He said that both these things would have to be overcome. If Apple offers movies in 320x240 for the current iPod forget it. If Apple comes out with a widescreen/touchscreen iPod with a resolution like that of the PSP then it might take off. The prices indicated are way too high for this though I haven't seen sales numbers of current iTMS videos yet.
Yeah, I know. But without having any idea as to whether his bandwidth problems will be solved, asking for better than DVD quality is a bit Quixotic.
Yeah, we get shafted in the US on the bandwith front.
It would probably cost $100/month to get that here.
Hell, I'm paying $35/month for 1.5meg
Yup!
I pay Covad $109 a month for 6.144 down and 768 up.
It's a very good service, though. I don't have that "up to" that they still get in Europe and the Far East. Also a static address, which is good for me, plus plenty of mailboxes, web services, should I need them, and dialup anywhere in the US and Canada.
I do need this, as both my daughter, and wife are often on at the same time I am in the evening.
And while I'm at it, f*** high-priced, low-quality, no-special-features-having video downloads.
I'm still at a loss why people buy videos from iTunes.
What would be worse would be to pay someone month after month for the privilege of watching them.
I really like iTunes. Yeah, the audio is lower quality, but the albums are cheaper, you can get them instantly, and you can buy individual songs. Generally, the loss in quality is an acceptable trade-off, but there are still some albums that I will buy becuae I want the quality. This is what people like about iTunes. It's not some techno-geek infatuation with being able to download music for its own sake.
If an iTunes movie service is going to be viable, it needs to think about these things in the same way. Is the quality going to be lower, as with music? If so, what are the trade-offs. What other advantages can they offer, considering that there are also no commentaries, extra features, multiple audio tracks, subtitles, etc. If the TV shows are anything to go by, they're not even going to be cheaper. So besides convenience, what else will Apple/iTunes put on the table?
Also, I am skeptical that Apple actually commissioned this survey too. Most likely a competitor. But we all know Apple is mulling it over. They need to be careful not to bomb now. This fiasco of a media event should teach them a lesson: Steve Jobs is not god, and Apple is not infallible. They are still on the raggedy edge and need to keep offering things that give users a real value, as well as the "Apple experience."
edit: the mini won't be a decent computer to conect to a tv until Intel's G965 "Broadwater" chipset arrives and Apple make use of all its features.
First link doesn´t work...
Anyone pushing for DVD-or-over quality is not in their right mind. Bandwidth is cheap these days. But it is not free. At DVD quality we are talking 1000+ songs from iTMS!
I would be able to live with a multiple scan H.264 at 700 mb per movie. Remember they only have to do the encoding once so they can take all the time nessesary for making it as good as possible. Heck, they could write a distributed encoder and use all the macs at infinitive loop at night for a couple of weeks and the job would be done.
What would be worse would be to pay someone month after month for the privilege of watching them.
Movies are not like music. People tend to listen to their CDs more often than watching their DVDs so an subscription model for movies are a much better idea than for music. You just have to compare netflix to Any subscription model music store.
I would be able to live with a multiple scan H.264 at 700 mb per movie. Remember they only have to do the encoding once so they can take all the time nessesary for making it as good as possible. Heck, they could write a distributed encoder and use all the macs at infinitive loop at night for a couple of weeks and the job would be done.
First, they should fix their rubbish H.264 implementation. They need "high-profile" H.264. At the moment, QuickTime only implements the "main" profile, which is vastly inferior to "high-profile".
I can encode widescreen DVD quality video using H.264 while keeping the file sizes down to about 750 MB. With better encoding (or a lower resolution!) you could get the size even smaller. Hell, we're already starting to see 250+ MB video podcasts!
HD is another issue. Worse, HD files are overboard for the iPod's screen, so something else would have to be done. Downloads of multiple versions perhaps?
At any rate, while I wouldn't bit unless the offering was HD, I know I'm not the average Joe Consumer. An SD/ED service (720x480 progressive) with DVD quality would be enough for most people. Some would miss the extra features but they can stick with Netflix or whatnot. Others will prefer the convenience and price.
I don't think this is Apple's survey, but I'm sure they're thinking along these lines.
So, if this is a competitor's survey, is it to create false expectations around price and/or features in order to create an air of dissapointment when Apple *does* announce their Movie Store? Apple's secrecy, and the hype machine that starts in the rumor boards and fantastically finds it's way reported by the mainstream press almost instantly, is a double-edged sword. I know if I were Apple's competitor, I'd try to turn this "strength" against them....
edit: the mini won't be a decent computer to conect to a tv until Intel's G965 "Broadwater" chipset arrives and Apple make use of all its features.
edit 2: link fixed
Yes, I'm sure the 965 will be a superior chip for a Conroe system in September or thereabouts. The PT study commissioned by Nvidia is rather irrelevant, though. They couldn't even get their test monitor hooked up right, they didn't test using a Mac so used some glommed PC kludge with Windows MCE. They were testing DVD playback, not computer output to a TV.
The Mac mini is perfect for hooking up to a TV and playing your iMovies, downloaded videos, photos and slideshows. All of that content is already 30 fps and would look perfect on any TV. If you want to play a commercial DVD, just use the consumer DVD player you probably already have. It'll probably play fine in the mini but what's the point?
As for Conroe, I'm sure Apple will use that in the first PM replacement but I bet they don't use integrated graphics. When the mini is revised, I think it'll be with a Merom system in October unless it gets a radical makeover. I think the iMac revision will be Merom, as well, unless Conroe could work, and it won't use integrated graphics, either.
Yes, I'm sure the 965 will be a superior chip for a Conroe system in September or thereabouts. The PT study commissioned by Nvidia is rather irrelevant, though. They couldn't even get their test monitor hooked up right, they didn't test using a Mac so used some glommed PC kludge with Windows MCE. They were testing DVD playback, not computer output to a TV.
The Mac mini is perfect for hooking up to a TV and playing your iMovies, downloaded videos, photos and slideshows. All of that content is already 30 fps and would look perfect on any TV. If you want to play a commercial DVD, just use the consumer DVD player you probably already have. It'll probably play fine in the mini but what's the point?
As for Conroe, I'm sure Apple will use that in the first PM replacement but I bet they don't use integrated graphics. When the mini is revised, I think it'll be with a Merom system in October unless it gets a radical makeover. I think the iMac revision will be Merom, as well, unless Conroe could work, and it won't use integrated graphics, either.
I agree with everything except that I'm not that sure that Apple will go with Conroe. That has been an assumption that has been made by those not working for Apple.
Remember that these same people also said, quite definitely, that the Power- MacBook Pro, and the iMac would wait for the Merom, and that Apple would never use the Yonah in either, for both speed and for the 64 bit question.
They were about as wrong as they could get.
I think that there is at least a 50% chance that Apple will use Woodcrest in the PowerMac revision.
Think about this. The Conroe is a midrange chip. Good at integer, but meh at float. The PM doesn't compete against mid range machines. Every $1,000 PC will end up with a Conroe.
The PM competes against Xeon's and Opteron's. That is both the price class it sells into, and the workload it sells into. Woodcrest is better than Conroe for both reasons. Conroe will be killed by Woodcrest and Opteron.
Scientific users, a large part of the PM's client list, won't be happy with a Conroe machine. Neither will video editors, a big market for Apple's hardware, AND software. If Apple wants to pull more high end 3D ware over to the platform, they have to have something in the low workstation class.
With Conroe pushed back, Woodcrest looks as though it might be out first.
If you want to play a commercial DVD, just use the consumer DVD player you probably already have. It'll probably play fine in the mini but what's the point?
Do you not understand the beauty of a living-room PC? Why spend £100 on a DVD player, £150 on a ROKU, and £600 on a DVB-T recorder with hard drive and DVD-RW drive, when you can get all those features and, much, much more in one computer for less money that takes up less space in your living room?
The 950 has integrated MPEG-2 decoding, and Apple's DVD player has always used GPUs to decode MPEG-2. If on the Mac mini, the data pathway is MPEG-2 to the video card, then decoded video back to the CPU for decent de-interlacing, video de-noising, back to the graphics card for Core Video brightness, contrast and colour saturation adjustments, and out to the display, then great. If the whole data pathway is within the 950 GPU, then the video output quality will not be very good.
On a related front, Think Secret has learned that a recent survey from market research firm Coyote Insight asking consumers their preferences on buying or renting full length feature films online is from the Starz Entertainment Group. The online survey was sent to current Vongo members late Monday/early Tuesday asking them a variety of questions, including whether they would like to download and watch a rented movie unlimited times and not have the option of burning it to DVD, or watch and burn to DVD for permanent ownership at price points of US$9.99, $12.99, $14.99 and up.
The survey specifically mentions at one point a scenario where users would access movies through Apple's iTunes service, but sources familiar with the survey said the example was hypothetical and that Apple had no involvement with the survey. The survey is part of Starz' on-going attempt to gauge consumer interest and only that.
Those same sources report that while Starz would be inclined to form a relationship with Apple to distribute movies via iTunes, a buyout of Vongo by Apple is out of the question. If anything, Starz' only interest would be to partner with Apple on distributing movie content, and it has publicly let it be known it would be interested in such a deal under the right technical and financial arrangements. In January, SEG's senior vice president for advanced services, Bob Greene, told MacCentral.com, ?We've had several conversations with Apple. We?d like to develop for the Macintosh and we're thinking throughout how to do that."
It seems that the survey was commissioned by Vongo. This explains the weighted wording used.
I currently subscribe to Netflix. I like it but the biggest advantage is having to wait 2 days to get the movie you want. Often there is a movie that you want to watch *now* and waiting for 2 days can be annoying. Personally, I would rather subscribe for $10 a month than pay $4.99 to download to own a movie. This way you have ALL the movies whenever you want.
However, I would think that the content providers would prefer the download to own model as I would think that it would result in increased revenues for them.
[B]Give me a break! You do know that Apple's H.264 implementation is one of, if not, the, poorest in the industry? And look at the T.V. shows. Lost, for example, is shot in 16:9 HD, but the downloads you get are 4:3 320 x 240.
I know that, I meant that Apple would not release movies if they were badly compressed or bad quality. As long as they were viewed at the desired sizes, they would look excellent, because Apple would not release bad quality stuff, it would just give any competition more time to catch up.
As to who the survey was authorized by, I think it's highly likely it could have been by a major video company (e.g. Sony Pictures, etc), or the video industry looking at how they can expand their sales.
Comments
Originally posted by 1984
He said that both these things would have to be overcome. If Apple offers movies in 320x240 for the current iPod forget it. If Apple comes out with a widescreen/touchscreen iPod with a resolution like that of the PSP then it might take off. The prices indicated are way too high for this though I haven't seen sales numbers of current iTMS videos yet.
Yeah, I know. But without having any idea as to whether his bandwidth problems will be solved, asking for better than DVD quality is a bit Quixotic.
Originally posted by Flounder
*sigh*
Yeah, we get shafted in the US on the bandwith front.
It would probably cost $100/month to get that here.
Hell, I'm paying $35/month for 1.5meg
Yup!
I pay Covad $109 a month for 6.144 down and 768 up.
It's a very good service, though. I don't have that "up to" that they still get in Europe and the Far East. Also a static address, which is good for me, plus plenty of mailboxes, web services, should I need them, and dialup anywhere in the US and Canada.
I do need this, as both my daughter, and wife are often on at the same time I am in the evening.
Originally posted by Rolo
Intel's GMA950 is perfect for DVD, HDTV, and a range of resolutions. The mini is the perfect media hub now.
Um, no. The 950's picture quality is total crap
edit: the mini won't be a decent computer to conect to a tv until Intel's G965 "Broadwater" chipset arrives and Apple make use of all its features.
edit 2: link fixed
And while I'm at it, f*** high-priced, low-quality, no-special-features-having video downloads.
I'm still at a loss why people buy videos from iTunes.
What would be worse would be to pay someone month after month for the privilege of watching them.
I really like iTunes. Yeah, the audio is lower quality, but the albums are cheaper, you can get them instantly, and you can buy individual songs. Generally, the loss in quality is an acceptable trade-off, but there are still some albums that I will buy becuae I want the quality. This is what people like about iTunes. It's not some techno-geek infatuation with being able to download music for its own sake.
If an iTunes movie service is going to be viable, it needs to think about these things in the same way. Is the quality going to be lower, as with music? If so, what are the trade-offs. What other advantages can they offer, considering that there are also no commentaries, extra features, multiple audio tracks, subtitles, etc. If the TV shows are anything to go by, they're not even going to be cheaper. So besides convenience, what else will Apple/iTunes put on the table?
Also, I am skeptical that Apple actually commissioned this survey too. Most likely a competitor. But we all know Apple is mulling it over. They need to be careful not to bomb now. This fiasco of a media event should teach them a lesson: Steve Jobs is not god, and Apple is not infallible. They are still on the raggedy edge and need to keep offering things that give users a real value, as well as the "Apple experience."
Originally posted by Mr. H
Um, no. The 950's picture quality is total crap
edit: the mini won't be a decent computer to conect to a tv until Intel's G965 "Broadwater" chipset arrives and Apple make use of all its features.
First link doesn´t work...
Anyone pushing for DVD-or-over quality is not in their right mind. Bandwidth is cheap these days. But it is not free. At DVD quality we are talking 1000+ songs from iTMS!
I would be able to live with a multiple scan H.264 at 700 mb per movie. Remember they only have to do the encoding once so they can take all the time nessesary for making it as good as possible. Heck, they could write a distributed encoder and use all the macs at infinitive loop at night for a couple of weeks and the job would be done.
For $10/month I would be all over this.
Originally posted by DCQ
What would be worse would be to pay someone month after month for the privilege of watching them.
Movies are not like music. People tend to listen to their CDs more often than watching their DVDs so an subscription model for movies are a much better idea than for music. You just have to compare netflix to Any subscription model music store.
Originally posted by Anders
First link doesn´t work...
oops, sorry. It's fixed now.
Originally posted by Anders
I would be able to live with a multiple scan H.264 at 700 mb per movie. Remember they only have to do the encoding once so they can take all the time nessesary for making it as good as possible. Heck, they could write a distributed encoder and use all the macs at infinitive loop at night for a couple of weeks and the job would be done.
First, they should fix their rubbish H.264 implementation. They need "high-profile" H.264. At the moment, QuickTime only implements the "main" profile, which is vastly inferior to "high-profile".
Originally posted by DCQ
What would be worse would be to pay someone month after month for the privilege of watching them.
Do you have a cable or satellite subscription?
HD is another issue. Worse, HD files are overboard for the iPod's screen, so something else would have to be done. Downloads of multiple versions perhaps?
At any rate, while I wouldn't bit unless the offering was HD, I know I'm not the average Joe Consumer. An SD/ED service (720x480 progressive) with DVD quality would be enough for most people. Some would miss the extra features but they can stick with Netflix or whatnot. Others will prefer the convenience and price.
I don't think this is Apple's survey, but I'm sure they're thinking along these lines.
Originally posted by Robin Hood
For $9.99 or ?9.99 a month, I would be likely to subscribe. If it is more, I will not.
Ditto the $9.99 part. Being in the US, I don't ditto the ?9.99 part!
Originally posted by Mr. H
Um, no. The 950's picture quality is total crap
edit: the mini won't be a decent computer to conect to a tv until Intel's G965 "Broadwater" chipset arrives and Apple make use of all its features.
edit 2: link fixed
Yes, I'm sure the 965 will be a superior chip for a Conroe system in September or thereabouts. The PT study commissioned by Nvidia is rather irrelevant, though. They couldn't even get their test monitor hooked up right, they didn't test using a Mac so used some glommed PC kludge with Windows MCE. They were testing DVD playback, not computer output to a TV.
The Mac mini is perfect for hooking up to a TV and playing your iMovies, downloaded videos, photos and slideshows. All of that content is already 30 fps and would look perfect on any TV. If you want to play a commercial DVD, just use the consumer DVD player you probably already have. It'll probably play fine in the mini but what's the point?
As for Conroe, I'm sure Apple will use that in the first PM replacement but I bet they don't use integrated graphics. When the mini is revised, I think it'll be with a Merom system in October unless it gets a radical makeover. I think the iMac revision will be Merom, as well, unless Conroe could work, and it won't use integrated graphics, either.
Originally posted by Rolo
Yes, I'm sure the 965 will be a superior chip for a Conroe system in September or thereabouts. The PT study commissioned by Nvidia is rather irrelevant, though. They couldn't even get their test monitor hooked up right, they didn't test using a Mac so used some glommed PC kludge with Windows MCE. They were testing DVD playback, not computer output to a TV.
The Mac mini is perfect for hooking up to a TV and playing your iMovies, downloaded videos, photos and slideshows. All of that content is already 30 fps and would look perfect on any TV. If you want to play a commercial DVD, just use the consumer DVD player you probably already have. It'll probably play fine in the mini but what's the point?
As for Conroe, I'm sure Apple will use that in the first PM replacement but I bet they don't use integrated graphics. When the mini is revised, I think it'll be with a Merom system in October unless it gets a radical makeover. I think the iMac revision will be Merom, as well, unless Conroe could work, and it won't use integrated graphics, either.
I agree with everything except that I'm not that sure that Apple will go with Conroe. That has been an assumption that has been made by those not working for Apple.
Remember that these same people also said, quite definitely, that the Power- MacBook Pro, and the iMac would wait for the Merom, and that Apple would never use the Yonah in either, for both speed and for the 64 bit question.
They were about as wrong as they could get.
I think that there is at least a 50% chance that Apple will use Woodcrest in the PowerMac revision.
Think about this. The Conroe is a midrange chip. Good at integer, but meh at float. The PM doesn't compete against mid range machines. Every $1,000 PC will end up with a Conroe.
The PM competes against Xeon's and Opteron's. That is both the price class it sells into, and the workload it sells into. Woodcrest is better than Conroe for both reasons. Conroe will be killed by Woodcrest and Opteron.
Scientific users, a large part of the PM's client list, won't be happy with a Conroe machine. Neither will video editors, a big market for Apple's hardware, AND software. If Apple wants to pull more high end 3D ware over to the platform, they have to have something in the low workstation class.
With Conroe pushed back, Woodcrest looks as though it might be out first.
Originally posted by Rolo
If you want to play a commercial DVD, just use the consumer DVD player you probably already have. It'll probably play fine in the mini but what's the point?
Do you not understand the beauty of a living-room PC? Why spend £100 on a DVD player, £150 on a ROKU, and £600 on a DVB-T recorder with hard drive and DVD-RW drive, when you can get all those features and, much, much more in one computer for less money that takes up less space in your living room?
The 950 has integrated MPEG-2 decoding, and Apple's DVD player has always used GPUs to decode MPEG-2. If on the Mac mini, the data pathway is MPEG-2 to the video card, then decoded video back to the CPU for decent de-interlacing, video de-noising, back to the graphics card for Core Video brightness, contrast and colour saturation adjustments, and out to the display, then great. If the whole data pathway is within the 950 GPU, then the video output quality will not be very good.
On a related front, Think Secret has learned that a recent survey from market research firm Coyote Insight asking consumers their preferences on buying or renting full length feature films online is from the Starz Entertainment Group. The online survey was sent to current Vongo members late Monday/early Tuesday asking them a variety of questions, including whether they would like to download and watch a rented movie unlimited times and not have the option of burning it to DVD, or watch and burn to DVD for permanent ownership at price points of US$9.99, $12.99, $14.99 and up.
The survey specifically mentions at one point a scenario where users would access movies through Apple's iTunes service, but sources familiar with the survey said the example was hypothetical and that Apple had no involvement with the survey. The survey is part of Starz' on-going attempt to gauge consumer interest and only that.
Those same sources report that while Starz would be inclined to form a relationship with Apple to distribute movies via iTunes, a buyout of Vongo by Apple is out of the question. If anything, Starz' only interest would be to partner with Apple on distributing movie content, and it has publicly let it be known it would be interested in such a deal under the right technical and financial arrangements. In January, SEG's senior vice president for advanced services, Bob Greene, told MacCentral.com, ?We've had several conversations with Apple. We?d like to develop for the Macintosh and we're thinking throughout how to do that."
It seems that the survey was commissioned by Vongo. This explains the weighted wording used.
I currently subscribe to Netflix. I like it but the biggest advantage is having to wait 2 days to get the movie you want. Often there is a movie that you want to watch *now* and waiting for 2 days can be annoying. Personally, I would rather subscribe for $10 a month than pay $4.99 to download to own a movie. This way you have ALL the movies whenever you want.
However, I would think that the content providers would prefer the download to own model as I would think that it would result in increased revenues for them.
Originally posted by Mr. H
[B]Give me a break! You do know that Apple's H.264 implementation is one of, if not, the, poorest in the industry? And look at the T.V. shows. Lost, for example, is shot in 16:9 HD, but the downloads you get are 4:3 320 x 240.
I know that, I meant that Apple would not release movies if they were badly compressed or bad quality. As long as they were viewed at the desired sizes, they would look excellent, because Apple would not release bad quality stuff, it would just give any competition more time to catch up.
Originally posted by Flounder
*sigh*
Yeah, we get shafted in the US on the bandwith front.
It would probably cost $100/month to get that here.
Hell, I'm paying $35/month for 1.5meg
I pay $30 a month for 5Mbs with Cox Cable in California.