iPod Video Coming to a Car Near You

_am99_ writes "In the "one more thing" media event today, an iPod that can play Video was announced. The initial content seems to be music videos that can be purchased from the iTunes Music Store." In related news aquachannel writes "Apple has just updated their iPodYourCar page to include a slew of new car companies. This means that there'll be a lot of cars that you can buy off the showroom floor and use your iPod with your car - right off the floor and out of the box."

Finally...

[rovingeyes]

This would be a big hit if they can stick to that price of $1.99 per video and have variety in the content provided. Already they have a winner with music videos and Pixar offerring six short films. MTV has turned in to a channel that has nothing to do with music. Also I don't have to put up with all the crappy vidoes with MTV stupid logos and artwork, assuming Apple is going to just give me a clean video. Along with that it'd be nice if they can provide other content like stand-up routines or I'd love if Jon Stewart could force comedy central to provide it's videos for video ipod.

No Divx support?

[tommers]

Even though Apple seems to be doing great with DRMed AAC files on iPods, iPods would have totally failed if they didn't support mp3s to begin with. I wonder if the video iPod will be able to gain traction without supporting the large collections of TV episodes, music videos, and movies that users already have in their collection in Divx format.

Not just videos

[That's Unpossible!]

TV shows (like Lost) one day after they air, and you know damn well what's next... movies.

A video airtunes device didn't materialize, but a dock with video out and remote control did.

Safty Concerns

[jamesgamble]

You would think that there would be safty concerns with users able to watch videos on their IPod while driving. That would be a bigger distraction than a cell phone. I really don't think this is a smart move on Apple's part. What if two years down the line, some guy kills someone because he wasn't paying attention to the road, and sues Apple for distracting him. If someone can sue McDonalds for making them fat, then this could and probably will happen.

Amazing...

[NewbieV]

From the report in the New York Times [nytimes.com]:

Citing a groundbreaking deal with ABC, owned by The Walt Disney Co., a longtime partner of chief executive Steve Jobs' Pixar Animation Studios Inc., Apple's online iTunes store will sell episodes of hit shows "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" for $1.99 apiece, making them available the day after they air on television.

Yes, it's a tiny video screen, but you can attach the iPod to a monitor using S-Video plus audio cabling. How can an organization like the RIAA justify wanting more than 99 cents per song when you can purchase 44 minutes of audio and video for two dollars?

No Divx...No Problem

[BancBoy]

My PSP doesn't play Divx (or XVID, or WMV, etc.) But that doesn't stop me from watching a lot of my weekly video content on it. With an app like PSPWare to do the conversion from a myriad of formats to the quality setting of my choice, I don't have a problem. As the iPod with Video plays H.264 and MPEG4, I would imagine a similiar application will work just fine to do the conversion and loading for you.

Re:Finally...

[Qzukk]

Music videos are commercials for albums

These days thats all there is, since MTV doesn't have time for much else, but if you look back... I'd pay $2 for New Order's True Faith video (possibly the most bizarre one I've ever seen outside of Asia, and if you've got stranger I'll take recommendations) or for Alien Ant Farm's version of Smooth Criminal.

Re:Finally...

[calibanDNS]

Does anybody know if this video content is HD?
According to Steve the video availabe through iTMS is all 320 x 240, which is the native resolution of the new iPod. Far from Hi-Def, but probably just right for the screen size that it's intended for.

I doubt this will have much if any impact on the HD DVD format wars since most people won't see this as a device for watching video on their TV. Apple is marketing it is as a portable video device, and if it works then that's what it will work as. I expect in the next year or so that we'll see them introduce a product similar to AirTunes Express, but with video capabilities. That's what would really get me excited.

Re:The Mini Cooper already has this.

[British]

There's a few options for the IPod in the MINI Cooper.

1.(cheapass). for $30, you can get a basic AUX port that works with any mp3 player
2. (not so cheapass) if you have the multi-function-steering-wheel(500 bucks) and the true "ipod adapter"(150 bucks), you can switch volume & tracks with the steering wheel buttons.

I just wish they would come out with an FM transmitter(or through the audio port if possible) that displays the currently playing track on the MINI's radio. It(along with other BMWs) tells you the track(RDS?) if the radio station supports it. Most around the twin cities do.

favourite gripe ...

[the bluebrain]

On a music iPod you only need the screen for navigating. On a video iPod the screen is used to watch stuff.
 
Can anybody tell me why 60% of the device's front-side real estate is white plastic?

American auto makers?

[SleezyG]

I just took a look at the iPodYourCar page. It's really a shame that not a single American auto manufacturer is in that list. I think it's also an indicator of just how bad American cars are and how distant their products are from what consumers want.

Burn video's to DVD?

[tyler083]

Anyone know if iTunes will now burn your video files you buy onto a DVD that will play in a standard DVD player?

If i buy every episode of a tv show, I may want to burn them to a dvd to watch when someone else is using the computer. or if i'd rather watch it on my huge 40 inch plasma tv (if I had one).

Re:Amazing...

[shark72]

"How can an organization like the RIAA justify wanting more than 99 cents per song when you can purchase 44 minutes of audio and video for two dollars?"

Because people are buying millions and millions of them at $0.99. They have likely done the research to show that they'll sell millions at $1.49 as well.

The fundamental thing here is value to the customer. It makes absolutely no difference what else is available for a similar price. If you want that CD for $13, you'll likely buy it despite the fact that a DVD costs $20 or a movie ticket costs $9 or a Urban Outfitters t-shirt costs $16 or a Jhane Barnes t-shirt costs $100 or a cheeseburger costs $4 or a concert ticket costs $40 -- because you want a CD, not a DVD, a cheeseburger or a t-shirt.

Likewise, if you want a particular song, but you don't happen to want a particular episode of Lost, then the price of the two items relative to each other -- or the price of the item you want relative to anything else on the planet -- makes little difference.

If anybody reading this is not a fan of the luxury of charging what the market will bear, then great -- figure out how much it would cost you to barely scrape by for a year without vacations or other discretionary spending, and then talk to your boss on Thursday about reducing your salary.

Re:Not just videos

[Grond]

Except the videos are at QVGA resolution (320x240). That's substantially less than even analog TV, much less DVD or HDTV. Don't count on a lot of people ditching their Tivos just yet. Or ditching bittorrent, for that matter. The videos are really just meant to play on the video-capable iPods. Frankly I think they really missed the boat. Knowing Apple, I expect what happened is that ABC/Disney (whom they still have a quasi-relationship with via Pixar) is just testing the waters, rather than Apple not having the foresight to go whole hog with legal TV show downloads. Note, for instance, that the only videos available are ABC/Disney shows and Pixar shorts.

If it works out, I would hope to see full-res shows on offer from all sorts of networks.

Also, I wonder...with iTunes you can burn CDs of music, right? Can you burn a DVD of the show? I expect you probably can't, but they ought to make it so you can. Would short-circuit the 'must buy a Mac mini or a new G5 in order to have a media center' thing, though. Hopefully Apple will choose the option that gives its users more freedom to use what they've bought.

FrontRow Question

[pmike_bauer]

Does anyone know if FrontRow (and remote) will be available for anything other than the new iMac?

I can't find any info about this on Apple's site.

Re:Erm...TV Shows?

[Seanasy]

Makes you wonder: When did Apple and Disney (ABC) become friends again? Smart move by Disney in my opinion.

Re:Finally... there *are* TV shows available

[Mercano]

Hey, perhaps this will allow that whole internet disributed fan financed "TV" show idea that gets dug up again every time someone's favorite cult show gets axed.

Re:Amazing...

[hackstraw]

How can an organization like the RIAA justify wanting more than 99 cents per song when you can purchase 44 minutes of audio and video for two dollars?

For one, the 44 minute program was pretty much paid for the night before by advertising dollars.

But in general, I've noticed this trend as well. Compare the prices for the latest Led Zeppelin releases on CD and DVD. The DVD has about 2x the content (over 300 minutes vs an estimated 180 minutes) in 3 different sound encodings but the CD costs _more_.

Link for DVD http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 08PX8P/qid=1129144470/sr=8-11/ref=pd_bbs_11/104-09 63173-9088738?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846 [amazon.com]

Link for CD http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 08OWZC/qid=1129144470/sr=8-12/ref=pd_bbs_12/104-09 63173-9088738?v=glance&s=music&n=507846 [amazon.com]

Oh, people still buy the CDs at the higher prices or via iTunes. Now I know why they are more expensive.

Voice Interface

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd they don't have the voice interface people have been asking for yet, press and hold a button and talk and it chooses the song/movie or playlist. Or, rather than press & hold, work off a trigger word you specify (ipod play XYZ, ipod replay) or something .. though obviously a default of "ipod" is too common a word to be the trigger. And obviously it'll be possible to disable this feature when not needed.

Other wanted feature is ability to run your own applets.

Re:Finally... there *are* TV shows available

[Anonymous Coward]

Why waste a DVD on 320x240 video? CDs will do fine. Apple saves on space and it saves time for consumers if the video is smaller.

Disney, of all companies

[mblase]

What amazes me is that Disney (owner of ABC), which was the last major media company to start selling DVDs, was the first company to provide downloadable video to Apple this way.

Granted their partnership with Jobs' Pixar Animation Studios was probably a big reason they agreed, but nevertheless -- this is a big switch (IMO) from the Disney I used to know. Hopefully it won't be long before other studios and networks see the download numbers for "Lost" and jump in. I bet if HBO can be persuaded to offer their shows on the iTMS (iTunes Media Store, now, I suppose), sales at the Store would skyrocket.

Re:Disney, of all companies

[shotfeel]

Granted their partnership with Jobs' Pixar Animation Studios was probably a big reason they agreed

IMO Jobs (via Pixar) essentially putting his money where his mouth is will really help with this.

OTOH I remember Eisner sitting in front of a congressional panel moaning about Apple and their Rip. Mix. Burn, campaign and how evil it was in light of how Dinsney's latest blockbuster, Monsters, Inc. was being downloaded over the net. I don't think it was until afterwords that someone pointed out to him the same Jobs behind Pixar's Monsters, Inc. was the same Jobs behind Rip. Mix. Burn. Not even a NYT article covering the hearing seemed to put the two together.

Re:kinda small

[pressman]

Yup! It's lousy for movies and television. However, for getting information on your way to work... much like a news program ornews paper it's great! I run a website called http://www.storypipe.com/ [storypipe.com]StoryPIPE. that is all about short-form narrative and music content. We're hoping that peoples' time constraints and short attention spans will play into this new device.

We will be setting up a "video blog"... I know I hate the term too, but we will have an RSS feed shortly that will be updated with new content daily that is perfect for your morning commute or a "sanity break".

I've been going on for months that this device would come out and they kind of hamstringed us by getting it out so early. I'm busy scrambling to re-encode everything to play on it right this very second.

Re:There. You happy?

[nitehorse]

No, no, no.

That's not what he asked.

The iPods may work with the remote, but the question is why can't they act as the remote?

It's a good question. The iPods are already pretty close to a good remote interface. Add a new main menu item for 'Front Row' and let it control the iMac from there, or something.

It's definitely an interesting idea.

Re:No more eMacs

[tim1724]

the eMac is still available for schools to buy, via the Apple Store for Education. (note that it's not available to students or teachers .. only to institutions.)

Of course, the eMac started out as an education-only product, and it was only after several months of consumer demand that Apple made it available to individuals. I imagine it will stay around for a few more months for schools, and then quietly disappear for good this spring, with Apple telling schools to buy the mini and buy a CRT somewhere else.

Re:No Divx...No Problem

[CronoCloud]

ffmpeg -y -i foo.mpg -title "foo" -bitexact -vcodec xvid -s 320x240 -r 29.97 -b 1500 -acodec aac -ac 2 -ar 24000 -ab 64 -f psp -muxvb 768
M4V80113.mp4

finding out the command line sequence for ffmpeg was easier (for me) than trying to figure out some of those PSP video conversion tools out there. Most of which use ffmpeg as their backend.

Forced upgrade?

[iowannaski]

From the iTunes 6 readme - "After purchasing music from the iTunes Music Store with iTunes 6, you will also need to upgrade your other computers that purchase music from the iTunes Music Store to iTunes 6"

Is this something new? I have an old computer running iTunes 4.8, and I'd rather not upgrade unless I find something worth upgrading for. I'd like to give iTunes 6 a spin on my iBook, though.

Have they upgraded the DRM or something?

Re:Finally... Just downloaded Lost... some info..

[Altima(BoB)]

One thing I noted was that I couldn't find a way to get the video to full screen from within iTunes. I opened the file from my paid copy of Quicktime to go full screen.

Anyway, as you say, the compression is impressive. For 100mb less than what you'll find on bittorrent (albiet not in 16:9) you get the whole program without ads, and also (and this is in my opinion pretty big) no intrusive messages along the bottom or top of the screen placed by the television network. It's one of the most obnoxious and annoying practices on U.S. TV (a network bloated with advertising places MORE advertising along the screen's margins during programming? No thanks.) If you were to download what is basically a TV rip from Bittorrent, these advertisements are unavoidable even if the normal ads are cut.

The quality looks just as good as what you're likely to find on BT, as is the sound. I even put it on fullscreen on my 23" cinema display, it still looks great. I give this a thumbs up. Not having seen more than a couple epsidoes of the original Lost, I'm tempted by the $34 download of season 1, a little cheaper than the DVD, but no extra features and lower res... Decisions decisions...

Re:P.S. Avalon versus Quartz

[fbg111]

Yes, I noticed too and wandered if Apple was uncharacteristically drifting away from their roots [folklore.org].

Re:Finally... Just downloaded Lost... some info..

[Ohreally_factor]

Well, the reason I'd consider it is that it's just so damn convenient. However, I've also considered your points and I agree with you. Buying the DVD is a much better value when all is said and done. (I'm actually going to borrow the first season DVD from a friend. If I find that I can't live without it, I'll buy it.)

Before downloading the first episode of Lost I'd never even seen it, and I wouldn't have bothered to buy, rent, or borrow it. I've downloaded the second episode on the strength of that, but as I said, I'm going to borrow the DVD. The point is that this is a great way to check out TV shows that I wouldn't watch otherwise and wouldn't go out of my way to watch.

I normally watch very very little TV; one hour a week for me is a lot. I discontinued my cable last spring. TIVO isn't interesting to me because I don't watch enough TV to warrant owning a PVR (The idea of TIVO is interesting to me however). So, something like this is perfect. even if I never buy a Video iPod.

Not since Eisner left

[SuperKendall]

Didn't Pixar decline to renew their contract with Disney?

Yes, because Jobs and Eisner hated each other (and from what Eisner has done to Disney I'd say he wins the lothesome person award by a mile).

However Pixar and Disney are talking again because Eisner is gone, as in not even on the board anymore. I'm sure that's what made this deal possible.

Killer App

[Iron Chef Unix]

I think that the killer app for the new iTunes/iPod is old TV shows. Have you ever wanted to watch an old TV show that isn't on DVD and isn't carried in reruns? There are plenty of shows that have followings, but aren't worth it for the networks to play. So, hire a team to go through your archives and digitize old TV shows and put them on iTunes. Instant revenue off of an already existing product. The hang-ups of course are paying to digitize them and figuring out how to pay all of the residuals to the actors.

I don't think the cost would be overly excessive, considering that it is a one-time cost. And I'm guessing they have ways of figuring out residuals from their experience putting old shows on DVD.

Just my 2 cents, but I would be willing to pay $2 for an episode or two of some old shows to watch. Plus, I could take them on the plane with my new video capable iPod.

Re:Finally... there *are* TV shows available

[iluvcapra]

It's only tomorrow, but:

Instructions for ripping a DVD to an iPod-compatible quicktime movie. [diveintomark.org]