iTunes Music Store Sells Videos 603
bonch writes "With the recent release of iTunes 4.8 and its ability to manage and play videos, several users are discovering that iTunes is now selling videos through the online store. One example is the 'Feel Good Inc.' single used in the recent rollerskating iPod ad. The videos are provided in DRM-less .mp4 format encoded in 3ivx D4 4.5 and are available with purchase of the album."
Okay, so (Score:3, Insightful)
Building a device perfectly capable of playing video and using it to display photos is insanity.
Is there a stevenote at the WWDC this year? Do you think maybe they'll announce a video iPod then?
Also: if the videos are un-DRMed mp4, does this mean they could be loaded onto a PSP or Nintendo DS play-yan?
Testbed for OTHER non-drm video (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:but still no... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's only vaporware if they said it was coming. I try to keep up on Apple news, but I don't remember Apple ever promising that iTunes was coming to Australia, so therefore they owe you nothing. I've heard that an actor and a musician said it was coming, but not Apple. If they made that promise, please post the link. I'd love to get more Chumbawumba songs. (No, really, I would.)
Frankly (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:How long until feature films... (Score:2, Insightful)
As long as they have hardware to decode the movie files, you can just plug your iPod into a TV through AV cables (about 20 bucks for iPod photo).
I'm surprised they're using DivX to encode it instead of H.264
Re:but still no... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Year of HD, coming soon! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft already does (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:FLAC or Apple Lossless first! (Score:5, Insightful)
As it stands now, if you burn your 128k AAC purchase from iTMS to a CD and re-rip the result to strip off the FairPlay DRM in an Apple-sanctioned manner, you've either a) lost some quality along the way by using another lossy format to re-encode, or b) grossly oversized the file by using Apple Lossless to re-encode the previously lossy material. But if they offer lossless tunes for download, then that same process will result in a perfect DRM-less copy (unless of course faulty hardware or something similar caused a bit or two to get lost along the way).
They'd never be able to sell the record companies on that one. So, unfortunately, I doubt we'll ever see lossless downloads from iTMS unless they prevented them from ever being burned to CD (in which case a lot of the desirability flies right out the window).
-Frank
Re:Does the MacMini figure into this? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Mac mini is meant to be a computer, nothing more. It was designed to be an inexpensive entry to the Mac product line for people who already own PCs and want to step up to something better. It doesn't have anything like the CPU power required for HD playback. You might be able to squeeze 4 Mbps out of it, maybe, if you hold your mouth just right and you're willing to live with some dropped frames. But anything more is not going to be an option this year, and maybe not next either.
And the iPod is not repeat not gonna say it one more time not meant to be a video-playback device. It's not even remotely designed for it. The iPod has a tiny hard drive that's designed for embedded applications, and a 32 MB (I think it is) RAM buffer cache that's optimized for dealing with song-sized chunks of data. That's about 4 MB. Even a half hour of HD content is gonna be half a gigabyte. There's basically no way for the iPod to play that without constantly keeping the hard drive running, and that will burn out the drive very quickly. Seriously, under constant use, the iPod hard drives' life spans are measured in tens of hours.
(How can we do photos, then? Easy. Photos are even smaller than songs. And unlike video, people often do want to carry photos around with them. Keep reading.)
Remember when I said the problem was part technology and part psychology? People like to listen to music while they do other things: Ride on the train, exercise, shop. People like to multi-task with their music.
Video, whether short-form like TV or long-form like movies, isn't like that. Video is an immersive experience. You sit down and you watch it, and you don't do anything else until it's over. That's a totally different interaction model than music.
So there's basically zero reason for video to be portable. You're not going to carry it around with you. You're going to watch it at home.
Exceptions? Sure. But Apple isn't a company that makes a habit of marketing to the exceptions. We shoot for a pretty clearly defined target market and let the exceptions buy their gadgets somewhere else. Chiefly because there aren't nearly enough exceptions out there to make it worth going after, financially speaking. We'd never be able to recover what we invest in R&D and design by selling a few hundred thousand units. We have to sell millions of units per quarter, otherwise the business plan just doesn't work.
Re:The Year of HD, coming soon! (Score:5, Insightful)
And when you've bought it, head over to http://www.misticriver.net/ [misticriver.net] to figure out how to use it.
is why this:
iRiver = iPod Killer.
Will never be true
Re:Okay, so (Score:5, Insightful)
Watching video on a 2 inch screen is insanity. No. It's just completely fucking stupid.
You are him! (Score:1, Insightful)
Points of Evidence:
#1: That stuff about watching videos and listening to music is EXACTLY what Jobs said....
#2: Regular employees, tend to know a lot about their division and not much about other division. Since you know details about hardware and software, this makes you either an Apple zealot (who has memorized all the hardware configurations and knows how to use every software product), or someone allowed to see the BIG picture, which puts you in upper management.
#3: You are not afraid of getting fired: Which means if you DO work for Apple you are untouchable. Aside from Steve (who can really only be fired by massive stock holder no-confidence vote) and maybe Philip Schiller (Who like Steve has also been Seen on TV), everyone at Apple is fireable.
Re:but still no... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where's As Seen On TV when we need him???? (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither Apple's management nor Apple's shareholders give a shit about what the "alpha geeks" think.
I know, I know. It's harsh. But it's absolutely true. See, the "alpha geeks" are not our market. We don't sell to them. The "alpha geeks" are defined by one key characteristic: they're irrational. Now, I'm not trying to insult you. I mean it literally. Geeks are not rational. They base their purchasing decisions on things that, from a rational point of view, just don't make any sense. Things like politics, lack "openness," like "customizability." Things that just don't add up in the cost-benefit analysis.
That's fine. That's totally legitimate. But it's not our business.
We sell products to people who want them to work. We don't sell products to people who want to take them apart. There are other companies that do that. We don't seek to dominate them or to put them out of business. We don't see them as competition at all, because the kinds of people who buy our products would never buy a motherboard. They'd never buy Linux. Never in a million years.
Is there some overlap? Sure. We love the fact that some prominent hard-core geeks use Macs. But we're not going to abandon our business plan to woo them. We're not going to turn our backs on the vast and untapped market for next-generation content delivery services, a market which we basically created, in order to please some Internet message board guys.
Again, I'm sorry for sounding so harsh here. I don't mean to be rude. I'm just not going to sugar-coat it for you. You do your thing, whatever makes you happy. We'll do ours.
Re:Is Mac Mini a stealth PVR/movie on demand devic (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like EVERY GRAPHICS CARD IN THE PAST 5 YEARS. Give me a break.
Excellent? Really? Quicktime streaming isn't any better than any other streaming technology I've seen. Besides, it's not as if Apple's streaming server is some secret technology that only they happen to have access to (as iTunes is), absolutely anyone else could stream media using the exact same protocols and even the exact same software.
No it couldn't. The Mac Mini isn't really powerful enough to playback HDTV video in realtime on it's CPU, and it only has hardware support for MPEG-2 playback. Nobody is going to want to download 30+GBs of MPEG-2 video just to watch a 30-minute video (minus commercials). So, any HDTV service would use a more advanced codec such as MPEG-4 AVC (H.264)/VP6/etc., which the Mac Mini doesn't have the power to playback.
Besides, if the Mac Mini was intended as an HDTV PVR, it would have come with a 3.5" HDD that could hold 300GBs, not a tiny drive, requiring numerous external expansion devices. Remember the iMac? Jobs would simply never put out a device that needs all sorts of add-on hardware.
Re:Where's As Seen On TV when we need him???? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Okay, so (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is Mac Mini a stealth PVR/movie on demand devic (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh and never mind that they keep relentlessly plodding forward with the video technology like Pixlet and Core Video.
So, yeah, go ahead and scoff. A lot of people scoffed at the iPod and iTunes at first too. However, to those of us paying attention, this almost seems obvious at this point.
Re:Who is this guy? ASOT unmasked! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where's As Seen On TV when we need him???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, my point is this: geeky Mac users may be a small group, but we're more influential than you apparently think. Don't piss us off.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where's As Seen On TV when we need him???? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the Geek Vanguard is not Apple's market, why are you guys so insistent about articulating Apple's positions to them? Obviously the perceptions of this community is important to Apple's advocates or we wouldn't see you here.
Try this riddle (Score:3, Insightful)
... a processor [apple.com] powerful enough to playback HDTV
... a video card [apple.com] able to decode MPEG-4
... an OS that includes a H.264 client [apple.com]
... a BTO option for a 400 GB [apple.com], 7200 RPM internal hard drive
... a double-layer DVD burner [apple.com] capable of archiving large movies
... a VESA mount [apple.com] for dramatic installations
... and a 17" or 20" 16:10 [apple.com] aspect ratio screen built in?
Give up? [apple.com]
Now that's what I call an Apple PVR!
Re:Not all of us need the fluff (Score:3, Insightful)
You will, however, see dual-G4 PowerBooks. This makes the most sense and would provide the biggest gain in performance for not much tradeoff in heat and power consumption.
Re:Where's As Seen On TV when we need him???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple is a clever company with clever people. Surely they realize how important the "network" factor is. Surely they realize that little rocks dropped in this pond spread pretty far?