10-12-2005, 08:47 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Apple iPod Video Product Page Launched
"Witness the evolution of the revolution. First it played songs. Then photos. Then podcasts. Now iPod plays video, changing the way you experience your music and more. Again. In lighter, thinner 30GB and 60GB models starting at $299, the new iPod is music to your eyes. Time for the world’s best music player to take the stage for another encore. In 30GB and 60GB(1) models that hold up to 15,000(2) songs, full-color album art and up to 25,000 photos(3), the new iPod makes the most of your music and more. Yeah, you’ve heard that tune before. Only now, you can watch it, too. With support for up to 150 hours(4) of video and a 2.5-inch color display, the new iPod lets you take music videos and TV shows on the road."
Thinner, and still offering 20 hours of battery life? I have to hand it to Apple, that's a compelling device. There's one thing that might hold it back though: popular video format support. Looking at the tech specs page, here's what it says for video support:
"H.264 video: up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats. MPEG-4 video: up to 2.5 mbps, 480 x 480, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats"
The lack of WMV isn't surprising, but there's so much video out there in that format, it may be a show stopper for some people. And what about DivX, Xvid, Real, and other codec suppot? I don't know enough about H.264 to know if that includes support for those formats, but I suspect not. I wonder, how popular would the original iPod have been if there was no MP3 support and it would have only played AAC files and not MP3? I don't run across a lot of Quicktime content any more compared to a few years ago, which makes me wonder how well this iPod will work with the video content that people already have. Will it be an issue? Remember that Apple has no free way of creating Quicktime files - they want you to pay for the Pro encoder. Or will iTunes do some sort of on-the-fly transcoding like Windows Media Player 10 does already?
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