Apple predictions, how video is useful
Troy posts some predictions for Apple's October 12 event. He figures Intel-based Powerbooks and iPod Minis that have no hard drives. He also says "I really doubt all this nonsense about video iPods. I just can't see it. Video is not that useful to people".
Well, I've already speculated that an Airport Express Video might be more likely than a video iPod (I would buy a Sony PSP over a video iPod...but that would mean Apple would need to allow Fairplay DRM to be built into the PSP, which seems unlikely).
I've been writing about iTunes Movies since October 2004...when the iPod Photo came out. I really do think video is "useful" to people. At least, in the small world of anecdotal stories.
Apple has stopped posting new music video content for the past couple of weeks. This seems to be one indication that *something* with video is coming. What if they did offer video content? Movies? TV Shows? I mean, Google Video is already going to be offering UPN's "Everybody Hates Chris".
I would pay for video. I don't have cable, but I do have a very nice screen and computer. I have no way of getting legal video content. The posting How Bob the Millionaire Became a Pirate, describing how it is impossible to get video online, is a good illustration of the problem.
What would Apple price video at? Movies vs. TV shows would of course have separate pricing. I can't see movies going for any less than $9.99. So let's say TV shows are $4.99 each. That's 5 shows per month vs. basic cable at $25, or 13 shows per month vs. full cable at $65. The numbers seem to make sense...if the movie industry actually makes it possible.
Of course, copyrights are once again per country, so it will be years before we get this in Canada. Regardless of what the "one more thing..." is, we're all looking forward to the unveiling this Wednesday.
Update: Jeremy Hubert whispers about inside sources, suggesting that there are indeed video *things* in the works for tomorrow. As well, Roland and I went to Simply Computing today, and they are out of stock on PowerMacs and PowerBooks. Will it, in fact, not be one more thing, but but a bunch more things?
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Movie pricing
I think $9.99 is _way_ too much. It costs me $4 to rent a movie right now. That includes either a 2 minute walk or a 5 minute drive (ok, so the latter will cost me a little extra, indirectly). But I'd never pay more than $5 for renting a movie, even if it would allow me to do it with a single click.
It's not renting
A new DVD is $15 - $30. Makes sense that a downloadable one would be $10 for *purchase*, not rental. If it were rental (some nonsense about the file "expiring" in some way), I would expect it to be significantly less. I can't see a rental model working particularly well, since it's more technically difficult to have a file expire.
Video Pod - what for?
I don't see any point for video pods, and much more than that, the video iPod is totally infeasible. Video needs a big PSP screen to be valuable. But that screen, a video processor, and a hard drive, suck a ton of juice. This is why the PSP has UMD and not a hard drive - UMD doesn't constantly suck juice because you can remove the disk. You can't remove a hard drive from the iPod, which means it is always sucking juice.
The net result is that you need a BIG device if you want a hard drive, big screen, and video. Probably the size of a portable DVD players.
Further, what is the use of video that small? All this looks like is another attempt to stuff advertising in our faces, or for teenagers to watch the latest "music" "video".
It doesn't have the star appeal like the iPod because the iPod stores huge amounts of music and it's incredibly small.
Here's an alternative: What about Cringely's idea of online video rental and transfer using the Mini?
What is an Airport Express Video?
No mention of a video iPod
Graham, read again: I don't mention a video iPod (although I have written up what I believe in the past). As Nathan commented, the numbers actually work for using the iPod as a storage device...playback would be via a video out port.
I also linked to what an Airport Express Video might be.
My entire write up is about Apple offering a video download service.
Ooops, yeah.
My bad. Video downloads on the net could, potentially, be a driver for faster Internet connections, so broadband companies might like that.
Cringely estimated that with a 4 megabit downstream, Apple could offer movies at 720 lines, which is impressive.
What remains to be seen, if this is what they intro, is who has access to it. MacMini only? Mac only?
While HD content might be nice, the next gen of DVD format is just around the corner, so why would you download, when you can buy, and own the thing forever? There are plenty of DVDs at stores going for $10. HD DVDs won't.
Actually, that raises a question - will Apple change its pricing model from a per-purchase format to a monthly fee, unlimited access model? I recall a few articles on how the music business liked the monthly fee model better, it will be interesting to see who won that battle, if it happened.
I think you fail to see what
I think you fail to see what brought the invention of iPod.
This is why you can’t see the use for video pods.
Just as the invention of the television out preformed the transistor radio is the same reason video pods will supersede everything ipod has done and more.
Cheap illegal music, available around the world created the vessel that is iPod.
How can you honestly think that cheaper, portable and more available video content, wouldn’t become more useful than the mega popular DVD.
With IPods pushing hard drive capacity of 40 gigs or more how did you not see this comming.With the size of average encoded DVD weighting in at 700mb and hour long TV at anywhere between 350-450 (depending on your version of VCD or HDTV release.) you have the potential to store full libraries into that of an iPod.
All of which will cost you less than the price of a portable DVD player.
And in turn what’s the point of paying distributors all that money for marketing and packaging when you can push digital copies to the masses for fractions of the cost via the web.
I’m sure many of you who read this are going to bring up the issue of serving the masses with terabytes of bandwidth to distribute these very copies.
Ah yes server costs.
Well i'm sure half of you wondering about that have probably thought of the idea of p2p networks ... think bigger.Bittorrent.
Well ladies and gents Microsoft has been in their works of their very own version known as avalanche for a couple years. They obviously see the potential.
Now that Bittorrent has been sold off to VC firm DCM-Doll, feel free to do your own math.
Many Indy and short films have already pushed their films to millions of people around the globe. Albeit free it’s something that has never been possible without hordes of cash. The limit is truly the sky and more and more people will attempt to harness this technology as a whole.
iPod and Zen are just the beginning what about portable divx players. Everyone has to be familiar with the growing trend of DVD players adopting newer and high quality formats.
It’s a revolution of sorts created by the publics craving for multimedia on a global scale.
Rant off,
-Nahan
My Predictions
I'd love to see Airport (AirMac in Japan) Express Video. I actually didn't believe this would be feasibled to do this with DVD-quality video and surround sound and still leave any bandwidth left, and was going to post this nitpick, but it looks like DVD video+audio typically looks like 6Mb/s which is about 10% of the 54Mb/s max available I'd use an iTunes Movie Store download service <b>if</b> I (a) had a way to stream it to my (miniscule) TV and (b) if I could burn to DVD with iDVD for later. Sadly if they do video, it'll be tricker than audio, since they'll need both NTSC/PAL support to get the whole world, and if they want to hit the HD video crowd (I haven't looked at bandwidth for this) maybe other standards issues. Anyway, I hope you're right; and I hope it's also avaialble in other countries faster than iTunes Music Store was... we just got it here a few months ago. Not only that, but I hope that they do it right and we get the option of subtitles in multiple languages as well so both I and Yasuko can watch the same film at the same time.