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.'"

Backwards

[Trails]

increasing volume-to-size ratio.

Something in there isn't right. I think this is meant to be either

decreasing volume-to-size ratio.

OR

increasing size-to-volume ratio.

Everyone having every video?

[ryanov]

But what a stupid idea. Why have millions of copies of everything when theoretically networks will allow there to be a few replicated copies? Seems a pointless waste of disk space to me.

Besides, there will be many more videos ever produced by that time than there are now... I doubt technology will keep pace with the rolling-themselves-off-a-cliff-in-a-shopping-car-v ideo crowd.

It already can!

[aarku]

....At 2x2 pixel resolution, 1 bit color, 1 fps... Where do you draw the line on video quality?

640k is enough for anybody

[jandrese]

I'm really tempted to save that article just so I can pull it out and show how naive people were back in 2006. If there is one thing time has taught me, it's that the volume of information expands in relation to your available storage. I mean 10 years ago one of our 500GB modern hard drives could have probably stored all of the video available on the internet with room to spare.

I do agree that an iPod like device could probably hold enough video (high quality video at that) to well exceed its battery life however (modern iPods have no trouble doing that with music).

Questionably useful?

[Toby The Economist]

Imagine a video iPod with a nice little screen (640x480) and enough store for your entire video and music collection.

You can carry it with you anywhere.

Useful?

I can usefully take music with me, because I can *listen* while I physically perform other tasks - like being at the gym, sitting down at work while I code.

But *video?*

Video is much less useful, because to *watch* you can't be doing other things - your eyes are occupied.

So I think it's only useful for being portable in situations where you have to sit and *wait* and cannot do other things.

For me that means just one thing; waiting for the bus and maybe when I'm on the bus, if it doesn't make me feel ill.

For others, I can only imagine similar situations, e.g. being stuck on a mode of transport.

Paging the **AA

[Rob T Firefly]

Carrying a drive with all the video in the world sounds like a great way to become the target of all the lawsuits in the world. Unless, of course, you have already paid all the money in the world for all the proper licensing rights in the world.

The barriers are political, not technical

[defile]

We could already be watching all of our TV shows over the internet on-demand.

The average person isn't watching the bulk of their TV this way because the networks don't want to give up that kind of control. To say nothing about the people who don't even want to control their TV experience. Some people are just happy to flop onto the couch and let a gigantic media corporation design their entire evening's entertainment experience.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Backwards

[lordb42]

It is correct as long as the ratio is storage volume / physical size. It is a bad choice of terms since it could also mean physical volume / storage size.

Re:First, the MPAA would be pissed

[bill_mcgonigle]

I remember the olden days when we called that "getting an education."

It used to be doctors personally knew about all the drugs you could give a person. Nowadays we have the PDR, and we don't think doctors are worse for it.

Article needs more context for those quotes

[Red Flayer]

Summary:

iPod to Eventually Hold All the Video in the World?

Article:Arora said, by 2012, iPods could launch at similar prices to those on sale now and yet be capable of holding a whole year's worth of video releases. Around 10 years down the line that could be expanded, creating iPods that can hold all the music ever sold commercially.Article, II (emphasis mine):

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

Any != all. I get the weird feeling that either he's tossing speculation around (most likely), or there was a part skipped in the article, where Arora discusses distribution methods, and how video content will be just as (or more) available in digital format as music is now.

As to his question of "why not" an iPod that can hold all video ever produced (if that is what he was asking), the answer is that there will be no demand for a personal player with that much storage -- and since it will be more expensive than a smaller-storage device that meets the demand for storage volume, the smaller-storge device will win the pricing/distribution war. In light of this, why bother developing an expensive product with little demand?

Let's hope they leave YouTube's content off...

[Channard]

.. because I sure as hell don't need six hundred gigabytes of random footage spliced with various unrelated songs. Think I'm kidding? Do a search on YouTube and half the results that come up are those crap. Of course, bearing in mind that much of the content on youtube is, despite Google's best efforts to remove it, made up of copyrighted material, that may be a good enough reason to keep it off.

Re:Apple and the Google

[tempestdata]

Yes, but he didn't talk about compression, resolution, frame rate or even how many colors in which you'll get to see it. :P

Seriously though, I agree with you. I think its just some guy making bold predictions to get attention. Like predicting flying cars, or colonies on the moon, plastic disposable houses, or android helpers, etc. Do what I do, and go 'yeah, maybe.. but I'll believe it when I see it.'

Re:How about this?

[TheRaven64]

I completely agree. Local storage is a temporary solution to the problem of not enough bandwidth. Latency is often an issue too, and a local cache is good, but why bother storing all the music ever if I will only ever listen to 0.001% of it? Just stream me the tracks I want, when I want them. That way, my collection will never go out of date.

Re:Really?

[Kadin2048]

If by "beautiful" you mean Analog NTSC Composite Video, then I suppose you're right.

Pity they don't have Firewire or some other digital output...course the MPAA would never allow that. Lord, no.

Re:exactly! Mod Parent +10

[drinkypoo]

Exactly. This is why I will never sign up for remotely hosted anything, pretty much.

There is a need for backups. However, they may not be online. In fact if you want them secure they should be in your safe deposit box or something. Having them in your house doesn't save you if your house burns down, for example.

If your backups aren't offsite, then I can't possibly take you seriously. If they are, then never mind :)