iPod To Eventually Hold All the Video In the World?

An anonymous reader writes "A senior Google exec has been talking up the prospect of iPods that can hold all the world's media due to the plummeting price of storage and its increasing volume-to-size ratio. Google's VP of European operations, Nikesh Arora, predicts that in as little as just over a decade's time, iPods will be capable of storing 'any video ever produced.'" From the article: "Arora believes, mobile is likely to follow the same path. 'Mobile is not going to be a different thing,' he added — and if the mobile industry is to capitalize on the growth of content, it would be wise to ape the development of the internet. He said: 'The mobile industry has to go through the same phases the internet has gone through... Mobile will have the same learning curve. It would be somewhat foolish to leapfrog the stages the internet went through.'"

Off by a factor of a bajillion

[bill_mcgonigle]

As an exercise in DVR-ology I worked out that by 2016 I should be able to buy enough hard drive space for &lt $500 (today's dollars) to hold all the video I'd want to watch for most of my life online, using a RAID mirror, by just scaling up Moore's Law. OK, so that much data could be un-RAID'ed on an iPod by then.

But that's just me. Given HD camcorders [amazon.com], YouTube [youtube.com] and 6 Billion people on earth, rapidly becoming technological, "All the Video in The World" is about 6 billion times larger than what we can do next decade - that's several more decades of Moore's Law to contend with.

Re:Am I a villager?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I spend three hours a day commuting on trains to/from Chicago. At this point, I would estimate that 65% of "regulars" (i.e. monthly ticket holders) are using iPods or portable CD players. Another 25% are reading (newspapers, novels, the Bible). Only about 10% actually talk to each other. The rest of us hate them and wish they'd STFU.

Re:Apple and the Google

[Josh Lindenmuth]

This is just as funny as the story is ridiculous.

Historically and mathematically Google's claim just doesn't add up. Apple's iPod site claims that their 80GB video iPod can store "up to 6 1/2 hours" of video. Let's be very aggressive and assume that hard drives continue doubling in capacity every 2 years for the next decade. Here's where'd we be after 10 years:

2006 - 80 GB, 6.5 hours
2008 - 160 GB, 13 hours
2010 - 320 GB, 26 hours
2012 - 640 GB, 52 hours
2014 - 1.28 TB, 104 hours
2016 - 2.56 TB, 208 hours

A 2.56 TB iPod would be quite impressive, but wouldn't even hold every season of The Simpsons, let alone "All the video in the world". Even if they ignored power/size requirements and used full 3.5 inch desktop drives, capacity would only be ~25.6TB or 2080 hours. This isn't even enough space to hold 1 year's worth of network soap operas.

Re:Apple and the Google

[aftk2]

Heh, that's 6 and a half hours of video playback, on one battery charge.

Sheesh.

Re:Apple and the Google

[timeOday]

You're criticising the slashdot mis-quote instead of what the guy actually said. Here it is from the article:

Around 10 years down the line that could be expanded, creating iPods that can hold all the music ever sold commercially.

He said: "In 12 years, why not an iPod that can carry any video ever produced?"

So, it seems pretty clear to me that he's discussing all (music) video, and not "all the video in the world" such as simpsons and soap operas. He still may be wrong, but but ~30,000 music videos would at least cover everything that hit the top 100 in the charts for many, many years.