The Motorola Q is full featured at 11mm (.4") thick, without a touch screen.
The P910 is actually only 18mm thick at the screen. The bit that adds the thickness on the 910 is the optional keypad flip. It also bulges out at either end a few mm. Mostly though it's because of the huge battery that gives you about 2 days of use on average, or about 6 hours playing music IME. The card slot on the side must take up some space too.
The Moto Q is also about 1cm wider and 1cm taller. They just kind of squashed a P910 flat and put a battery in that doesn't last as long. 212 hours as opposed to 400.
Anyway, the 910 is old hat. The 990 is out and that adds 3G, two cameras, Wifi, accelerated graphics, 2megapixel camera, push email (inc blackberry support) and still is about the same size as the 910.
DVD's do what? Have DRM? Not an issue when the ripping apps make it irrelevant.
Even the new minis will rip a DVD in a couple hours. If you have a slower machine, just pop in the disc before you go to bed. And you don't have to be a geek to figure it out, just grab an app like Instant Handbrake, you just select the DVD tracks you want and hit the button. Done. It's not illegal either as long as you are ripping content you own a copy of.
I think the concern was that it's perfectly legal to rip CDs for fair use (in most jurisdictions) and transfer them onto your iPod because the CD's data is not encrypted in any way.
The same is true of copyrighted video content, as long as the original video is not encrypted. As soon as the video stream is encrypted in any way (even a simple XOR crypto) it falls under the jurisdiction of the DMCA.
Sure there's still fair use. But before fair use comes into play, you still need to get a version of the video stream that has been adequately massaged so that it can be played. And to do that you have to either convert the whole file into an unencrypted stream, and then send the unencumbered file to the iPod, or somehow modify the iPod's firmware so that it is capable of doing the decryption on-the-fly as you watch the video. The latter option could probably be permissible under the DMCA's reverse-engineering clauses. The former certainly isn't.
The DMCA (or several countries' local equivalents) is what's getting in the way.
Canada has no such equivalent law yet (thankfully) so I can legally circumvent the DVD's DRM. And I think the "fair use" copyright clause would still protect me if I transfer the decrypted movie onto my iPod as long as I take care not to allow the files to be redistributed.
DVD's do what? Have DRM? Not an issue when the ripping apps make it irrelevant.
That doesn't change the legality of bypassing copy protection which is against the law usually, at least in the USA (DMCA) and Europe (EUCD).
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
Even the new minis will rip a DVD in a couple hours. If you have a slower machine, just pop in the disc before you go to bed.
Sure, but it's not like CDs which take up 50-60MB an album. It's 4+GB of data to transcode and store somewhere.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
And you don't have to be a geek to figure it out, just grab an app like Instant Handbrake, you just select the DVD tracks you want and hit the button. Done. It's not illegal either as long as you are ripping content you own a copy of.
That's not usually true with copy protected works such as DVDs, the only exception being software where most countries allow a copy for archival purposes and fair use or fair trading which only allows excerpts, unless you're a library.
Oh yeah, no problem to slap a film onto the screen. You'd think all smartphones would have 'em. But drawing on a screen, the processor having to listen for touch drawings, and increased luminance required to shine through the scuff marks make the device more complex. How's the battery life on the M600i? Maybe they could've added a few more battery millimeters.
And when you write that it "reduces complexity", we are posting on two opposite ideas. It's easier to use a smart phone with a touch screen, yes. But it makes the internal operation of it more complex, more power, and hence, thicker.
This entire tangent demonstrates that touch screen devices are at least 36% thicker than non touch screen devices, and even that with reduced battery to achieve it.
The battery life on the M600i is 7.5 hours talk or 2 weeks standby. About twice that of the Q.
It's mostly because (IIRC) it's one of the first Symbian phones to use a single system-on-a-chip setup where the radio stack and the CPU is one chip. In older phones (and the 990 still even which is really an older design) and current Palm, Windows and Linux phones you have a CPU running the OS and a DSP handling the radio stack. Two chips and a hungry OS (Windows or Linux anyway) mean the power requirements are much higher. The Symbian phones use a much lighter OS, lower clocked CPU (~200Mhz) and the M600 and W950 cut out one of the chips. They also cut out a few other things the 990 has such as graphics acceleration and WiFi which the 990 has to make up for with a bigger battery. Swings and roundabouts.
Fair use. Not to mention unenforcable to a ridiculous degree.
And like I care whether it is or not? The DMCA certainly hasn't stopped tons of apps from being distributed, all of which are perfectly clear that they are for ripping DVD's - why aren't they shut down if they are illegal? As an end user who rips dvd's I've bought, what does the DMCA matter to me?
Quote:
Originally Posted by aegisdesign
Sure, but it's not like CDs which take up 50-60MB an album. It's 4+GB of data to transcode and store somewhere.
Which ends up as 1-1.5 gigs after the rip. Hard drives go up to 300/500/750 gigs these days, that's hundreds of movies. And I was responding to your comment about ripping speed, not sure why you're trying to change the subject.
I'd go for this if it had Palm or Windows compatibility built in. I have a treo and use numerous medical apps on it, and I am not willing to carry two devices. The likelihood of any company porting their Palm/Windows apps to the iPhone is pretty small (unless they just take over the market). Of course I have two devices to carry around now as it is, iPod and Treo, maybe I'll upgrade to an iPhone and get a cheap Palm for my med apps.
Well, it will will launch with 2,500 Dashboard Widgets available.
I'm sure all the popular medical apps will follow in due time.
Fair use. Not to mention unenforcable to a ridiculous degree.
Fair use doesn't cover copying a whole DVD.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
And like I care whether it is or not? The DMCA certainly hasn't stopped tons of apps from being distributed, all of which are perfectly clear that they are for ripping DVD's - why aren't they shut down if they are illegal? As an end user who rips dvd's I've bought, what does the DMCA matter to me?
Not a lot. Not a lot to me either as it happens although it's more EUCD here. I rip them too.
However, the salient issue is what does it matter to Apple. They can't add DVD ripping code in to iTunes like they can with music CDs. That means there's only a tiny legal market for a video iPod - Digital Downloads.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
Which ends up as 1-1.5 gigs after the rip. Hard drives go up to 300/500/750 gigs these days, that's hundreds of movies. And I was responding to your comment about ripping speed, not sure why you're trying to change the subject.
So you're now also expecting people who want to illegally rip DVDs to go out and buy large hard drives and faster computers than the average most people have too?
Can you see yet why Apple is still saying video is some way off?
Well, it will will launch with 2,500 Dashboard Widgets available.
I'm sure all the popular medical apps will follow in due time.
Not all of those can possibly run or be of any use. Many are larger than the usual QVGA screen available on most smartphones (and the iPod), require a live net connection and/or are written in Perl/Ruby/Python/Objective-C which any iPhone is unlikely to support.
Irrelavent. Fair use only comes into play after you've obtained an unencrypted data stream to work with. And your options for doing that without breaking DCMA are quite limited. Consider the two general possibilities:
1) You have an unencrypted file which is ready for the iPod to look at. It's impossible to obtain such a file from a commercial DVD without breaking the DCMA because commercial DVDs all contain DRM encryption which the DVD rippers break. In this case, it's possible that your government's definition of fair use isn't being violated. But certainly the DCMA is.
2) You maintain the encrypted file, and your iPod is performing just-in-time decryption as it plays the movie. Possibly no DCMA violation here depending on how the courts choose to interpret the reverse-engineering clauses, since arguably no additional rights are being granted than were previously available in the original encrypted form. Also, it's possible that there's no fair use violation here (the same conditions for that test would apply as one would use in the previous example). However, no iPod is equipped with firmware to do this currently. It's debatable whether portable, battery-supplied iPods could have the computational power to do such a job in real time in the first place.
Of course we have no official facts, but I have to believe that the iPhone will be realeased by T-Mobile.
- T-Mobile's CEO recently talks favorably about Apple, "comparing visions."
- T-Mobile's release of 3G is scheduled for Q1 of '07, and Apple's iPhone release is Q1 of '07.
- 3G is suspected to have technology in which the phone can switch from cell towers, and transition to Wi-Fi signals to get better signals indoors. Apple's iPhone supposedly has Wi-Fi.
It's a shame because isn't CDMA suppose to be faster, and able to handle the computer side of a cell phone. And GSM was invented for voice quality, making it flourish only with voice? Someone correct me if I am wrong. (Don't correct me if you simply favor GSM)
This entire tangent demonstrates that touch screen devices are at least 36% thicker than non touch screen devices, and even that with reduced battery to achieve it.
And this, children, is how you use a logical fallacy of the informal type "ignorantio elenchi". Peppered with a healthy dose of ignorance, generalization becomes a nice package-deal fallacy, or possibly a hasty generalization.
No, mugwump. Adding a touchscreen doesn't increase significantly the power drain on the battery, nor does it require a lot of extra chips and controllers.
No, the fact that there aren't thinner touchscreen devices doesn't demonstrate that they can't exist, it's just a statement of fact, not a cause-effect. And it's almost impossible you're seriously pretending to prove that all touch-screen devices must be at least 36% thicker than non-touch-screen by using two devices provided, almost at random, in a forum post.
Really. It's almost too much obvious bait to take it (I'm weak, I'll admit it).
The reason touchscreens haven't found their way into thinner phones has nothing to do with them making the devices much thicker (as has been repeated and is adequately documented if you care to search for it, touchscreen capabilities don't add more than a 1mm to thickness for the screen overlay itself and there's enough space for a touchscreen controller chip in most modern phones, even thinner ones).
Touchscreens haven't appeared in thinner phones yet because of several reasons, not all of them technical:
-The thinnest phones are still marketed as luxury items. Usually with a minimalistic look and preferrably with a gimmicky way of opening them. They are NOT PDAs, nor are they smartphones, as a general rule. PDAs are only used to brag among geeks, whereas thin phones are marketed as fashion statements. Marketing an ultra-thin phone right now as a PDA would stain (to the marketers' eyes) both markets.
-Touchscreen phones are, usually, smartphones and this, as a market, still has to take off. So far it's been a shoddy market, with shoddy offerings, that doesn't appeal to the masses (as PDAs really didn't). In the same way that ultrathin wristwatches originally were luxury items and weren't expected to have many features. Actually they revelled in their lack of features. Minimalism always goes well with fashion design.
-Ultra-thin and fully-featured are still two completely different market segments and until they start to merge thinness won't be a priority. There are even old Palms that are incredibly thin compared to current smartphones and they fell into disuse because they didn't feel sturdy. The thickest components are already there (speakers, microphones, backlight, BATTERY) but phone companies are (smartly) pacing their own releases. By keeping these as two different market segments they ensure lots of models until they are forced to make a first luxury smartphone that is ultrathin, followed some time after by more and more commoditized (cheaper) versions, initially uglier.
The reason there aren't ultrathin touchscreen phones is pure marketing. Nothing else. As is traditional until a single company decides to plunge forward the others will continue to market this as different segments. Thinking that there is even one really leading-edge product, technologically speaking, in the market is delluding yourself. Technologies are squeezed until the majority demands improvements and I don't really see the masses demanding ultrathin PDAs (call them smartphones if you want, they see PDAs, which most are already biased against). Relatedly, using older technology that is not focused on size but on features makes devices cheaper on the whole (touchscreens may not be thick, but they're not free either, and adding them adds to the price of the product)
And please, try to not make this gross generalizations. If you had a solid argument it was completely destroyed by it.
The technology behind Safari has already been ported to Symbian and runs on Nokia phones so you could at least run the simpler dashboard widgets easily. Some of the widgets however are full OSX Cocoa apps and those would be an awful lot harder to transfer across.
Apple already has written Symbian apps too. On Nokia S60 and Sony Ericsson UIQ phones iSync copies across a Symbian app to handle syncing.
If these aren't clues enough as to what OS an Apple phone would run then I don't know what is.
Interesting
The Wikipedia entry for Symbian says that Symbian is the base OS on top of which various vendors create their user interface layer.
Symbian is owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Matsushita (Panasonic), Siemens, Sony Ericsson and Samsung.
I wonder if Apple will try to buy into Symbian?
These user interface platforms include Nokia's S60, which is also used by Lenovo, LG and Samsung.
UIQ Technology's UIQ user interface platform is used in more advanced pen based devices from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and BenQ.
I wonder if Apple will use one of these existing platforms or will roll their own interface layer on top of Symbian's OS?
Will we see QuickTime for Symbian OS? Quartz? Aqua?
Webkit has already been ported to Nokia's S60 platform.
However S60 also includes support for Real's Helix multimedia platform and Nokia has it's own plans for getting into the music business.
36% thicker, to be pedantic, considering the Q is .43 inches thick.
I currently own 3 phones: Moto v3i, SE M600i and an HTC TyTN. Each, successively, provides me with a greater range of abilities with their increased size. Would I like a v3i sized phone with all the technology provided by the TyTN? Sure.
If it were currently possible to squeeze quad-band GSM, tri-band UMTS/HSDPA, b/g wi-fi, a decent sized qwerty keyboard, a 2 MP photo camera, a VGA video-call camera, and bluetooth into a form-factor that matched a closed v3i, don't you think it would be done?
You claim that the touchscreen is what is adding the complexity. Melgross has clearly pointed out that the touchscreen barely increases the thickness of a phone and that it's a reasonably easy endeavour to add one to a phone. I posit that a touchscreen reduces the complexity of a phone with these abilities.
0.5" (12.8mm), MP3, touchscreen, 1.3MP cam., Bluetooth
I personally don't like it, and as I mentioned in another post, it belongs to a wholly different category and market segment and is thus more expensive by extension. Still, it's pretty thin by any standard.
Of course we have no official facts, but I have to believe that the iPhone will be realeased by T-Mobile.
- T-Mobile's CEO recently talks favorably about Apple, "comparing visions."
- T-Mobile's release of 3G is scheduled for Q1 of '07, and Apple's iPhone release is Q1 of '07.
- 3G is suspected to have technology in which the phone can switch from cell towers, and transition to Wi-Fi signals to get better signals indoors. Apple's iPhone supposedly has Wi-Fi.
I think you're thinking of UMA. Some phones already support handoff between 3G, GSM and 802.11 networks without interruption for data at least (Nokia's N series and SE's phones mentioned in this thread for instance have that ability) and it's being added for voice calls too. Nokia were trialling UMA earlier in the year in Finland which allows you to walk between networks and it'll pick the best solution.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JustBrady
It's a shame because isn't CDMA suppose to be faster, and able to handle the computer side of a cell phone. And GSM was invented for voice quality, making it flourish only with voice? Someone correct me if I am wrong. (Don't correct me if you simply favor GSM)
The 3G version of GSM uses W-CDMA. W-CDMA is almost identical to CDMA, using the same technology. W-CDMA HSDPA is slightly faster than CDMA EVD0 although there's supposed to be room to grow HSDPA so it's about twice as fast as EVD0.
The idea was that W-CDMA was similar enough to CDMA that the US carriers could get on board with the rest of the world fairly easily and migrate their CDMA systems to W-CDMA, but that hasn't happened. I haven't followed exactly why but the US has a long history of not following what the rest of the world is doing.
Fair use covers copying content in its entirety if it is for backup or media shifting (as long as I paid for the content).
If ripping DVD's is illegal, why don't the movie studios just shut down all the apps that rip DVD's and copy them?
Quote:
Originally Posted by aegisdesign
However, the salient issue is what does it matter to Apple. They can't add DVD ripping code in to iTunes like they can with music CDs. That means there's only a tiny legal market for a video iPod - Digital Downloads.
Apple can't put in ripping software I assume because the movie studios wouldn't allow it in their iTunes store contracts. But there are plenty of third party ripping apps that work great, so it's not much of an issue. And people don't care about "legal" if it's unenforcable.
Also, people can put home movies on iPod, video podcasts, as well as content they've recorded from the airwaves. And I wouldn't call digital downloads "tiny".
Quote:
Originally Posted by aegisdesign
So you're now also expecting people who want to illegally rip DVDs to go out and buy large hard drives and faster computers than the average most people have too?
Faster computers? Where did that come from? You don't need faster computers.
And people will buy hard drives depending on what they need. Same as with mp3's. And same as before that with other files. Drives get cheaper and bigger all the time (and that includes internal drives that ship with computers).
Quote:
Originally Posted by aegisdesign
Can you see yet why Apple is still saying video is some way off?
Where are they still saying that? With iPod and iTunes, video is here now and iTV will be here early next year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lfmorrison
Fair use only comes into play after you've obtained an unencrypted data stream to work with.
Fair use is still being debated. I agree with those who feel that the DMCA violates consumers' fair use rights. And it's a moot point anyway since cracking down on consumers ripping their own media is completely unenforcable.
Tell me, has anyone ever been prosecuted for ripping DVDs they've purchased and transferring them to an ipod? And why doesn't the DMCA shut down all the ripping apps?
I think it's only a matter of time before the DMCA is revised if not thrown out. In the meantime, the law seems unenforcable to the point of being practically worthless.
[IMG]I wonder if Apple will use one of these existing platforms or will roll their own interface layer on top of Symbian's OS?
Will we see QuickTime for Symbian OS? Quartz? Aqua?
I think it's possible. Creating a phone OS from scratch or downsizing OSX to a phone is a mammoth task. Symbian on the other hand lets you run a user interface layer on top so Apple may use Symbian underneath and it's own interface library on top. OSX on a phone would be almost as lame an idea as Windows on a phone.
UIQ and S60 are reasonably similar that programmers have little trouble hopping between them. An Apple UI layer might not be though. S60 and UIQ aren't pretty and could certainly be improved upon by someone more fastidiously inclined to good UI and device design. I wonder if Apple did do this, that enough of the existing UIQ/S60 developers would be able to also pick up the Apple UI? All the developers tools are Windows based btw.
In the last iPod rev, they moved to Samsung sourced ARM chips instead of the Portal Player chips. I wonder if Apple couldn't be on the way to using Symbian on the iPod too and having one development platform?
I think it's possible. Creating a phone OS from scratch or downsizing OSX to a phone is a mammoth task. Symbian on the other hand lets you run a user interface layer on top so Apple may use Symbian underneath and it's own interface library on top. OSX on a phone would be almost as lame an idea as Windows on a phone.
Symbian is currently very popular in Europe.
Windows and Palm dominate the smartphone market in the US.
Microsoft doesn't get mobile design, they are stuck in a desktop metaphor.
Palm has one foot in the grave and it's of their own doing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aegisdesign
UIQ and S60 are reasonably similar that programmers have little trouble hopping between them. An Apple UI layer might not be though. S60 and UIQ aren't pretty and could certainly be improved upon by someone more fastidiously inclined to good UI and device design. I wonder if Apple did do this, that enough of the existing UIQ/S60 developers would be able to also pick up the Apple UI? All the developers tools are Windows based btw.
It would be very nice if existing Symbian apps would run on Apple's iPhone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aegisdesign
In the last iPod rev, they moved to Samsung sourced ARM chips instead of the Portal Player chips. I wonder if Apple couldn't be on the way to using Symbian on the iPod too and having one development platform?
Interesting idea!
Symbian would be a better platform for Apple to tie it's long-term ambitions to.
Apple could also achieve more consistency in it's user experience by using the same OS across the board for it's mobile devices.
Fair use covers copying content in its entirety if it is for backup or media shifting (as long as I paid for the content).
It does not.
Apart from that you are not copying it in it's entirety because you're also transcoding and stripping copy protection. Fair use aside, you're breaking DMCA or EUCD.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
If ripping DVD's is illegal, why don't the movie studios just shut down all the apps that rip DVD's and copy them?
It's like whack-a-mole though. The industry knows it's an impossible battle.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
Apple can't put in ripping software I assume because the movie studios wouldn't allow it in their iTunes store contracts. But there are plenty of third party ripping apps that work great, so it's not much of an issue. And people don't care about "legal" if it's unenforcable.
As I said, it's irrelevant what you or I think, it's Apple that has to flaunt the law. Technically, in the UK at least even the current version of iTunes and the iPod were breaking the law up until recently. So was home taping though so nobody batted an eyelid.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
Also, people can put home movies on iPod, video podcasts, as well as content they've recorded from the airwaves. And I wouldn't call digital downloads "tiny".
Yes, that's tiny. Compare it to DVD sales or TV viewing figures. In the UK, recording from the airwaves is illegal too. IIRC recording TV onto VHS still is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
Faster computers? Where did that come from? You don't need faster computers.
You said 'Even the new minis will rip a DVD in a couple hours'.
Most people don't have computers even as fast as that never mind a computer fast enough to also transcode it to 320x240 for an iPod or phone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
And people will buy hard drives depending on what they need. Same as with mp3's. And same as before that with other files. Drives get cheaper and bigger all the time (and that includes internal drives that ship with computers).
They do. But it's still not quite there yet. Laptop drives are still much smaller and people aren't going to spend another couple of hundred on extra drives. Most people just aren't that tech savvy. They'll buy a new computer perhaps.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
Where are they still saying that? With iPod and iTunes, video is here now and iTV will be here early next year.
To quote Steve Jobs a few days back...
"it's hard to imagine that music is not the epicenter of the iPod, for a long, long, long, long, long time."
And video isn't 'here' it's only 'there' in the USA and extremely limited. Early days yet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
Fair use is still being debated. I agree with those who feel that the DMCA violates consumers' fair use rights. And it's a moot point anyway since cracking down on consumers ripping their own media is completely unenforcable.
Tell me, has anyone ever been prosecuted for ripping DVDs they've purchased and transferring them to an ipod? And why doesn't the DMCA shut down all the ripping apps?
I think it's only a matter of time before the DMCA is revised if not thrown out. In the meantime, the law seems unenforcable to the point of being practically worthless.
I agree. I'm sure Apple agrees too to a point though not to the point they'll state that publicly or introduce software that circumvents it. The former would piss off the studios and the latter would see them in court.
Apart from that you are not copying it in it's entirety because you're also transcoding and stripping copy protection. Fair use aside, you're breaking DMCA or EUCD.
So which is it? Before you said "Fair use doesn't cover copying a whole DVD." Now you're saying ripping isn't copying a whole dvd?
Fair use does allow consumers to back up and shift media. Problem is, the DMCA and fair use seem to contradict each other, which is why it's being debated in the courts right now.
It's like whack-a-mole though. The industry knows it's an impossible battle.
That article is from 2002. And the outcome seems to be the company going bankrupt from the lawsuits, not the studios winning. Has a studio won one of these cases? And if the law supports the studios, why is it an impossible battle? If they are truly breaking the law, shouldn't they be able to win fairly easily and shut down all companies doing this?
Quote:
Originally Posted by aegisdesign
As I said, it's irrelevant what you or I think, it's Apple that has to flaunt the law.
What are you talking about? Third parties are making the ripping software, so how would Apple be flaunting the law??
Quote:
Originally Posted by aegisdesign
Yes, that's tiny. Compare it to DVD sales or TV viewing figures. In the UK, recording from the airwaves is illegal too. IIRC recording TV onto VHS still is.
The entire portable video is tiny compared with those. We were talking about ways to get video onto an iPod, and in that context, digital downloading is hardly tiny.
Are you in the UK? Might explain some of the discrepancies in this conversation about copyright laws. I'm talking about the USA, where it's completely legal to record broadcast TV. It was established a couple decades ago in the famous case against Sony in regard to vcr's (yep, fair use rears its pesky head again).
Quote:
Originally Posted by aegisdesign
You said 'Even the new minis will rip a DVD in a couple hours'.
Most people don't have computers even as fast as that never mind a computer fast enough to also transcode it to 320x240 for an iPod or phone.
Yep. But they can still convert the video, it just takes longer. As pointed out before, just pop in the DVD before you go to bed. Problem solved. Nothing is stopping someone with a slow computer and small hard drives from putting video on an iPod.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aegisdesign
They do. But it's still not quite there yet.
Technology is never "quite there yet". Portable video is an emerging technology. It will get cheaper and smaller as time goes on, just like any other technology. The same was true with mp3's and with other files in the past, the scale keeps getting bigger. In the meantime, there are plenty of early adopters already digging in with their iPods and big hard drives.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aegisdesign
"it's hard to imagine that music is not the epicenter of the iPod, for a long, long, long, long, long time.".
Which means that music is bigger. It doesn't say they're not going to get into video, just that it won't surpass music for a long time. Not to mention that Jobs also said there wouldn't be an ipod just months before releasing one. When it comes to future plans, the man is a liar.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aegisdesign
And video isn't 'here' it's only 'there' in the USA and extremely limited. Early days yet.
You mean that the iTunes store is limited and not there. Nothing is stopping you from buying an iPod and ripping all your DVD's to it. I have an iPod with video today, and I'm putting anything I want onto it. Sure looks like "here" to me.
Comments
Sony Ericsson P910A\t1.02"
The Motorola Q is full featured at 11mm (.4") thick, without a touch screen.
The P910 is actually only 18mm thick at the screen. The bit that adds the thickness on the 910 is the optional keypad flip. It also bulges out at either end a few mm. Mostly though it's because of the huge battery that gives you about 2 days of use on average, or about 6 hours playing music IME. The card slot on the side must take up some space too.
The Moto Q is also about 1cm wider and 1cm taller. They just kind of squashed a P910 flat and put a battery in that doesn't last as long. 212 hours as opposed to 400.
Anyway, the 910 is old hat. The 990 is out and that adds 3G, two cameras, Wifi, accelerated graphics, 2megapixel camera, push email (inc blackberry support) and still is about the same size as the 910.
DVD's do what? Have DRM? Not an issue when the ripping apps make it irrelevant.
Meep! DMCA violation.
DVD's do what? Have DRM? Not an issue when the ripping apps make it irrelevant.
Even the new minis will rip a DVD in a couple hours. If you have a slower machine, just pop in the disc before you go to bed. And you don't have to be a geek to figure it out, just grab an app like Instant Handbrake, you just select the DVD tracks you want and hit the button. Done. It's not illegal either as long as you are ripping content you own a copy of.
I think the concern was that it's perfectly legal to rip CDs for fair use (in most jurisdictions) and transfer them onto your iPod because the CD's data is not encrypted in any way.
The same is true of copyrighted video content, as long as the original video is not encrypted. As soon as the video stream is encrypted in any way (even a simple XOR crypto) it falls under the jurisdiction of the DMCA.
Sure there's still fair use. But before fair use comes into play, you still need to get a version of the video stream that has been adequately massaged so that it can be played. And to do that you have to either convert the whole file into an unencrypted stream, and then send the unencumbered file to the iPod, or somehow modify the iPod's firmware so that it is capable of doing the decryption on-the-fly as you watch the video. The latter option could probably be permissible under the DMCA's reverse-engineering clauses. The former certainly isn't.
The DMCA (or several countries' local equivalents) is what's getting in the way.
Canada has no such equivalent law yet (thankfully) so I can legally circumvent the DVD's DRM. And I think the "fair use" copyright clause would still protect me if I transfer the decrypted movie onto my iPod as long as I take care not to allow the files to be redistributed.
[edit: spelling mistake in last paragraph]
DVD's do what? Have DRM? Not an issue when the ripping apps make it irrelevant.
That doesn't change the legality of bypassing copy protection which is against the law usually, at least in the USA (DMCA) and Europe (EUCD).
Even the new minis will rip a DVD in a couple hours. If you have a slower machine, just pop in the disc before you go to bed.
Sure, but it's not like CDs which take up 50-60MB an album. It's 4+GB of data to transcode and store somewhere.
And you don't have to be a geek to figure it out, just grab an app like Instant Handbrake, you just select the DVD tracks you want and hit the button. Done. It's not illegal either as long as you are ripping content you own a copy of.
That's not usually true with copy protected works such as DVDs, the only exception being software where most countries allow a copy for archival purposes and fair use or fair trading which only allows excerpts, unless you're a library.
Oh yeah, no problem to slap a film onto the screen. You'd think all smartphones would have 'em. But drawing on a screen, the processor having to listen for touch drawings, and increased luminance required to shine through the scuff marks make the device more complex. How's the battery life on the M600i? Maybe they could've added a few more battery millimeters.
And when you write that it "reduces complexity", we are posting on two opposite ideas. It's easier to use a smart phone with a touch screen, yes. But it makes the internal operation of it more complex, more power, and hence, thicker.
This entire tangent demonstrates that touch screen devices are at least 36% thicker than non touch screen devices, and even that with reduced battery to achieve it.
The battery life on the M600i is 7.5 hours talk or 2 weeks standby. About twice that of the Q.
It's mostly because (IIRC) it's one of the first Symbian phones to use a single system-on-a-chip setup where the radio stack and the CPU is one chip. In older phones (and the 990 still even which is really an older design) and current Palm, Windows and Linux phones you have a CPU running the OS and a DSP handling the radio stack. Two chips and a hungry OS (Windows or Linux anyway) mean the power requirements are much higher. The Symbian phones use a much lighter OS, lower clocked CPU (~200Mhz) and the M600 and W950 cut out one of the chips. They also cut out a few other things the 990 has such as graphics acceleration and WiFi which the 990 has to make up for with a bigger battery. Swings and roundabouts.
Meep! DMCA violation.
Fair use. Not to mention unenforcable to a ridiculous degree.
And like I care whether it is or not? The DMCA certainly hasn't stopped tons of apps from being distributed, all of which are perfectly clear that they are for ripping DVD's - why aren't they shut down if they are illegal? As an end user who rips dvd's I've bought, what does the DMCA matter to me?
Sure, but it's not like CDs which take up 50-60MB an album. It's 4+GB of data to transcode and store somewhere.
Which ends up as 1-1.5 gigs after the rip. Hard drives go up to 300/500/750 gigs these days, that's hundreds of movies. And I was responding to your comment about ripping speed, not sure why you're trying to change the subject.
I'd go for this if it had Palm or Windows compatibility built in. I have a treo and use numerous medical apps on it, and I am not willing to carry two devices. The likelihood of any company porting their Palm/Windows apps to the iPhone is pretty small (unless they just take over the market). Of course I have two devices to carry around now as it is, iPod and Treo, maybe I'll upgrade to an iPhone and get a cheap Palm for my med apps.
Well, it will will launch with 2,500 Dashboard Widgets available.
I'm sure all the popular medical apps will follow in due time.
Fair use. Not to mention unenforcable to a ridiculous degree.
Fair use doesn't cover copying a whole DVD.
And like I care whether it is or not? The DMCA certainly hasn't stopped tons of apps from being distributed, all of which are perfectly clear that they are for ripping DVD's - why aren't they shut down if they are illegal? As an end user who rips dvd's I've bought, what does the DMCA matter to me?
Not a lot. Not a lot to me either as it happens although it's more EUCD here. I rip them too.
However, the salient issue is what does it matter to Apple. They can't add DVD ripping code in to iTunes like they can with music CDs. That means there's only a tiny legal market for a video iPod - Digital Downloads.
Which ends up as 1-1.5 gigs after the rip. Hard drives go up to 300/500/750 gigs these days, that's hundreds of movies. And I was responding to your comment about ripping speed, not sure why you're trying to change the subject.
So you're now also expecting people who want to illegally rip DVDs to go out and buy large hard drives and faster computers than the average most people have too?
Can you see yet why Apple is still saying video is some way off?
Well, it will will launch with 2,500 Dashboard Widgets available.
I'm sure all the popular medical apps will follow in due time.
Not all of those can possibly run or be of any use. Many are larger than the usual QVGA screen available on most smartphones (and the iPod), require a live net connection and/or are written in Perl/Ruby/Python/Objective-C which any iPhone is unlikely to support.
Fair use.
Irrelavent. Fair use only comes into play after you've obtained an unencrypted data stream to work with. And your options for doing that without breaking DCMA are quite limited. Consider the two general possibilities:
1) You have an unencrypted file which is ready for the iPod to look at. It's impossible to obtain such a file from a commercial DVD without breaking the DCMA because commercial DVDs all contain DRM encryption which the DVD rippers break. In this case, it's possible that your government's definition of fair use isn't being violated. But certainly the DCMA is.
2) You maintain the encrypted file, and your iPod is performing just-in-time decryption as it plays the movie. Possibly no DCMA violation here depending on how the courts choose to interpret the reverse-engineering clauses, since arguably no additional rights are being granted than were previously available in the original encrypted form. Also, it's possible that there's no fair use violation here (the same conditions for that test would apply as one would use in the previous example). However, no iPod is equipped with firmware to do this currently. It's debatable whether portable, battery-supplied iPods could have the computational power to do such a job in real time in the first place.
- T-Mobile's CEO recently talks favorably about Apple, "comparing visions."
- T-Mobile's release of 3G is scheduled for Q1 of '07, and Apple's iPhone release is Q1 of '07.
- 3G is suspected to have technology in which the phone can switch from cell towers, and transition to Wi-Fi signals to get better signals indoors. Apple's iPhone supposedly has Wi-Fi.
It's a shame because isn't CDMA suppose to be faster, and able to handle the computer side of a cell phone. And GSM was invented for voice quality, making it flourish only with voice? Someone correct me if I am wrong. (Don't correct me if you simply favor GSM)
This entire tangent demonstrates that touch screen devices are at least 36% thicker than non touch screen devices, and even that with reduced battery to achieve it.
And this, children, is how you use a logical fallacy of the informal type "ignorantio elenchi". Peppered with a healthy dose of ignorance, generalization becomes a nice package-deal fallacy, or possibly a hasty generalization.
No, mugwump. Adding a touchscreen doesn't increase significantly the power drain on the battery, nor does it require a lot of extra chips and controllers.
No, the fact that there aren't thinner touchscreen devices doesn't demonstrate that they can't exist, it's just a statement of fact, not a cause-effect. And it's almost impossible you're seriously pretending to prove that all touch-screen devices must be at least 36% thicker than non-touch-screen by using two devices provided, almost at random, in a forum post.
Really. It's almost too much obvious bait to take it (I'm weak, I'll admit it).
The reason touchscreens haven't found their way into thinner phones has nothing to do with them making the devices much thicker (as has been repeated and is adequately documented if you care to search for it, touchscreen capabilities don't add more than a 1mm to thickness for the screen overlay itself and there's enough space for a touchscreen controller chip in most modern phones, even thinner ones).
Touchscreens haven't appeared in thinner phones yet because of several reasons, not all of them technical:
-The thinnest phones are still marketed as luxury items. Usually with a minimalistic look and preferrably with a gimmicky way of opening them. They are NOT PDAs, nor are they smartphones, as a general rule. PDAs are only used to brag among geeks, whereas thin phones are marketed as fashion statements. Marketing an ultra-thin phone right now as a PDA would stain (to the marketers' eyes) both markets.
-Touchscreen phones are, usually, smartphones and this, as a market, still has to take off. So far it's been a shoddy market, with shoddy offerings, that doesn't appeal to the masses (as PDAs really didn't). In the same way that ultrathin wristwatches originally were luxury items and weren't expected to have many features. Actually they revelled in their lack of features. Minimalism always goes well with fashion design.
-Ultra-thin and fully-featured are still two completely different market segments and until they start to merge thinness won't be a priority. There are even old Palms that are incredibly thin compared to current smartphones and they fell into disuse because they didn't feel sturdy. The thickest components are already there (speakers, microphones, backlight, BATTERY) but phone companies are (smartly) pacing their own releases. By keeping these as two different market segments they ensure lots of models until they are forced to make a first luxury smartphone that is ultrathin, followed some time after by more and more commoditized (cheaper) versions, initially uglier.
The reason there aren't ultrathin touchscreen phones is pure marketing. Nothing else. As is traditional until a single company decides to plunge forward the others will continue to market this as different segments. Thinking that there is even one really leading-edge product, technologically speaking, in the market is delluding yourself. Technologies are squeezed until the majority demands improvements and I don't really see the masses demanding ultrathin PDAs (call them smartphones if you want, they see PDAs, which most are already biased against). Relatedly, using older technology that is not focused on size but on features makes devices cheaper on the whole (touchscreens may not be thick, but they're not free either, and adding them adds to the price of the product)
And please, try to not make this gross generalizations. If you had a solid argument it was completely destroyed by it.
The technology behind Safari has already been ported to Symbian and runs on Nokia phones so you could at least run the simpler dashboard widgets easily. Some of the widgets however are full OSX Cocoa apps and those would be an awful lot harder to transfer across.
Apple already has written Symbian apps too. On Nokia S60 and Sony Ericsson UIQ phones iSync copies across a Symbian app to handle syncing.
If these aren't clues enough as to what OS an Apple phone would run then I don't know what is.
Interesting
The Wikipedia entry for Symbian says that Symbian is the base OS on top of which various vendors create their user interface layer.
Symbian is owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Matsushita (Panasonic), Siemens, Sony Ericsson and Samsung.
I wonder if Apple will try to buy into Symbian?
These user interface platforms include Nokia's S60, which is also used by Lenovo, LG and Samsung.
UIQ Technology's UIQ user interface platform is used in more advanced pen based devices from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and BenQ.
I wonder if Apple will use one of these existing platforms or will roll their own interface layer on top of Symbian's OS?
Will we see QuickTime for Symbian OS? Quartz? Aqua?
Webkit has already been ported to Nokia's S60 platform.
However S60 also includes support for Real's Helix multimedia platform and Nokia has it's own plans for getting into the music business.
36% thicker, to be pedantic, considering the Q is .43 inches thick.
I currently own 3 phones: Moto v3i, SE M600i and an HTC TyTN. Each, successively, provides me with a greater range of abilities with their increased size. Would I like a v3i sized phone with all the technology provided by the TyTN? Sure.
If it were currently possible to squeeze quad-band GSM, tri-band UMTS/HSDPA, b/g wi-fi, a decent sized qwerty keyboard, a 2 MP photo camera, a VGA video-call camera, and bluetooth into a form-factor that matched a closed v3i, don't you think it would be done?
You claim that the touchscreen is what is adding the complexity. Melgross has clearly pointed out that the touchscreen barely increases the thickness of a phone and that it's a reasonably easy endeavour to add one to a phone. I posit that a touchscreen reduces the complexity of a phone with these abilities.
http://www.dynamism.com/n908/main.shtml
0.5" (12.8mm), MP3, touchscreen, 1.3MP cam., Bluetooth
I personally don't like it, and as I mentioned in another post, it belongs to a wholly different category and market segment and is thus more expensive by extension. Still, it's pretty thin by any standard.
Of course we have no official facts, but I have to believe that the iPhone will be realeased by T-Mobile.
- T-Mobile's CEO recently talks favorably about Apple, "comparing visions."
- T-Mobile's release of 3G is scheduled for Q1 of '07, and Apple's iPhone release is Q1 of '07.
- 3G is suspected to have technology in which the phone can switch from cell towers, and transition to Wi-Fi signals to get better signals indoors. Apple's iPhone supposedly has Wi-Fi.
I think you're thinking of UMA. Some phones already support handoff between 3G, GSM and 802.11 networks without interruption for data at least (Nokia's N series and SE's phones mentioned in this thread for instance have that ability) and it's being added for voice calls too. Nokia were trialling UMA earlier in the year in Finland which allows you to walk between networks and it'll pick the best solution.
It's a shame because isn't CDMA suppose to be faster, and able to handle the computer side of a cell phone. And GSM was invented for voice quality, making it flourish only with voice? Someone correct me if I am wrong. (Don't correct me if you simply favor GSM)
The 3G version of GSM uses W-CDMA. W-CDMA is almost identical to CDMA, using the same technology. W-CDMA HSDPA is slightly faster than CDMA EVD0 although there's supposed to be room to grow HSDPA so it's about twice as fast as EVD0.
The idea was that W-CDMA was similar enough to CDMA that the US carriers could get on board with the rest of the world fairly easily and migrate their CDMA systems to W-CDMA, but that hasn't happened. I haven't followed exactly why but the US has a long history of not following what the rest of the world is doing.
Fair use doesn't cover copying a whole DVD.
Fair use covers copying content in its entirety if it is for backup or media shifting (as long as I paid for the content).
If ripping DVD's is illegal, why don't the movie studios just shut down all the apps that rip DVD's and copy them?
However, the salient issue is what does it matter to Apple. They can't add DVD ripping code in to iTunes like they can with music CDs. That means there's only a tiny legal market for a video iPod - Digital Downloads.
Apple can't put in ripping software I assume because the movie studios wouldn't allow it in their iTunes store contracts. But there are plenty of third party ripping apps that work great, so it's not much of an issue. And people don't care about "legal" if it's unenforcable.
Also, people can put home movies on iPod, video podcasts, as well as content they've recorded from the airwaves. And I wouldn't call digital downloads "tiny".
So you're now also expecting people who want to illegally rip DVDs to go out and buy large hard drives and faster computers than the average most people have too?
Faster computers? Where did that come from? You don't need faster computers.
And people will buy hard drives depending on what they need. Same as with mp3's. And same as before that with other files. Drives get cheaper and bigger all the time (and that includes internal drives that ship with computers).
Can you see yet why Apple is still saying video is some way off?
Where are they still saying that? With iPod and iTunes, video is here now and iTV will be here early next year.
Fair use only comes into play after you've obtained an unencrypted data stream to work with.
Fair use is still being debated. I agree with those who feel that the DMCA violates consumers' fair use rights. And it's a moot point anyway since cracking down on consumers ripping their own media is completely unenforcable.
Tell me, has anyone ever been prosecuted for ripping DVDs they've purchased and transferring them to an ipod? And why doesn't the DMCA shut down all the ripping apps?
I think it's only a matter of time before the DMCA is revised if not thrown out. In the meantime, the law seems unenforcable to the point of being practically worthless.
Interesting
[IMG]I wonder if Apple will use one of these existing platforms or will roll their own interface layer on top of Symbian's OS?
Will we see QuickTime for Symbian OS? Quartz? Aqua?
I think it's possible. Creating a phone OS from scratch or downsizing OSX to a phone is a mammoth task. Symbian on the other hand lets you run a user interface layer on top so Apple may use Symbian underneath and it's own interface library on top. OSX on a phone would be almost as lame an idea as Windows on a phone.
UIQ and S60 are reasonably similar that programmers have little trouble hopping between them. An Apple UI layer might not be though. S60 and UIQ aren't pretty and could certainly be improved upon by someone more fastidiously inclined to good UI and device design. I wonder if Apple did do this, that enough of the existing UIQ/S60 developers would be able to also pick up the Apple UI? All the developers tools are Windows based btw.
In the last iPod rev, they moved to Samsung sourced ARM chips instead of the Portal Player chips. I wonder if Apple couldn't be on the way to using Symbian on the iPod too and having one development platform?
I think it's possible. Creating a phone OS from scratch or downsizing OSX to a phone is a mammoth task. Symbian on the other hand lets you run a user interface layer on top so Apple may use Symbian underneath and it's own interface library on top. OSX on a phone would be almost as lame an idea as Windows on a phone.
Symbian is currently very popular in Europe.
Windows and Palm dominate the smartphone market in the US.
Microsoft doesn't get mobile design, they are stuck in a desktop metaphor.
Palm has one foot in the grave and it's of their own doing.
UIQ and S60 are reasonably similar that programmers have little trouble hopping between them. An Apple UI layer might not be though. S60 and UIQ aren't pretty and could certainly be improved upon by someone more fastidiously inclined to good UI and device design. I wonder if Apple did do this, that enough of the existing UIQ/S60 developers would be able to also pick up the Apple UI? All the developers tools are Windows based btw.
It would be very nice if existing Symbian apps would run on Apple's iPhone.
In the last iPod rev, they moved to Samsung sourced ARM chips instead of the Portal Player chips. I wonder if Apple couldn't be on the way to using Symbian on the iPod too and having one development platform?
Interesting idea!
Symbian would be a better platform for Apple to tie it's long-term ambitions to.
Apple could also achieve more consistency in it's user experience by using the same OS across the board for it's mobile devices.
Fair use covers copying content in its entirety if it is for backup or media shifting (as long as I paid for the content).
It does not.
Apart from that you are not copying it in it's entirety because you're also transcoding and stripping copy protection. Fair use aside, you're breaking DMCA or EUCD.
If ripping DVD's is illegal, why don't the movie studios just shut down all the apps that rip DVD's and copy them?
They regularly try it. See http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmed...studios_t.html for one example.
It's like whack-a-mole though. The industry knows it's an impossible battle.
Apple can't put in ripping software I assume because the movie studios wouldn't allow it in their iTunes store contracts. But there are plenty of third party ripping apps that work great, so it's not much of an issue. And people don't care about "legal" if it's unenforcable.
As I said, it's irrelevant what you or I think, it's Apple that has to flaunt the law. Technically, in the UK at least even the current version of iTunes and the iPod were breaking the law up until recently. So was home taping though so nobody batted an eyelid.
Also, people can put home movies on iPod, video podcasts, as well as content they've recorded from the airwaves. And I wouldn't call digital downloads "tiny".
Yes, that's tiny. Compare it to DVD sales or TV viewing figures. In the UK, recording from the airwaves is illegal too. IIRC recording TV onto VHS still is.
Faster computers? Where did that come from? You don't need faster computers.
You said 'Even the new minis will rip a DVD in a couple hours'.
Most people don't have computers even as fast as that never mind a computer fast enough to also transcode it to 320x240 for an iPod or phone.
And people will buy hard drives depending on what they need. Same as with mp3's. And same as before that with other files. Drives get cheaper and bigger all the time (and that includes internal drives that ship with computers).
They do. But it's still not quite there yet. Laptop drives are still much smaller and people aren't going to spend another couple of hundred on extra drives. Most people just aren't that tech savvy. They'll buy a new computer perhaps.
Where are they still saying that? With iPod and iTunes, video is here now and iTV will be here early next year.
To quote Steve Jobs a few days back...
"it's hard to imagine that music is not the epicenter of the iPod, for a long, long, long, long, long time."
And video isn't 'here' it's only 'there' in the USA and extremely limited. Early days yet.
Fair use is still being debated. I agree with those who feel that the DMCA violates consumers' fair use rights. And it's a moot point anyway since cracking down on consumers ripping their own media is completely unenforcable.
Tell me, has anyone ever been prosecuted for ripping DVDs they've purchased and transferring them to an ipod? And why doesn't the DMCA shut down all the ripping apps?
I think it's only a matter of time before the DMCA is revised if not thrown out. In the meantime, the law seems unenforcable to the point of being practically worthless.
I agree. I'm sure Apple agrees too to a point though not to the point they'll state that publicly or introduce software that circumvents it. The former would piss off the studios and the latter would see them in court.
It does not.
Apart from that you are not copying it in it's entirety because you're also transcoding and stripping copy protection. Fair use aside, you're breaking DMCA or EUCD.
So which is it? Before you said "Fair use doesn't cover copying a whole DVD." Now you're saying ripping isn't copying a whole dvd?
Fair use does allow consumers to back up and shift media. Problem is, the DMCA and fair use seem to contradict each other, which is why it's being debated in the courts right now.
They regularly try it. See http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmed...studios_t.html for one example.
It's like whack-a-mole though. The industry knows it's an impossible battle.
That article is from 2002. And the outcome seems to be the company going bankrupt from the lawsuits, not the studios winning. Has a studio won one of these cases? And if the law supports the studios, why is it an impossible battle? If they are truly breaking the law, shouldn't they be able to win fairly easily and shut down all companies doing this?
As I said, it's irrelevant what you or I think, it's Apple that has to flaunt the law.
What are you talking about? Third parties are making the ripping software, so how would Apple be flaunting the law??
Yes, that's tiny. Compare it to DVD sales or TV viewing figures. In the UK, recording from the airwaves is illegal too. IIRC recording TV onto VHS still is.
The entire portable video is tiny compared with those. We were talking about ways to get video onto an iPod, and in that context, digital downloading is hardly tiny.
Are you in the UK? Might explain some of the discrepancies in this conversation about copyright laws. I'm talking about the USA, where it's completely legal to record broadcast TV. It was established a couple decades ago in the famous case against Sony in regard to vcr's (yep, fair use rears its pesky head again).
You said 'Even the new minis will rip a DVD in a couple hours'.
Most people don't have computers even as fast as that never mind a computer fast enough to also transcode it to 320x240 for an iPod or phone.
Yep. But they can still convert the video, it just takes longer. As pointed out before, just pop in the DVD before you go to bed. Problem solved. Nothing is stopping someone with a slow computer and small hard drives from putting video on an iPod.
They do. But it's still not quite there yet.
Technology is never "quite there yet". Portable video is an emerging technology. It will get cheaper and smaller as time goes on, just like any other technology. The same was true with mp3's and with other files in the past, the scale keeps getting bigger. In the meantime, there are plenty of early adopters already digging in with their iPods and big hard drives.
"it's hard to imagine that music is not the epicenter of the iPod, for a long, long, long, long, long time.".
Which means that music is bigger. It doesn't say they're not going to get into video, just that it won't surpass music for a long time. Not to mention that Jobs also said there wouldn't be an ipod just months before releasing one. When it comes to future plans, the man is a liar.
And video isn't 'here' it's only 'there' in the USA and extremely limited. Early days yet.
You mean that the iTunes store is limited and not there. Nothing is stopping you from buying an iPod and ripping all your DVD's to it. I have an iPod with video today, and I'm putting anything I want onto it. Sure looks like "here" to me.