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No Video iPod Coming? 221

Posted by Zonk from the dang-shame dept.
Fuzzball963 writes "ThinkSecret is reporting that a video iPod is not going to be released on Oct.12th. Instead, the announcement will be an 80 GB update to the iPod, along with size improvements on the color models. The analysts seem to say that the video iPod is in development, but that lack of a licensing agreement between Apple and the studios has made it a no-go for now." From the article: "While a video-capable iPod remains in development, without the agreements nor infrastructure in place to deliver movies to customers through a store-like interface, Apple sees little value in releasing such an iPod at this time. Apple insiders have also said executives see consumers needing the capability to easily import the DVD movies they own to a usable format (similar to the encoding functionality provided for audio CDs with iTunes) in order for a video iPod to be truly successful. The complexity to date of accomplishing such a feat has meant only a minority of computer users have dabbled with watching full-length movies on their computer, with most of those having acquired the content through file sharing services."
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No Video iPod Coming? More

No Video iPod Coming?

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  • No Video iPod (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Makes sense when they explain it but really if we all just wait a few days there will be no speculation =p

    • Re:No Video iPod (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )
      I stand by the statements I've made the past two times that the iPod Video seemed on the cusp of release. Allow me to quote a post I made a few days ago:

      I think a previous post I've made still applies to this situation, and I'll reiterate the key points: Every time Apple hints they are about to make an announcement, the media always tells the public that it is undoubtedly going to be a video iPod. And every single time they have been wrong. Does this mean that this announcement is not a video iPod? No. I me

  • Why wait for Hollywood? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jack_call ( 742032 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @05:29AM (#13745760) Journal
    Last time I checked, iTunes Music Store had music videos. Put the video iPod on the market, let the movie folks see the potential just in music videos.
  • This was already posted in the comments of the "Video iPod Coming Soon [slashdot.org]" post the other day.

  • What about? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Phil1 ( 723762 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @05:29AM (#13745764) Journal
    Home-made movies?

    • Re:What about? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Home-made movies?

      YOU SICK PORN-FREAKS, I don't want *anyone* to watch this stuff when sitting next to me on my way to work.

    • Re:What about? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MouseR ( 3264 )
      Most phones allow you to play small movies. Some carriers now even sport TV channels on 3G phones.

      The much criticized ROKR phone is actually very nice (I own one). pigmy VGA camera but that's still 640x480 more pixels than an iPod can capture AND it records/play videos.

      Steve has got to open his eyes and release what the public wants ratter than wait for the industry to provide what they wished the public wants.

  • Is the Video iPod worth the wait? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dynamoo ( 527749 ) * on Saturday October 08, 2005 @05:32AM (#13745769) Homepage
    I have to question the whole buzz about the Video iPod, and indeed any other similar portable video player (such as those made by iRiver and others). It's an much small niche market than audio, because unlike music playback, video demands your full attention. You can't reasonably watch a video while out walking, jogging, riding a bike or working away at your desk. Plus, the small screens don't exactly do justice to most of the things you are watching.

    So, I think the lack of a Video iPod is no great loss. What Apple are missing out on is a decent iPod-style phone. According to The Register [theregister.co.uk], the Motorola ROKR iTunes phone isn't shifting in any significant quantity. Perhaps if Apple and Motorola had come up with something more like the (admittedly flawed) Bang & Olufsen Serene [mobilegazette.com] then it would be a real seller. That's the kind of unified gadget there's a market for.. a good mobile/music player hybrid. B&O showed that it's possible. But Apple have either missed the boat on this one, or perhaps they do have something in development in-house.

    Really though.. if I want to watch a film while I'm away.. I stick a DVD in my laptop. That has a nice big screen and I've never run into DRM issues with that. Yet.

    • Right now there is no significant demand , Of course the market can be made .
      I would love a portable video player if they a decent battery life , Laptops and current generation portable video devices simply are not that useful for long stays away from a power outlet , the screens I have seen are fine ( I tend not to mind as they are held rather close , in perspective they seem about as large as a normal TV at a good range ) though .

      Long haul flights , lazy days in the garden .,um work if you have your own
    • Yeah, but its not like it's going to cost them much to add the video. They have the screen, they have the harddrive and sound hardware/processing - all they need to add is a chip which (i am guessing) costs less than 20-30 dollars that can decompress video files. When they are charging 300-400 dollars, that isn't much.

      Normally you could use it just like your old ipod, but on long trips or airplane rides you could watch a movie or something. My friend had an iriver on our europe trip this summer, and it was
      • Remember, this is Apple. They're not going to release something that's just "better than nothing." If they're going to release a video iPod, they're going to solve the distribution problems, make encoding trivial, give it an easy interface, and mark it way up. It will be usable by one hand, you will be able to watch and do the dishes at the same time, and it will be revolutionary in other ways that we can't even think of right now. It will also be very, very thin and utterly sexy. Did I mention it woul

    • Re:Is the Video iPod worth the wait? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @06:01AM (#13745818) Homepage
      So, I think the lack of a Video iPod is no great loss. What Apple are missing out on is a decent iPod-style phone. According to The Register, the Motorola ROKR iTunes phone isn't shifting in any significant quantity.

      Up until the iPod nano, I would have disagreed. But now I agree. You already have the screen, input device and battery. Include a mic, radio antenna and basic SMS/MMS and you have a working phone that isn't too big. Just include a little bit of sane battery management (that is, not let the pod drain the phone beyond a certain threshold). With the relatively large battery for a phone they might even catch a niche market for people who want extra long life. In other words I'd much rather have an iPod with phone than a phone with iPod. The ROKR is going about it in a completely wrong way, at least to my tastes.
      • rokrs problem is that it's a shitty mp3 player and a shitty phone - and horribly late.

        glue the nano to a razr and it's slightly better.

        ah well.. they should just write player programs for the major smartphone platforms..
    • Plus, the small screens don't exactly do justice to most of the things you are watching.

      I find the Archos AV700 [archos.com]'s 7" screen quite bearable. Should be great for commuting to work in trains. Much like those portable DVD players (though I suspect those are mostly in use by kids in the backseats of cars).
    • I think the perfect media for portability like this has to be "The Family Guy"... or other TV comedy series... So what if the picture is small and not so perfect... A comedy series is all about whats said anyway. I've laughed just as hard at some crappy 32 MB episode with 320x240 resolution and bitrate worth next to nothing as a high quality dvd rip. id watch it when taking trains and public transport (except at night... as that just screams out "MUG ME")
    • funny, I made the exact same comment the last time this story was posted, and was modded down for it. The arguments against me boiled down to the fact that a video iPod could be used to carry movies with you to plug into TVs to play, rather than watching on the small screen.
    • "It's an much small niche market than audio, because unlike music playback, video demands your full attention."

      How many people travel, and would like a video player, but don't want yet another device/charger in addition to their notebook, mp3 player, and cell phone? (ME!)

      How many people work jobs where nothing is happening at two in the morning and you're stuck there? How many people commute and ride subways, trains, buses, or ferries to work each day? How many people wait in lobbies for appointments? H

  • Copying your legally-owned DVDs... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Trollificus ( 253741 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @05:33AM (#13745771) Journal
    ...to an mpeg/divx/whatever format isn't as difficult as they make it sound. I currently use Smartripper [afterdawn.com] to rip the .vob files and separate my audio and video tracks, and DVDx [labdv.com] to encode the audio to mp3 and video to DivX and package it all up in a nice .avi container.

    Granted, it is not as easy as ripping a CD, but if anyone can streamline this into a single-step process(to the end-user anyway), it would be Apple.

    • I currently use Smartripper to rip the .vob files and separate my audio and video tracks, and DVDx to encode the audio to mp3 and video to DivX and package it all up in a nice .avi container.
      And for us Mac heads, there is HandBrake [m0k.org].

      • mod parent up (Score:3, Interesting)

        by adpowers ( 153922 )
        I looked at the comments of this article specifically to see if anyone mentioned HandBrake. It makes it super, super easy to record DVDs into H.264 format, which looks amazing. Of course, it does take for friggin' ever. It took like 20 hours to encode a movie to H.264 on my 1.33 GHz PowerBook (if I remember correctly). I can't wait for my family to get an iMac or something to make it faster. Hell, it might even be worth it just to get a Mac mini to use as a dedicated ripping machine, as to not type up your

    • Re:Copying your legally-owned DVDs... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I really can't see the MPAA sitting still whilst Apple does this, given that they've gone after makers of high end DVD jukeboxes in the past. Music is different; there's established cases showing that you have the right to rip your music (at least in the US; Australia is different) ... but that case hasn't been demonstrated for movies, and I'd bet my bottom dollar they're keen to avoid it becoming "legit".

      The other point: doing so would almost certainly violate the CSS license, which Apple would have signed
    • If you have out of date hardware, ripping a dvd is painfully slow, like overnight slow.
      Most consumers don't have dual processor g5's as far as I know.
      • If you have out of date hardware, ripping a dvd is painfully slow, like overnight slow.
        Most consumers don't have dual processor g5's as far as I know.

        Are people nowadays really that impatient? I don't see why popping in DVD before you go to bed, only to have a nice DVD rip waiting for you when you get up to be such a hassle. Many people leave their computers on 24/7 anyway, so they might as well be doing something instead of just sitting there idle wasting electricity.
      • When I recode my movies for watching on my portable gmini 400, my p4 3.0 does it in about 170fps. Or about 15 minutes a movie. The end result for an 2 hour movie is about 300Mb,300kbps mpeg4 video, 64kbps mp3 sound.

        I think it's a very reasonable time. Can be done in the morning before I get on the bus to watch it. It should be noted that I already have all my movies on the hardrive, but I don't think the actual copying of the DVD is that expensive timewise.

        Yes, this is singlepass and lowquality so the files

    • Re:Copying your legally-owned DVDs... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Val314 ( 219766 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @07:15AM (#13745962)
      its easy, but unfortunatly illegal.
      at least here in Austria its not allowed to break a copy protection. (and yes: CSS counts as copy protection)

      • Re:Copying your legally-owned DVDs... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by plj ( 673710 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @07:52AM (#13746043)
        Mod parent up. The DVD CCA [dvdcca.org] will never grant Apple a license to rip CSS-encrypted movies to a hard disk. While it is technically entirely feasible to make DVD ripping as easy as CD ripping, it is not, for legal reasons, anything that a major consumer electronics manufacturer like Apple can do.

        This is all just DVD DRM (aka CSS) hard at work, stifling innovation.

        • You can legally rip HD-DVDs, but not DVDs (?) (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Saturday October 08, 2005 @12:57PM (#13747073) Homepage
          Here's something I've been wondering the last week. In the flurry of HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray bickering in the press, "managed copy" keeps coming up. To make a managed copy of an HD-DVD, a computer rips it, strips off the AACS DRM, and wraps on a new DRM layer (MS will use Windows Media DRM, of course, and you'd expect other companies to use their own DRM layers). This is all legal and approved. So the studios will let us rip HD-DVDs (with conditions), and the studios believe that HD is much more valuable than SD. So why can't the computer industry convince the DVD CCA to amend their rules to allow managed copy for regular DVDs?
    • The problem with all-in-one push one button to encode type applications is that they usually result in horrible quality videos. Encoding video is a very, VERY delicate process to result in a good looking video. Forget bit rate issues, you can have a 2mbps video that looks crappy because of issues with interlacing, telecining, rainbowing, blended field effects, color fields, etc, etc. There's just no way to build an all-in-one app to do video encoding properly.

    • Disk Copy (Score:3, Informative)

      by lexarius ( 560925 )
      You can rip a DVD using Apple's Disk Utility program. What you get is disk image, suitable for burning if you have big enough blanks, or playing using DVD Player by mounting the image. Sure, it isn't a small file, but an 80 GB iPod could hold several. The problem is when you want to encode that into a different format.
    • Even easier is the MEncoder GUI on OS X, where I just pop a dvd in, select "dvd rip" and get a nicely packaged rip in any format I want.

  • Thank god, no UMD (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aussie_a ( 778472 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @05:33AM (#13745772) Journal
    Thank god they didn't decide to go the route of Sony with a special format (such as UMD) that can only be played on a tiny machine. It's just a cash-cow for sony, and I hope that it doesn't work (I'd hate to see yet another competing video format, one that isn't even for the main television, it would be like getting movies on gameboy cartridges).

  • This isn't going to be a movie iPod (Score:5, Interesting)

    by the_unknown_soldier ( 675161 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @05:33AM (#13745774)
    It's going to be a VIDEO iPod. Did anyone notice that free music videos on iTMS, which used to be updated lots haven't since June? Perhaps apple isn't giving them away because they want to sell them now!

    I very much doubt they will launch with movies. If they do it will be limited. They will simply market it as an added extra similar to album art on the color iPods.

  • Bad excuses (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @05:44AM (#13745794) Homepage
    The complexity to date of accomplishing such a feat has meant only a minority of computer users have dabbled with watching full-length movies on their computer, with most of those having acquired the content through file sharing services."

    Yes, putting in a DVD and have it autostart is really complex, and prevents me from "watching full-length movies on [my] computer". My friend has a flashy new phone capable of playing video, it has a tool for ripping DVDs which is equally simple. I don't see myself getting a video iPod though, I've never missed having something like that.

  • A Video iPod may be nice.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sunsetbeach ( 753829 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @05:58AM (#13745815)
    If it can be connected to any TV.

    I mean imagine, you could go visit a friend, and bring your movie/porn collection...

    • Re:A Video iPod may be nice.. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Xarius ( 691264 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @06:19AM (#13745859) Homepage
      Or even better! Some kind of "storage medium" that has "players" installed in most households now-a-days! Imaging most modern computers being able to Digitally write to this Versatile format? Some kind of new Disc perhaps?
    • Everyone assumes it's an iPod. IMHO, they'll release a new Airport Express [apple.com], one that has an S-video cable out, hooks up to your TV AND stereo, and plays movies off of your Mac directly.

      In which case, you'll be watching your neighbor's home pr0n, which is probably a scarier proposition.

      But "As Seen On TV" (long since vanished) mentioned it quite a while ago. It does seem a genius move, if they can pull it off - last I remember, he mentioned there being several technical hurdles to be overcome, mostly doing

  • I already have an iPod Video... (Score:5, Informative)

    by michaelzhao ( 801080 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @06:04AM (#13745825)
    Its called the iPod-Linux. If you install Linux on your iPod Photo, it will play video. It takes 24 bit uncompressed AVI files and splits up the sound. It takes each frame separately and stores it as a slideshow. Next, it goes to the slideshow and accelerates the frames to 30 frames a second while playing audio in the background. Voila! Although the screen is small, no screen is too small for the Boondock Saints.

  • There won't be a video iPod (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joelhayhurst ( 655022 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @06:13AM (#13745845)

    Jobs has said time and time again that he thinks the idea of a video iPod is stupid and doesn't want to make one. And yet, Slashdot keeps acting like it will be a reality. He even went so far as to mock companies that were pursuing portable video.

    I've actually posted a comment similar to this a year ago. Here is the Apple Special Event 04 [apple.com]. 12:35 into the video.

    • jobs says a lot of things.

      but there's a point where they're intentionally limiting the features to keep it simple even if the new feature would be only few hundred kb's of software on the device - they're already at that point, the photo ipod is powerful enough to play video. like, home videos don't make sense but photos do ? there's no logic in that.

      so.. wanna bet that there won't be a video ipod? i'm pretty sure that apple will produce sooner or later a portable device that also plays videos - if they do
      • The iPod Photo has two 80mhz ARM chips in it. That's not enough to decode fullres MPEG4 in realtime. Heck, today's xScale PDAs can barely do that at around 500mhz. It would need a faster CPU and/or a dedicated custom decoder chip.

        Just beause it can do a slideshow that looks like a video doesn't mean it's a viable video player.

    • Sure an iPod video would have been crazy LAST YEAR. Way back then you'd have to be daft to even consider it. The proof? Well you don't have one, do you? Now doing it today? That's another story. Today it's all "wave of the future", "the next big thing" and "whatnot."

      Never underestimate the power of Steve's reality distortion field.
    • Didn't he say similar things about a headless iMac?

    • Jobs has said time and time again that he thinks the idea of a video iPod is stupid

      Just like he and the other Apple drones spent a year or so dissing the expensive, high-end Flash players before introducing the ipod mini? I recall hearing quite a lot of apple fans parroting Apple's talking points: flash players suck, the capacity is tiny, everyone wants 60GB, and so on. On stage during the mini inro, he even spent an abnormal amount of time dissing existing Flash players. And today what is Apple's current i

      • I did your research for you. He talks about the flash players here: MacWorld 04 [apple.com] at about 1:50:45.

        He critiques the competition's low storage space (128-256mb), their clumsiness, and their poor interface. He does not in any way critique flash technology and instead says he wants to actively go into this high-end flash player market.

        Jobs hasn't contradicted himself regarding flash players. But nice try!

    • Size -- other poratables are too big.
      Weight -- they also also too heavy.
      Content -- there is no content to put on it. Copyright issues are everywhere!
      Output screens -- they are simply too small for video.

      So how could that change?

      If the iPod could be made to do video playback without getting bigger or heavier, there was a source for content, and you had some kind of output, you bet he'd do it.

      For output, the 12" PB shows you how it could be done -- a simple mini-DVI slot would do it. Or you could use the ex
  • "While a video-capable iPod remains in development, without the agreements nor infrastructure in place to deliver movies to customers through a store-like interface, Apple sees little value in releasing such an iPod at this time"

    80gb ? Im crazy about music and I've got roughly 350 cd albums I've hand ripped and encoded at a high bitrate. Last time I checked my 30gb iPod has about 7gb free. I wanted a 40gb model but at the time I bought mine the next size up was the 60gb model - that just seemed excessive so
    • 80gb ? Im crazy about music and I've got roughly 350 cd albums I've hand ripped and encoded at a high bitrate. Last time I checked my 30gb iPod has about 7gb free

      Many years ago I used to work in OpenVMS. With every release we would get a pack of CD's with just about every bit of software you could buy for VMS from DEC.

      You couldn't run the software without paying for it first because of all the DRM in VMS. Doing it this way just simplified distribution.

      Now I wonder if Apple could do a similar thing with t

    • So you arranged the bits yourself?

    • Re:Crazy! (not) (Score:2, Interesting)

      by DusterBar ( 881355 )
      My personal CD collection is a bit over 1200 CDs. (And some are multi-disc titles) Add in around 800 LPs plus some old collectors 78s and 45s and I get a ton of music to encode. I am almost done with my CD collection and I did a few LPs already but the LPs take a long time (there is no 10x RIP speed :-()

      So, while I may not have a huge collection, I do have a reasonably large one and at high bit rates (192+ VBR) they tend to take up some room.

      Plus, my iPod has a few essential data files on it (such as

    • I am confused by your maths. You have 350CDs. Each CD is 650MB. Let's assume that actually they only use an average of 80% of that space. This gives 177GB. Now, lossless compression could get this down to around 89GB. Encoding at a high bitrate (256kb/s) squeezes it down to 44GB. And yet, somehow you squeezed this into under 23GB?

      I think, perhaps, you have a different definition of high bitrate to me. It sounds like you count 128kb/s as high bitrate. This is just about acceptable if you are using

      • Assume each CD is 1 hour, and he means 160kbps encoding (which isn't really that high, but you'll see why I make that assumption). 350 CDs * 1 hour/cd * 3600 sec/hour * 160kbps * 1/8 bytes/bit * 1/1048576 GB/KB = 24.03GB. 128kbps would make it 19.2GB. 192kbps would make it 28.8GB. 256kbps would make it 38.4GB (close enough.)
    • It's not just the music.

      I just bought a 4th gen 60gb. (I had a 10gb 3rd gen for ~2 years). The 10gb wasn't enough to hold just the music. Top that off with calendar stuff, files, and selective (encrypted) backups, and I was always fighting for space on the old one.

      Now with the 60 I have plenty of room. And I can put pictures on the thing as well! It's very very cool.

      But the pictures eat up space, and eat up a ton of space if I put them on the thing at full resolution. (I have about 20,000 pictures in iPhoto
  • I've been holding off on a powerbook anticipating an upgrade. I REALLY hope they at the very least increase the memory speed on the powerbooks.
  • I have a nokia 6230. This is a regular joe - standard nokia candy bar form factor series 40 - phone. Its not a smart phone / mobile computer / email executive toy. This is a phone marketed to kids / fashion crowd. An updated version is already in the shops marketed as free with a 12 month contract (i.e. in j6p's eyes this is a completely free phone).

    now using just dvd-decryptor and the software (transcoder) that comes with the phone you can copy a complete dvd-film to the memory card. a film takes up about

  • Wrong! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Hitchcock_Blonde ( 717330 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @07:11AM (#13745953) Homepage
    Obviously, ThinkSecret is wrong.

  • Lack of licensing agreement (Score:3, Funny)

    by Junior J. Junior III ( 192702 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @08:28AM (#13746143) Homepage
    I guess 99 cents per movie wasn't enough for those greedy Hollywood studios.
    • Possibly not. But what about TV shows? How about 99 for an episode, $9.99 for a season? You pick a show you like and subscribe to the podcast. Every week, you find a new episode sitting on your hard drive. You can then burn it to VCD or DVD, watch it on your laptop, or stream it to your Airport Express AV base station.

      Before anyone mentions TiVo:

      • Last time I checked, TiVo to go was Windows only - I don't own a Windows box.
      • It doesn't allow you to burn to DVD, so I can't watch shows at a friend's house
      • But what about TV shows? How about 99 [cents] for an episode, $9.99 for a season?

        Are you kidding? A season of a TV show costs $30-50 on DVD (except the HBO ones, which are $100 for 12 episodes!). Steve's Reality Distortion Field is powerful, but I don't think it can get us a 3-5x discount on TV shows.
  • The most fundamental reason is that it sucks to watch movies on a 3" or smaller screen. The beauty of sound is that the size of the generator doesn't matter (much - audiophiles will point out the lack of base, clipping/overshooting on square wave tests, etc.); this is just not true of visuals. The only way around this is if someone can put a 3" screen 3" from your eyeballs (to get the same angular coverage as a movie or TV screen) and hold it there, comfortably.

    iGlasses, anyone?
  • Video is soooo different to audio on a portable device.
    With audio you have the same experience as you'd have in the 'full' sense PLUS listening to an album over and over again is entirely normal and expected. With video, you may watch the content once or possibly twice in a small form factor and that's it. Why would anybody buy an iPod movie for full bucks when they can rip? I think the movie studios are all too aware of this which is why they will never agree to a licence similar to the one set up for ITM

  • Media event for modest product updates? No way. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by calstraycat ( 320736 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @10:18AM (#13746479)
    I have no idea what will be announced at this event, but I think it's safe to assume that Thinksecret's assertion that Apple will simply announce modest updates to it's iPod, Powerbook and Power Mac product lines is highly unlikely. Apple only orchestrates these types of highly-publicized events when they are introducing a brand new or substantially different product.

    I just can't see Jobs deliberately getting the media buzz going with his cryptic little invitation and then getting on stage and saying "look, here's our new 80 GB iPod and our dual-core Power Mac...oh, and one more thing...our Powerbooks have higher resolution screens".

    Something new will be announced. I'd bet against a video iPod, but this event is most assuredly not for announcing product updates.

  • No, of course not, we didn't invent this story. There really is a Video iPod in development. Don't listen to Jobs, he's trying to cover it up.

    And no, this isn't bait and switch. We aren't switching to a more likely story to make it seem that we are guessing right. It is not as if we had a history of fabulation.

    Yeah, right.
  • The most compelling evidence against a video update can be seen in the recent update of iTunes to version 5.x. It's a safe bet that Apple would save the first digit upgrade and interface revamp for a month if they had a video iPod ready to go.

  • Google Video (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Mindslinger ( 895745 )
    Forget feature movies for now. The obvious first step is to start off small and infectious. Watch Apple announce an integration with Google Video. There was an iTunes/Google rumour or hint going around. Video Podcasts, Viral videos, home-made clips, free shorts and portfolio clips The Star Wars Kid, Numa Numa, Leeeroy Let the first Video iPod trade in that content to get the ball rolling. This is a great way to test the water, check the popularity, security, and potential business models for video. Experime
  • Are industry analysts ever right except due to the statistically low chance that they'd be always wrong?
  • Here [iaudio.com] (sorry no direct link) is the product website. It can play compressed MPEG4. What I have to do is rip a DVD to MPEG4. Then I use Cowan's software to properly compress and resize the movie (160 x 128) for the X5. The movies get down to about 100 MB in size, so many movies can fit on its 20 GB mini hard drive. On my Athlon 64 notebook, the entire process takes 4 HOURS :-(

    The screen is small, so it's better to NOT have the widescreen version of a movie. It just makes the movie even smaller. However, the s

  • Don't cry wolf (Score:3, Insightful)

    by geddes ( 533463 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @11:46AM (#13746805)
    It has got to be bigger than minor upgrades to the current iPods. The invitations to this event seemed to suggest something big: "One more thing..." and if that one more thing is just a hard drive upgrade to the iPods than a lot of journalists are going to be mad that they made the trip out to california. By calling media events like this, Steve Jobs spends a lot of his social capital, the press is willing to come because they expect something awesome. If he dissapoints, he will be limited in his ability to do this in the future. I do not think he will disappoint. These upgraded iPods he may announce, yes, but there will be something bigger, it may not be an iPod, but it will be something cool. - Geddes
  • I wish the Ipod would have support for more formats, and a digital out for playing 5.1 surround sound.

    A lot of companies have tried making the ipod the central music player in a household, but the stereo limit is slightly annoying.

    I really don't think it'd take that much room to add the proper plug on the top of the ipod. Eh.

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