasn't gone up by much either, especially for the 30GB version.

    13 Oct 2005, 09:34

11. …and you have 10GB of extra music now?

    I'd like to do a little survey and actually find out how much people really put on their iPods.

    13 Oct 2005, 09:47

12. Tom Abbott

    What will be interesting is that iTunes really established online music purchase for the non-tech majority of people – whilst the p2p stuff may have done it for a narrow group of people, a safe legal alternative is what the vast majority will be interested in.

    Now, iTunes delivering TV shows – that's a very attractive proposition for people. Whether they view them on the iPod, on the mac or through the TV, it's going to open up a lot of people to the idea of accessing programming online rather than via dvd, cable, satellite or terrestrial telly.

    I know, for example, that my dad would find bittorrent a very scary and unhelpful environment. iTunes, on the other hand, is immediately attractive.

    As with many of these things, the media player is really a periphery object. Yes, it may be very cool and sexy and a desireable object, but it is the content and the manner of distribution, and most importantly how accesible that mechanism is to the average Joe or Joanna, that makes something revolutionary.

    13 Oct 2005, 10:05

13. Tom Abbott

    Quote from Boing Boing:

    "I also read in one source that Apple is negotiating with the BBC for access to their massive library.

    13 Oct 2005, 10:26

14. Steve Rumsby

    To make video on an iPod work for the masses, it needs to be as easy to use as audio currently is. Of course that means useful video downloads, but it also means ripping DVDs into iTunes (they have to find a better name for it now, surely), and being able to import video from "other sources", like stuff recorded from TV by a PVR/TiVo/Sky+. I don't find access to video downloads at all attractive, but being able to put my own content on the device could well sell it to me.

    Yes, the screen is small, but for short periods of time that's not necessarily hugely important. Yes, there are better video capable devices, but this is by Apple so it has to be good right:-) And the form factor seems to be about right. It is the sort of device you could carry with you most of the time. A bigger screen, like on the 4" or 7" Archos devices, would make it too unwieldy for me.

    13 Oct 2005, 11:25

15. Tom Abbott

    I would have to agree with that Steve – I don't think they have it quite right yet, but I doubt that it will be long before the integration you mention with other sources becomes necesarry for commercial reasons.

    13 Oct 2005, 11:40

16. John Dale

    And actually, I think Apple have been very smart in the way that they've positioned the new device; not as a video iPod which is designed specifically for TV/movie playback, but as an iPod which _happens_to be able to do video now and again when it would be handy. It's still primarily a music player, just as the iPod Photo was.

    This is clever, because it means that the small screen and the lack of content are much less of deal-breaker. Presumably third party converters for other video formats will appear quickly enough, and if interest grows, Apple can consider devices made more specifically for video in the future.

    13 Oct 2005, 18:48

17. Steve Rumsby

    It didn't take long for somebody to document the process of ripping DVDs for playing on an iPod – link.

    Mac-specific, but similar tools exist for Windows…

    14 Oct 2005, 10:55

18. John Dale

    A quote from Steve Jobs:-

    There is no market today for portable video. We’re going to sell millions of these to people who want to play their music, and video is going to come along for the ride. Anyone who wants to put out video content will put it out for this. And we’ll find out what happens.

    17 Oct 2005, 10:18

19. Yup, that sounds about right. I guess that is why he didn't bother making the screen any bigger.

    17 Oct 2005, 10:32

Trackbacks

Trackback URL: http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/stevencarpenter/entry/new_ipods/trackback/

1. Quick survey: How much music is on your MP3 player?

   Over at Steve's entry we are talking about the new iPods and the kind of pointlessness of the new video iPod. What I'd like to know is? What is the point of keep on upping the capacity of these things (60GB!) and how much music do p...

   Kieran's blog - 13 Oct 2005, 10:09

2. iPods and video

   There's been a bit of chat on Steve's blog about the new iPods which can do video, albeit on a pretty small screen at a pretty cruddy resolution. A couple of posts on blogs elsewhere touch on...

   Autology: John Dale's blog - 13 Oct 2005, 21:37