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New iPods on the Horizon
RemovableBait writes "Apple Computer plans to introduce more iPods before the end of the year", a company executive said Tuesday. From the article: Executive Vice President Tim Cook didn't say whether the new iPods will come at a press event Apple has scheduled for Wednesday morning. But during a conference call with analysts, he suggested that the iPod Nano won't be the last new iPod of the year."
Shuffle (512MB or 1024MB)
Nano (2GB or 4GB)
Normal (20GB or 60GB)
3 types, 2 size choices for each, with a nice $50 price difference for each model.
I think Apple are really good when it comes to coming up with a product lineup. It's other suppliers that are too confusing.
-- The doctor said I wouldn't get so many nose bleeds if I just kept my finger out of there!
If you want to catch the latest products about to be released today, check out the rumor sites at 10am PDT, I'm sure one of them will be following it. They currently think the Video iPod will debut today.
thinksecret
appleinsider
Or just checkout apple's website later today!
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
It's not about the resolution, it's about the compression.
With h.264 even HD files can be compressed to a manageable size. With iPod's large storage capacity one could easily carry half a dozen movies on it.
With a video out, all you'd need is a TV to plug it in.
The problems are, and I have no idea if they have been solved:
-the battery life for outputting a movie
-is the iPod beefy enough for h.264 decoding? (Possibly, through a dedicated hardware chip)
Here's a good real-world explanation of h.264 and what it can do for HD.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Maybe not indestructible, but they're already pretty damn tough http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/nano.ars/3
What sort of length are we talking about? You can get 4 hours of video onto a DVD of 4.7GB (of a quality that you couldn't get better than on your typical household TV. If you have a fantastic plasma screen you may notice an improvement at 3 hours/DVD). So a 60GB iPod would hold about 2000 songs and 40 hours of DVD quality video. I'm sure they will be releasing larger hard drives at some point, this isn't going to require a fundamental overhaul.
Here's a link to live coverage of the event: http://live.macobserver.com/article/2005/10/specia levent_keynote.shtml
I tend to agree.
3 8-D9FB-1055-973683414B7F0000 would not, however.
I'm sure the author of this piece http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0006AD
=======
Science -- Sealed, Delivered.
The compression that DVDs use is pretty old and crappy.
A 600M xvid file will give you a movie at DVD quality.
I'm sure there are lots of other formats out there that will give you just as good, and probably better quality.
I find it interesting that you said this right after Apple announced that sales of Mac-hardware increased by about 50% when compared to last year. If that means that Mac is "dying", I would LOVE to see what it would be like when it's thriving!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
OK, according to the rumour mill there will likely be a new iPod today, but let's get it straight here: Cook said Apple has some innovative new products up its sleeve, but did not mention whether those products are iPods.
If this story wasn't so misleading I wouldn't have even bothered to read the linked article. Please, Slashdot, be more careful ... this is misinformation that wastes my valuable nerd time.
Not a couple of seconds, but a small fraction of a second (yet still noticeable that its there)? Yes, they do.
However, iTunes includes the ability to turn your multiple tracks into one big file in order to cut the gap out, if it really bothers you. It seems to be some sort of problem with the way mp3 files decode, as Winamp does it too if you don't use an additional plugin that crossfades on the fly.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
H.264 IS mepeg 4
The compression that DVDs use is pretty old and crappy.
It's the same compression used in our HDTV standard. It's intended for use at high bit rates, like HDTV or DVD. You're not going to get any better quality at those bit rates using another encoding scheme.
A 600M xvid file will give you a movie at DVD quality.
No, it won't. It may look similar, and maybe you have to take your eyes off the foreground action to see what xvid is doing to your movies, but I have never, ever seen any xvid rip that comes close to the original DVD.
xvid and other mpeg-4 standards do well at what they're intended for - creating good-looking video at low bit rates. One of the intents of mpeg-4 (including h.264, which is mpeg-4 part 10) is delivery of high-quality movies over the internet. At that, xvid does a good job, but that doesn't mean an xvid movie encoded at 1mbps is going to look anywhere near as good as a DVD encoded at 9mbps. It never will. It's not possible. It will look "good enough" for some people, but not for those who are really interested in quality.
mpeg-2 does not do well at low bit rates required for things like web delivery. This is one big reason why mpeg-4 was created. But if you're talking about encoding a movie such that it looks basically indistinguishable from the original, both mpeg-2 and mpeg-4 are going to require similarly high bit rates. (And yes, I've downloaded Apple's h.264 videos, before anyone brings that up - they are very large, if you've noticed. Some of them hit a couple hundred megabytes for 2-3 minutes of video.)
People get this mixed up; they think because mpeg-4 is newer that it is more advanced than mpeg-2 in every way. It's not. It's better at low bit rates, but even comparing directly at similarly low bit rates, "better" does not mean "perfect". At high bit rates and otherwise identical settings, you can't tell the difference between the two standards.
I encode video both as part of my job and also for laughs at home (and I've tried pretty much everything, including h.264 using Nero Digital, xvid, divx, QuickTime, WM9 and mpeg-2), so I have some level of practical experience with this. At home, I still actually just use mpeg-2 more often than not, because h.264 support is so spotty right now and the quality at the bit rates I use is the same between the two formats. For stuff I want people to download over the web, I've actually gotten better results with WM9 than I have with h.264 yet (probably mainly because playback support of h.264 is so spotty right now).
The iPod has been around for four years as of next week.
The reason you get modded "flame" or "troll" when suggesting that iPods are coasting on a "hype bubble" or some such is because that is a flaming troll. We're well past the point of hype.
Someone above laughably said: "When the iPods first came out they were cool, now they're just a fad." Zuh? No, they were a fad when they came out. That's what a fad is. It's long past a fad at this point. Now it's just plain old "cool" reaching the point of "standard equipment" for a certain (affluent) section of the population.
Seriously. Four years of steadily increasing sales != fad or hype. Exactly, precisely, inimitably the opposite.
This picture of the new ipod has just been posted up on macrumors:
http://www.macrumors.com/downloads/5G_ipod.jpg
Looks legit to me, has a larger screen but not as large as everyone seems to be expecting.
A friend of mine who reads chinese says that one of the options means "repeat broadcast" maybe a chinese slasdot member could conrim it.
Here's the info so far: - iMac: faster, larger disk, built in iSight. Includes FrontRow (app) /. yet at macrumors.com
- iPod: 30GB/60GB with Video - realtime decoding of MPEG4 and H.264. 260,000 colors. Video out.
- FrontRow and PhotoBooth Apps.
- 30GB iPod: $299 - 31% thinner than current 20GB; - 60GB iPod: $399.
- New iPods avail next week. Comes with case
- iMac: $1299 for 17" model with 1.5GHz, $1799 for 20" model with 2.1GHz
- iTunes 6 to be released
- Front Row - comes with new iMacs. Lets you enjoy video/music/pictures from sofa. Everything
still displayed on iMac screen. iPod-like remote. 6 button remote.
- Photobooth - appears to be slide show application.
- Music Videos. 2000 available to buy. $1.99 each.
- Can "gift" music to other people. Peer reviews and recommendation service.
They keep updating and aren't
// no
A Shuffle in an iVault is probably about as close to indestructible as any portable electronics appliance ever made, excepting submersion.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?