I, too, have lusted after a video iPod for quite a while. But I envision it differently that I think most people do. This idea is dismissed off-hand by most people because the iPod has a tiny, black-and-white screen. "Who wants to watch movies on a screen that small?" Obviously, no one.
But a lack of speakers doesn't make the iPod a bad MP3 player, either. The iPod should continue to do what it does best - allowing me to quickly and easily select the media I want to experience at that moment. I want to be able to plug an 1/8" AV cable into the iPod headphone port and connect it to my television to watch my video library. This would be the MP4 killer app.
Ever wanted to show someone else an iMovie you made? It's a pain: export to DV, connect DV cam to VCR, record onto VHS tape, lose an analog generation. Or, spend three hours burning it to a DVD and hope they have a compatible player at their house. But imagine if you could just connect your iPod and put your iMovies on it. From a few steps that could take upwards of an hour, to around 10 seconds. Like that.
Thinking of a video iPod makes us think of an Apple Video Store. Apple already has their wonderful QT trailer page, which SJ even mentioned in his iTMS presentation, serving video is easy for them. So write a good Quicktime Player, integrate it with a video store, and sell TV shows and movies and documentaries. Then take your Spongebob Squarepants collection on your iPod (every episode, in the size of a deck of cards. Heaven.) and take it wherever you want. Parties, friends' houses, any TV in the house.
And I've saved my favorite for last. This would depend on iPod-sized hardware MP4 encoding, which might not be feasible, but what I want to do is connect my iPod to an iSight. This would probably necessitate some kind of video-capable screen on the iPod, but it would be worth it. Sure, you couldn't use it to shoot The Godfather, but what would be more perfect to tape, say, your snowboarding adventure? With an iPod running $300 and an iSight for $150, that's cheaper than most DV cams.
Well, those are my ideas. Waiting eagerly for an iPod AV.
It will use MusicMatch as the audio jukebox software.
It will support mp4 and WMA.
80 hours of video or 600 hours of music.
It has a 20gig harddrive but doesn't describe a memory format.
I also don't know what "8 lines LCD" display means resolution-wise.
nevos: I think this would be much different from a tablet and more along the lines of what wyntir described. A tablet would be nice of course!
No device can be all things to all people, but a well designed product that makes content simple and entertaining to access is what the iPod and iTMS is all about. There is no reason why an iVid and QTime can't do the exact same thing at some point.
One friend uses his iPod 85% of the time in the car and on his home stereo via the dock. I think as wyntir described, much of the cool factor would be to have a device EASILY display on a TV or a friends computer with maybe only 15% of the time using the screen on the device itself.
Ripping and encoding mp4's would probably still require the computer digital hub. The lack of a video displaying spoke to that hub seems glaring to me.
The Lyra pdf sez it can hold up to 80 hours of mp4 video in its 20 gig drive. That might give studios cause for concern, but I doubt mp4 will look so incredible on TV's that it will kill the DVD industry, let alone the movie theater industry. And even if better video resolutions were possible, you could probably not hold all that many feature-length movies anyway, so a computer would still need to be your hub for making playlists and doing downloading, etc. That means there would some real memory and physical barriers that would prevent users from trying to pirate, for instance, the Universal Studios archives.
I don't really see the need for a tablet video device when you can get an iBook with a DVD drive for $1300. The development costs of a seperate product, which would basically be just a tablet computer, would be much higher than the volume of sales it would bear.
An iBook gives you things that an "iVid" wouldn't:
1) DVD drive
2) Large Screen
3) Keyboard
4) CD-RW
5) A full fledged computer with the world's best operating system that you can access the internet, write papers... and watch video.
Apple can probably sell an iBook for less than an iVid because of volume. On every flight I now see quite a few laptops brought along just for playing DVD's. I don't think the dedicated portable video device will ever really catch on. If people want a video tablet, they'll just get a tablet computer.
The video device I'd like to see is one for your TV that you can watch video stored on your Mac with. I don't think Apple will ever product this because the set-top box market is too complex and crowded. They'd have to deal with Cable/Satalite companies, TiVo, ReplayTV, and compete with very strong consumer electronics companies like Sony, Phillips, Panasonic, etc... The vast majority of households have cable or satalite, and those companies are starting to put PVR features into their boxes, potentially killing TiVo and ReplayTV as seperate products.
In my opinion, Apple unvieled their media integration strategy when they introduced Rendezvous: they want the consumer electronics companies to adopt Rendezvous to stream media from Macs to their devices. Phillips has supposedly signed on, though I haven't yet seen any products that support Rendezvous from them.
Remember Apple wants to sell Macs. (The iPod is a very special case because until it came along the current crop of MP3 players had way too many limitations. The iPod is also designed to sell more Macs.) I think what Apple will do is come out with media sharing software, similar to iTunes' sharing feature, that will allow you to share Movies, Pictures, and Music, between computers, and consumer electronics devices. Apple will basically give away the client code to Sony, Phillips, etc... Their goal is to make the Mac the easiest computer to share your media with.
I don't really see the need for a tablet video device when you can get an iBook with a DVD drive for $1300. The development costs of a seperate product, which would basically be just a tablet computer, would be much higher than the volume of sales it would bear.
An iBook gives you things that an "iVid" wouldn't:
1) DVD drive
2) Large Screen
3) Keyboard
4) CD-RW
5) A full fledged computer with the world's best operating system that you can access the internet, write papers... and watch video.
Sorry spankalee, I don't think you get it.
An iBook gives you all of those things that an iVid doesn't need. Take out those hardware devices and make the screen smaller and you cut alot of costs.
I doubt development costs would be much since all of the basics are there - hardrive, gpu, LCD, memory, FW800 I/O, etc. Of course if you still can't make a quality mp4 player for less than $600, it is a moot point.
it looks to me macgregor you live in Portland Or just like me...
Quote:
Originally posted by MacGregor
Ha Ha, no. This thread doesn't come close to a kormac speculation! I have supported kormacs willingness to take speculations to the next level, but I never thought he had any particular inside info beyond possible knowledge of some case designs.
I was the next poster on one of his threads when he accidently put his real name on his signature. He was pretty harshly trashed back then and luckily the mod caught it quickly and took it off.
Yep, indeed. I grew up in Beaverton before it became California. Lots of Portlanders on the Mac forums. I know Minneapolis has a high concentration of Mac folks, but I bet Pdx has alot as well....yet no Apple Stores are even close, while Pasedena has two within a few miles of each other.
I have never gone to the local User Group meetings though, have you?
Sorry for tangential discussion to this thread...
Back to the topic:
I guess I've always thought the iVid would be primarily a display device, but as I've reread some of the posts, maybe Apple will just keep the iPod as a portable harddrive that just gets added I/O features. In that way a future device is just a larger capacity iPod with video out to a TV. Thus the display will never need to be more than what it is now. I assume mp4's could be downloaded to the iPod now. Has anyone done this? How difficult would it be to put an mp4-to-composite-video card in it so that you could just hook it up to a TV like a DVD player? Is that compelling? The Pixlet codec should make for great quality, but how big are those files compared to mp4?!
I don't know. I think portable harddrives (and eventually read/write DVD's) now are adequate to move video around from computer to computer. Once DVD players are ubiquitous, then they also will be a cheap portable medium for most things. I think a video version of a iPod DOES need to make for a good viewing experience to be worth the effort.
Comments
But a lack of speakers doesn't make the iPod a bad MP3 player, either. The iPod should continue to do what it does best - allowing me to quickly and easily select the media I want to experience at that moment. I want to be able to plug an 1/8" AV cable into the iPod headphone port and connect it to my television to watch my video library. This would be the MP4 killer app.
Ever wanted to show someone else an iMovie you made? It's a pain: export to DV, connect DV cam to VCR, record onto VHS tape, lose an analog generation. Or, spend three hours burning it to a DVD and hope they have a compatible player at their house. But imagine if you could just connect your iPod and put your iMovies on it. From a few steps that could take upwards of an hour, to around 10 seconds. Like that.
Thinking of a video iPod makes us think of an Apple Video Store. Apple already has their wonderful QT trailer page, which SJ even mentioned in his iTMS presentation, serving video is easy for them. So write a good Quicktime Player, integrate it with a video store, and sell TV shows and movies and documentaries. Then take your Spongebob Squarepants collection on your iPod (every episode, in the size of a deck of cards. Heaven.) and take it wherever you want. Parties, friends' houses, any TV in the house.
And I've saved my favorite for last. This would depend on iPod-sized hardware MP4 encoding, which might not be feasible, but what I want to do is connect my iPod to an iSight. This would probably necessitate some kind of video-capable screen on the iPod, but it would be worth it. Sure, you couldn't use it to shoot The Godfather, but what would be more perfect to tape, say, your snowboarding adventure? With an iPod running $300 and an iSight for $150, that's cheaper than most DV cams.
Well, those are my ideas. Waiting eagerly for an iPod AV.
It will support PC and Mac OSX.
It will use MusicMatch as the audio jukebox software.
It will support mp4 and WMA.
80 hours of video or 600 hours of music.
It has a 20gig harddrive but doesn't describe a memory format.
I also don't know what "8 lines LCD" display means resolution-wise.
nevos: I think this would be much different from a tablet and more along the lines of what wyntir described. A tablet would be nice of course!
No device can be all things to all people, but a well designed product that makes content simple and entertaining to access is what the iPod and iTMS is all about. There is no reason why an iVid and QTime can't do the exact same thing at some point.
One friend uses his iPod 85% of the time in the car and on his home stereo via the dock. I think as wyntir described, much of the cool factor would be to have a device EASILY display on a TV or a friends computer with maybe only 15% of the time using the screen on the device itself.
Ripping and encoding mp4's would probably still require the computer digital hub. The lack of a video displaying spoke to that hub seems glaring to me.
The Lyra pdf sez it can hold up to 80 hours of mp4 video in its 20 gig drive. That might give studios cause for concern, but I doubt mp4 will look so incredible on TV's that it will kill the DVD industry, let alone the movie theater industry. And even if better video resolutions were possible, you could probably not hold all that many feature-length movies anyway, so a computer would still need to be your hub for making playlists and doing downloading, etc. That means there would some real memory and physical barriers that would prevent users from trying to pirate, for instance, the Universal Studios archives.
An iBook gives you things that an "iVid" wouldn't:
1) DVD drive
2) Large Screen
3) Keyboard
4) CD-RW
5) A full fledged computer with the world's best operating system that you can access the internet, write papers... and watch video.
Apple can probably sell an iBook for less than an iVid because of volume. On every flight I now see quite a few laptops brought along just for playing DVD's. I don't think the dedicated portable video device will ever really catch on. If people want a video tablet, they'll just get a tablet computer.
The video device I'd like to see is one for your TV that you can watch video stored on your Mac with. I don't think Apple will ever product this because the set-top box market is too complex and crowded. They'd have to deal with Cable/Satalite companies, TiVo, ReplayTV, and compete with very strong consumer electronics companies like Sony, Phillips, Panasonic, etc... The vast majority of households have cable or satalite, and those companies are starting to put PVR features into their boxes, potentially killing TiVo and ReplayTV as seperate products.
In my opinion, Apple unvieled their media integration strategy when they introduced Rendezvous: they want the consumer electronics companies to adopt Rendezvous to stream media from Macs to their devices. Phillips has supposedly signed on, though I haven't yet seen any products that support Rendezvous from them.
Remember Apple wants to sell Macs. (The iPod is a very special case because until it came along the current crop of MP3 players had way too many limitations. The iPod is also designed to sell more Macs.) I think what Apple will do is come out with media sharing software, similar to iTunes' sharing feature, that will allow you to share Movies, Pictures, and Music, between computers, and consumer electronics devices. Apple will basically give away the client code to Sony, Phillips, etc... Their goal is to make the Mac the easiest computer to share your media with.
Originally posted by spankalee
I don't really see the need for a tablet video device when you can get an iBook with a DVD drive for $1300. The development costs of a seperate product, which would basically be just a tablet computer, would be much higher than the volume of sales it would bear.
An iBook gives you things that an "iVid" wouldn't:
1) DVD drive
2) Large Screen
3) Keyboard
4) CD-RW
5) A full fledged computer with the world's best operating system that you can access the internet, write papers... and watch video.
Sorry spankalee, I don't think you get it.
An iBook gives you all of those things that an iVid doesn't need. Take out those hardware devices and make the screen smaller and you cut alot of costs.
I doubt development costs would be much since all of the basics are there - hardrive, gpu, LCD, memory, FW800 I/O, etc. Of course if you still can't make a quality mp4 player for less than $600, it is a moot point.
Originally posted by MacGregor
Ha Ha, no. This thread doesn't come close to a kormac speculation! I have supported kormacs willingness to take speculations to the next level, but I never thought he had any particular inside info beyond possible knowledge of some case designs.
I was the next poster on one of his threads when he accidently put his real name on his signature. He was pretty harshly trashed back then and luckily the mod caught it quickly and took it off.
I have never gone to the local User Group meetings though, have you?
Sorry for tangential discussion to this thread...
Back to the topic:
I guess I've always thought the iVid would be primarily a display device, but as I've reread some of the posts, maybe Apple will just keep the iPod as a portable harddrive that just gets added I/O features. In that way a future device is just a larger capacity iPod with video out to a TV. Thus the display will never need to be more than what it is now. I assume mp4's could be downloaded to the iPod now. Has anyone done this? How difficult would it be to put an mp4-to-composite-video card in it so that you could just hook it up to a TV like a DVD player? Is that compelling? The Pixlet codec should make for great quality, but how big are those files compared to mp4?!
I don't know. I think portable harddrives (and eventually read/write DVD's) now are adequate to move video around from computer to computer. Once DVD players are ubiquitous, then they also will be a cheap portable medium for most things. I think a video version of a iPod DOES need to make for a good viewing experience to be worth the effort.