Apple have announced their first video iPod, in 30gb and 60gb flavours. Wired report that it will play video clips downloaded from the iTunes music store, but also that it will play any video that is converted to QuickTime.

Update! ABC are reporting that Disney will soon begin offering next day digital downloads of shows like Desperate Housewives and Lost for around AU$2.63 an episode! A great step forward; hopefully iTunes will come to Australia at some point in the near future.

forgive me if im wrong but isn't there already a thread called 'New ipod released' that reports the same thing?

That was so 31 mins ago

I find it wierd how people will pay money to watch tv shows or movies on such a small screen. I remember back in the 80's it was cool to have a tv the size of your watch and then in the 90's thru to now big tv's are where it's at. Anyway, I'm ranting and will stop now.

On another note, we had some guy have a sad at work because we told him we prolly wouldn't be stocking the PSP movies at work. Anyway, he had gone out specifically to buy one of these and only use it to watch movies while he's in bed. WTF would you wanna watch a movie on a screen the size of a postage stamp?

8-)

forgive me if im wrong but isn't there already a thread called 'New ipod released' that reports the same thing?

I tried to promote it but couldn't without practically rewriting it, which I don't like doing

Yeah don't know why anyone would want to watch TV on tiny screen either. If I were to buy an Apple music player I'd get iPod Nano, because it's small, solid state.

more lame gadgets for lamers with no women to spend money on

HEYYYY! I have a woman... grmbl.

The main reason I really wanted something like an ipod was to have a phat portable hdd for transfering gigs of mp3s & wotnot from my work & home computers. Instead I bought one of those ata hdd cradles that turns any old pata hdd into a portable external usb hdd. sorted.
Now i'll just buy a 1gb flashdrive for a portable music player. :D

the ipods good dont get me wrong but its annoying when they do incremental updates to the product that could have been put in years ago, it wouldnt be very hard for them to do away with all the accesories but its another thing they make money off

Was this so 31 minutes ago as well? http://static.flickr.com/30/51912132_1699c31ce0_o.jpg

Updated news item with word of the TV shows that will be on offer.

Man, Apple are legends.

~$2.60 sounds pretty good when you consider a boxed set of DVDs is probably going to be at least $40 - so it works out at a pretty good price. I assume all these episodes will be in DRM'ed QuickTime, but I'm sure they'll be great quality and I'm also sure DVD Jon will be figuring out a way to open them up so people can actually enjoy the media that they've bought.

All I want is for Front Row to be released for other Macs. This could finally be the missing link between Mac Mini and Media Centre.

Hopefully iTunes Australia will be announced soon... pretty please Mr Jobs. & Sony

Sounds great. I'd pay 2.60ish for an episode. 30GB is great too.

tv shows, good step forward. Im sure people would warez american tv shows less if we no longer had to wait for channel 7 to catch up.

Sounds great. But quicktime sucks the wang.

Hmm, I wonder if these episodes are encoded for play on the iPod (ie, low-as-s*** quality and resolution)? Or if they're good high-res eps that are comparable to what you'd find if you were downloading them via BT or something?

^^^ AFAIK they'll be encoded for low res viewing only, this would make sense because

1) It'll take forver to download HD res one
2) Discourage people to crack the DRM because the quality of the movies are crap and you can't really watch it on your TV.

My $0.02

(at a net kiosk, excuse fast typing and braindump)

The video is 320x240, but it's encoded with H.264, so the quality is around the same as your usual non-HDTV torrent rip, maybe better in some cases.

The DRM allows you to play it on 5 computers, and whatever iPods you connect to your computer - so basically, the same as the iTMS music.

Lost and Desperate Housewives are there for download now, with episodes available the day after airing - which is awesome. It's basically paying $2 for a dedicated legal connection for TV rips.

Considering that TV networks are already sabotaging torrents with bad packets and fake seeds, I'd gladly pay $2 to avoid the trouble of hunting for a non polluted torrent. I'm looking at you, HBO

Once Apple integrate an HDTV tuner/PVR bit into FrontRow, then the circle will be complete, and Apple will have captured the living room right from under MS's and TiVo's noses.

yeah I'd be interested to know what the quality is like, whether they're tiny 200x320 res or whether they're decent on say a TV or monitor screen

Is 320x200 going to scale up OK on a TV? Even if its H.264?

WTF is H.264?

h.264 is the new whizzbang codec that everyone is blowing over at the moment - its in use on the PSP and is the main thing (or one of the main things, haven't read the full feature list too closely) of the new QuickTime 7.

Here is some far-too-detailed info on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264. A better (simpler) description is on this quicktime page.

last edited by trog at 13:37:34 14/Oct/05

If it's encoded with H.264 then it'd probably be ok to watch it on your TV. Didn't know what codec they'd used to encode that was why I thought it'd be crap :)

The codec may be all well and good, but that resolution really doesnt cut it for me. To put things in perspective, it's half that of the commonly downloaded HDTV rips and a quarter of HR.HDTV rips.

Basically, the 128kbps mp3 equivalent of video encoding. It's a step in the right direction and should definitely be encouraged, but they're going to have to do better to beat piracy's current offerings.

The real question still remains unanswered - if indeed iTunes Shop Australia opens up...will they offer these tv shows?

My bet is "not a chance in hell"

why would you want to watch those rubbish shows anyway?

we never said anything about buying those ones :P but if they take off then other shows will be available ^_^