News Rumourville: Video iPods Soon?

[GreatOldOne]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/07/19/vpods_soon/

[Firehed]

If one is made, it better cover every codec out there. I could understand if it doesn't do wmv, just because of the MS thing (like WMA on the iPod), but everything else anyways. As it is, I already store about a dozen Xvid-encoded movies on my 20GB, just for when I AM at a computer.

[Bindibadgi]

Pfff, apple will make it quicktime only. Or, at least heavily orientated.

Sadly, Bindi will most likley be right (as always )

[koola]

Think I'll stick with my PDA as if apple do release their VPod, it's gonna be crap for all non apple related stuff like Bindi said

[Cheap Mod Wannabe]

After experiencing the excitement of portable media and videos on my pda... I can say that it is quite useless. Sure for a week it is so cool, but then it hard to see on a little screen, and why wouldn't you rather watch movies on 20 or more times bigger screen? Unless you are spending a lot of time sitting bored without big screen around, then maybe you'll find it useful.

[Firehed]

well they wanted only itunes to work with the ipod, but there are quite a few alternatives around, all of them at least ten times better. I just looked around a bit, but I'm pretty sure there are a few "quick and dirty hacks" to make nonsupported audio types play. And the thing about that is it would be a marketing disaster really, seeing as nothing useful is available in quicktime format and you've got about a 1% chance of people even considering to re-buy all their movies. I'd imagine iFilms or whatever would really just be something to the (more legallized equivalent) of dvd decrypter and have a converter built in.

Then again seeing as I really can't use any handheld consoles for a long period of time from neck strain, I'd hardly want to watch a full-length movie on what wouldn't be more than a 5" screen or so, with my head bent over for two hours.

[Bindibadgi]

Originally Posted by charl3s_fatal1ty

Sadly, Bindi will most likley be right (as always )

Thank you, my children, now go out and play in the sun.

/sits crosslegged, looking into middle distance whilst gently stroking his chin stubble trying to look wise.

/answers phone

Yes, Steve?

[Darkedge]

yeah it'll be quicktime only, yeah it'll be very expensive and lets face it there have been the equavalent of video iPods on the market for a couple of years now - like the Archos Gmini 400.
Does mp3, wma, and of course Divx on its screen but also has a normal TV out so you can play it on your big TV.

I don't doubt that if apple bring out the iVid they will claim they invented the idea too.

[Bindibadgi]

But do you want it to play divx on your tv encoded for 320x240? Youd have pixels the size of your thumb.

[moddenmania]

well itunes now has video so it makes you wonder if they are working on something steve also said that there would never be a flash based ipod

[Darkedge]

encoded for 320x240?
nope i encode them at 640x400 so is fine on tv..

screw apple try THIS:
http://www.archos.com/products/overv...ech_specs.html

I think that'll thrash any iVid they come up with

[Cheap Mod Wannabe]

No one will trash Apple with their Ipods, unless they do it themselves. Too many people already bought 20 and 40 gig Ipods having only 2gigs of music (and not using ipod as a portable harddrive). That says a lot to me about US (not sure about other countries) market...

[pillow]

its also gonna be hella expensive.

[Bindibadgi]

Originally Posted by Darkedge

encoded for 320x240?
nope i encode them at 640x400 so is fine on tv..

screw apple try THIS:
http://www.archos.com/products/overv...ech_specs.html

I think that'll thrash any iVid they come up with

Yea but the screen will likely be 320x240 and if it's on an xscale it only has so much processing power so might not be able to play+resize anything bigger.

[DreamTheEndless]

come on now - do you really think the first company to bring true hi-def content to the personal computer would do something like this with out having it work with hi-res formats? Have you heard of h264? want to watch h264 content on your computer? better download the latest quicktime player - I'm pretty sure it's still the only way.

Steve did say that this was 'the year of high def'

I don't think that the video ipod will come out before it is able to work well. And, when it does, it will be able to output to television.

[Hamish]

Originally Posted by DreamTheEndless

come on now - do you really think the first company to bring true hi-def content to the personal computer would do something like this with out having it work with hi-res formats? Have you heard of h264? want to watch h264 content on your computer? better download the latest quicktime player - I'm pretty sure it's still the only way.

Steve did say that this was 'the year of high def'

I don't think that the video ipod will come out before it is able to work well. And, when it does, it will be able to output to television.

what do you mean the first to bring hi-def to pc's?
hd wmv has been out for ages now when did h264 come out?
and yes its quite likely that it wont playback hi-res video

quicktime alternative plays h264
and quicktime still ********ing sucks
.ts > .wmv > .mov for hd

[DreamTheEndless]

Originally Posted by Hamish

what do you mean the first to bring hi-def to pc's?
hd wmv has been out for ages now when did h264 come out?
and yes its quite likely that it wont playback hi-res video

quicktime alternative plays h264
and quicktime still ********ing sucks
.ts > .wmv > .mov for hd

I did say "true hi-def" - by that I meant specificaly h264 - the internationaly agreed upon standard for hi-def that will be used in next gen optical discs and the format that will be used by your cable company and / your satelite company to stream video to you.

The standard was completed in may of 2003

See this site for some more information on h264 or check out wikipedia

Quicktime alternative 1.50 BETA says that it will play quicktime codecs version 7, but first of all, this is a beta, and secondly, there is NO WAY that they were able to play quicktime version 7 (the first version to support h264) codecs before quicktime 7 existed -


So, yeah, apple was the first company to bring true HD to personal computers.

[Hamish]

ah ok fair enough, bit of a convoluted definition of true HD tho
we dont get HD tv here yet anyway so the only HD stuff i get to see is downloadable, and given the choice i'd take the wmv or .ts form over quicktime

my point about quicktime alternative was you said
"want to watch h264 content on your computer? better download the latest quicktime player - I'm pretty sure it's still the only way."
and its not
whilst 1.5 beta is still beta it does work fine, i download the batman begins trailer in 1080p h264 to try it out

edit: quicktime 7 is fairly new tho, what was used for broadcast HDTV before that?

[DreamTheEndless]

Originally Posted by Hamish

ah ok fair enough, bit of a convoluted definition of true HD tho
we dont get HD tv here yet anyway so the only HD stuff i get to see is downloadable, and given the choice i'd take the wmv or .ts form over quicktime

my point about quicktime alternative was you said
"want to watch h264 content on your computer? better download the latest quicktime player - I'm pretty sure it's still the only way."
and its not
whilst 1.5 beta is still beta it does work fine, i download the batman begins trailer in 1080p h264 to try it out

edit: quicktime 7 is fairly new tho, what was used for broadcast HDTV before that?

H264 is not a 'quicktime' format - it's not some proprietary apple format. Apple has paid the license fee and developed the codec so that quicktime can play it, but there are other encoders/decoders out there. In fact, (I just found out from the wikipedia article,) that beta drivers for the latest nvidia and ATI cards can decode h264 right on your video card.

The Digital Video Broadcast standards body in Europe approved the use of h264 for broadcast television in Europe in late 2004
The prime minister of France announced the selection of h264 as a requirement for receivers of HDTV and pay TV channels for broadcast in France in late 2004
The Advanced Television Systems Committee standards body in the US is in final consideration work on use of h264 for US broadcast
Korea has selected h264
Japan has selected h264

As to what was used before these governing bodies selected h264: whatever the service provider wanted. Many of them were/are using h264 or one of its predecessors.

Check out the wikipedia article - it's very good.

Edit - and, you were right - there are other things to play h264 on your computer. (but the one you listed still uses the QT codec written by apple. )