Video iPod

M

MonsieurBond

Registered User
Messages
819
Anyone pre-ordered the new [broken link removed] yet? (NY Daily News article - )

Looks very nice - clear and bright colour screen, device itself is fairly thin.

€329 from the Apple Store.

Plays MPEG-4 but not DIVX which is unfortunate but I suppose you can always convert any DIVX moves you have.
I was expecting the screen to be bigger and on its side. It looks small compared to the Archos players, but the price is competitive enough.

I won't be buying one myself as I recently spent €269 on the iPod Nano!
Ouch!
 
Nah wont be getting one of these

Getting an Archos AV420 so it should arrive soon

It seems to do everything I want, well except for the ironing

so this w/e I will be trying to figure it out???
 
ClubMan said:
I don't get the attraction of playing movies on a tiny screen myself...
Click to expand...

Well, you can output it to a TV...

But it is not really optimised for that - the video downloads are formatted for half-VGA screen size (see the Register article).

To be honest, I was expecting the screen to be bigger. It's not really a Video iPod - it's the next gen (5th gen) iPod which happens to play videos as well. In fact, they will no longer be selling the non-Video iPods any more, apart from the nano & Shuffle.

So, if you were thinking of buying a full size iPod, you get the Video capability to play with "for free". If you don't want this or don't need 30GB of hard disk, and especially if you want a very small device, you are probably better with a nano (although you must budget for a cover).

The people who will be most annoyed will be those who have just bought a full size iPod....

Apart from all of this, I think anything that promotes the use of legal video downloads is a good thing. €1.99 for an episode of Lost (even if it is low quality) is not too high a price - there may even be a discount if you buy 24 episodes. This makes the DVD box set look a little bit expensive - part one of the boxset i.e. 12 episodes is €40 online and a complete rip-off in the likes of HMV where it sells for over €50!
 
ClubMan said:
I don't get the attraction of playing movies on a tiny screen myself...
Click to expand...

I, who spend the guts of 90 minutes on the DART every day, have often mused about getting something like this to watch whatever I currently tape using the VCR.
Then I think of the price and the actual use I would make of it and the sheer geekiness of watching TV on public transport and decide to put it off for another while.
I saw my first PSP in use on the DART last week and the owner was a poster boy for Nerds.
 
TarfHead said:
I saw my first PSP in use on the DART last week and the owner was a poster boy for Nerds.
Click to expand...
Ditto on the Luas the other night. I had visions of the geek getting mugged in Tallaght for his PSP.
 

It is a shame if the resolution is so low as this could be a handy way to buy legal downloads and watch them on any TV you wanted. Are TV shows available outside the US though? I installed iTunes 6 and all I could see were music videos and movie trailers. I am guessing the TV shows could involve rights issues as TV stations with the rights outside the US are generally far behind the US showings.

I agree with others on the small screen, I can't see the attraction. Maybe in a good few years when technology advances to the stage where we have portable large screens or psuedo large screens portable video players might actually be of some value.
 

You are right, the TV shows are only available in the U.S. at present, for obvious reasons.

In terms of video format, according to the [broken link removed] page, it supports the following video formats:

H.264 video: up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats

MPEG-4 video: up to 2.5 mbps, 480 x 480, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats
​
480 x 480 is not bad - many DIVX movies I have seen/downloaded are in this sort of resolution.


Pity you can't record from the TV via in input cable...
 
If you are interested in the subject of (the lack of) DIVX support on the iPod Video and on the video pricing model, there's an extremely interesting article on [broken link removed].
 
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