[_mr_m_]

i heard in business news today that Apple is putting out a new version of the iPod that can play "movies", more specifically, TV shows (mainly from the ABC network). you have to pay to download the episodes, costing an absurd $1.99 USD. the new iPods are scheduled to be in stores this coming week.

i also heard murmurs the the new iPod Nano got recalled due to the screens being easily scratchable. is that really true?

what are everyones thoughts on this?

 

[masque]

If you think about it, 1.99 would pretty much cover the cost of the bandwidth to download the TV show . The videos are encoded in h.264 with 128kbs audio (from apple website). I don't think its ridiculous, especially if they happen to leave the ads out (ads in is still fine, Fast Forward is a great feature).

iPod Nano did get recalled because of faulty screens. Don't know the details on this though.

edit: article on the quality of the Ipod videos.

http://www.tuaw.com/2005/10/13/video-quality-what-1-99-will-buy-you/

 

[__Xzyx987X]

So, they expect people to pay $1.99 for a DRMed TV episode that low in quality, when HDTV rips are availible elsewhere on the internet for free? Look, I know the old argument that says you can't compete with piracy, but at the same time you aren't doing yourselves any favors by releasing stuff at less than half the quaility of pirated stuff. And on top of that, buying shows by the season on DVD is still cheaper than what they're selling them at, and much higher quality too. Honestly, I don't see the appeal here.

 

[Demigod]

iPod Nano did get recalled because of faulty screens. Don't know the details on this though.

I heard about something like that as well but it seems only a small number of people were affected by it though. They might have just been bad samples. Mine at least hasn't shown any problems, and I use it the same way as the others who had problems did. Now what I do have problems with is the clear plastic used, which is much too soft. I mean, just wiping it with cloth will scratch it. The nano tube helps, but they really should have used a different, more scratch-resistent material.

So, they expect people to pay $1.99 for a DRMed TV episode that low in quality, when HDTV rips are availible elsewhere on the internet for free? Look, I know the old argument that says you can't compete with piracy, but at the same time you aren't doing yourselves any favors by releasing stuff at less than half the quaility of pirated stuff. And on top of that, buying shows by the season on DVD is still cheaper than what they're selling them at, and much higher quality too. Honestly, I don't see the appeal here.

The advantage is portability. Unless you have a laptop or a portable media player (which are ridiculously expensive) you won't be able to play the TV show episodes outside your computer.

 

[Snake785]

There are other DAPs that support video. And if you have TV eps of your own, you can just convert the video to the format the DAP uses and you can watch it on the go. Sure the resolution is greatly reduced but it's still good enough to view on the smaller screens.

 

[_mr_m_]

And if you have TV eps of your own, you can just convert the video to the format the DAP uses and you can watch it on the go. Sure the resolution is greatly reduced but it's still good enough to view on the smaller screens.

if its on an iPod, the odds are the video format would be either .MOV or .MPG (or the like)

and if youre converting your video to .MOV, its a time consuming process, depending on your machine.