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Video iPod Apple's First Bad Move?
An anonymous reader writes "Apple has had a lot of success with the iPod brand the past few years. The NYT has an article up wondering if, just maybe, this week's release of the video iPod was too soon." From the article: "Everyone from Microsoft to Comcast - in other words, the usual suspects - is working on or looking at similar pocket-size recorders. At least two companies, Pace Micro Technology of Britain and Samsung of South Korea, have said they plan to introduce models early next year. There is also TivoToGo, a service that can forward recorded shows to various mobile devices, even Sony PSP handheld gaming units ... [anyway,] the video iPod only has it half right: if it took material from the television as readily as it did from the Internet, it could be a blockbuster. But then who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of 'Lost' from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free? Unlike its musical forebear, the video iPod may not be ready for prime time. "
Mr. Siklos seems to miss the point, and the details. Apple substantially downplayed the video capability of the iPod, and the audience reaction was understandably lukewarm considering the limited selection and quality of available content.
As for the details: There already is a "bogeyman" of online video: BitTorrent. Hell, it's the bogeyman of online everything, depending on who you ask. It's no centralized Napster, but that's mostly due to the lessons learned from Napster.
There are TV tuners for computers available. How long until it's seamless to drop content from your PVR software into your iTunes Library and onto your iPod? I noticed I can't drag just any video into my iTunes Library, but I haven't played enough to really see about adding my own video.
Trying to wedge PVR functionality into the portable device is overkill. It's a player. Let the computer do the work... that's why it's there.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
"Video iPod Apple's First Bad Move? Unlike its musical forebear, the video iPod may not be ready for prime time. "
First, the ipod was not ready for prime time when it first appeared and yet look at what Apple has accomplished. When the 1st ipod came out in 2001 there was no itunes music store, no cottage industry of ipod accessories, no support for PCs and no cult of ipod. The only way to get music on your ipod was to rip cds yourself or download mp3s and get access to a Mac.
Now it's 2005 and the ipod is firmly entrenched in the American psyche and it is easy to get audio onto an ipod but difficult to get video on it unless you rip dvds or download optimized movie files yourself. The situation is hardly any different.
Second, Apple is not selling a Video-ipod or vpod or anything else that emphasizes video. Apple's selling ipods, some of which have video playback capabilities. These other companies are trying to sell hardware that may have no real market.
http://nyamenation.org/
"But then who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of 'Lost' from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free?"
and why would a person download from iTunes when free P2P networks exist?
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
But you watch the show once, maybe twice, and can listen to the song many many times.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
And why do people pay $1.99 for a ring tone that lasts 30 seconds? As expensive as $2 sounds for a TV episode sounds, you can never underestimate the wastefulness of the consumer. I don't think Apple will find any problems making money off of selling videos, as long as they have reasonable co-operation from networks, and provide enough free content themselves, someone out there will spend the money.
>|<*:=
If the download was fast and I'd missed my favorite show, I might pay $1.99 to see it. It's true that the shows are also likely to be on BitTorrent, but that has legal issues, and the download might not be reliable. For people who don't watch much TV, the occasional $1.99 would work out cheaper than buying a TiVO and a subscription.
I assume you'll be able to watch it on a PC or a TV, not just a tiny iPod screen.
Everyone is quick to attack the leader. Granted it might be too soon, but thats what always has made Apple successful. Yes, there will be other devices that can do video, probably even better than this device (Archos and Cowon make devices like this already).
But they are doing something different. They are creating a market for paying for video content via the Internet. I for one am interested--I don't pay for Cable and getting a decent version of a TV show for $1.99 is a good deal to me. I don't have an iPod, but might I get one once I buy a few episodes? Sure.
Apple is the leader of the pack. Just because they jumped in first doens't mean its too soon. Sould we wait until MS finally realizes its a good idea (late 2006, probably) for such content? No.
I'm not an Apple apologist (or even really a fan), but the one thing that sticks out about Apple's take on this is simplicity.
First, I still know people who have trouble hooking up their own VCRs (and to a lesser extent, DVD players), not to mention programming them. Hooking up a device to a TV to record a show would probably make their heads explode. Setting up the timing just right on a Tivo-like device would also be a daunting task to some.
And second, if programming the device to record a show is too much, you could just sit there and hit 'record' as soon as the show comes on, and 'stop' when it ends, but that sort of defeats the purpose of having a Tivo-like device. Why would these people want to do that when they can pay $1.99 or whatever at any time to get the show they missed the night before?
I think Apple made a good move with the Video iPod. That said, however, I think their initial offering of shows on the iTunes store is pretty pathetic. They should have launched with a slightly larger variety.
Similar devices from other manufacturers will be released NEXT YEAR. Getting your product to the market first is a good thing, not a slip up. Somebody is just an apple hater.
How ya like dat?
But then who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of 'Lost' from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free?
The best reason I can think of is that you don't have to think of it in advance. You don't have to know when it's on; you don't have to remember to program your TiVo/VCR. You can say any time, "Oh, yeah, I think I'd like to watch that" and download it.
Or to put in another way: true cable a la carte, which consumers have been demanding for years and unable to get.
The end of "Oh, was that good? I missed it!" would be a revolution in television.
But then who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of 'Lost' from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free?
Er... those of us without cable television? Who will never have cable television, because we absolutely refuse to pay to view commercials?
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
On the contrary, I think that Apple may be tapping into a potential gold mine. There isn't much of a retail industry around online music video content at the moment. Certainly not in the same way that there is for music. If they can make the online purchase of music videos as ubiquitous as they have done for music, they stand to make a mint.
Then there's "porn in your pocket, anytime, anywhere". Could be just the thing to spice up marital play time after the kids have gone to bed
"But then who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of 'Lost' from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free?"
My response: "But who would pay $.99 to download a song when I could hook up to the radio and download the song for free?"
BECAUSE MY TIME IS WORTH MONEY.
Most people want to highlight why it's bad. With music, as most slashdotters recognise, it's far more portable than video. You can listen to video while driving to work, travelling, standing in line, exercising, jogging, etc. Video requires eyeballs, of course, which are often doing other things. It might work while travelling on a train or plane, standing in line, or exercising, but video is not workable on 40% of the list I mentioned
However:
1) People do want to take video with them. Take a look at the recent portable kid video players. They've mostly been crap, but they are for kids who don't care as much about quality, and for parents who want to occupy their children on long trips and commutes. Also, if you are riding the train to work every day, why not get that extra episode in during the commute?
2) Get into the market now and define the standard everyone has to beat. Those kid players I mentioned were dismissed as toys. The iPod has a mystique as a sexy "entertainment device." The video isn't all that bad, for that size of a screen anyway, and you don't need high quality video for Desperate Housewives, it's a dialog and situationally driven show.
Apple is always on the edge. If they are first to market, a lukewarm response as the front runner is just as good as a strong success in a large field of competitors. Now the competitors have to play catchup while Apple surges forward with new ideas.
3) It's still a 30/60 GB audio iPod. The high end iPods before video could practically be replaced by the shuffle and Nano because those two fill strong niches and are just about perfect for their market segment. The high end iPod needed an update to justify it's existence. In this manner, Apple keeps the high end and justifies distributing new versions. It's similar to the idea of putting a camera in a phone. It won't but hugely useful but it will be cute and people will eventually catch on and want to have it.
Personally, I don't want a Video iPod for any of these reasons and I'm a touch of a videophile so the screen will be way too small for me. Come back to me when someone creates widely available sunglasses that project an image for me that looks like a 30 inch widescreen TV that no one else can see and I'll buy it.
However, in terms of the market, this isn't all that bad as people make it out to be. The NY times smells that, unlike the other products, the video iPod is not a huge smash, and therefore wants to start the FUD right away, just like any other sensationalistic ad-driven media whore of a news paper.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
At some point Apple may choose to release a video device. You can be pretty sure it'll have a much bigger screen than the current iPods.
"But then who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of 'Lost' from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free"
That must be one of the most stupid comments I've ever read. There are about 4 500 million people on this planet who can't record it from television without a satellite disc. Getting something like Lost from an online store is something I've been waiting for ages. It's not about some certain series, it's about same philosophy as in iTunes, there's a never-ending library of albums that you can download when ever you want.
Since VCDs became leechable online, I've downloaded thousands of movies. Last year alone I lost two terabytes of movies in hard disk failures. I'm sick and tired of downloading and archiving everything by myself. It has nothing to do with the money. I can't watch everything when it comes out and especially non-main-stream movies vanish from the Internet in couple of months. There's no other way than download and archive it by yourself, if you wan't to watch it eventually. Ofcourse I could order the same thing from a DVD-shop, but takes over a week. When I want to watch something, I want to do it that day, otherwise 'mood for the movie' is gone.
If iTunes starts to sell movies and series, I'm in! 1-2euros per episode is not much. A good set of pay-tv channels cost 30-50euros/month (atleast where I live). That's about 40e/2e = 20 episodes / month, which is about a season of any tv-series. Therefore, you could buy twelve seasons of tv-episodes for the price of a set of pay-tv channels. At the moment there are barely six series running that I watch, sometimes even less.
And about the video iPod. Fancy technical journalists are comparing it to those pocket tvs that existed over 10 years ago. They didn't sell that well. But has anything changed? Hell yes! I owned one of those crappy tvs at the time. It consumed a set of AA-batteries in two hours and its LCD screen was something like 80x60 pixels. You could barely read subtitles. And they're comparing those to movie iPod.. if it works even half as well as music iPod, it's gonna be a killer product! Mark my words.
As Jobs has stated 3 times; video is a BONUS on top of a normal music player. the iPod has been, is, and will be a MUSIC player. Just like the additional funtionality of being able to display photo's from the photo library, or calendars and contacts, it can now display video from the video/movies library. It is NOT A VIDEO iPod. It's a music player that also happane to play some video formats. It is NOT a dedicated handheld video machine. When Apple built calendars and contacts into teh iPod, did ANYONE headline "Apple's PDA iPod a bad move?"
It's the new iPod. It just happens to do video.
From my point of view they announced the 5th gen iPod, which some were waiting for. For the same price as the 4th gen 60GB iPod color you get one with a better screen, *way* more battery life (going from 12 to 20 hrs) and smaller. Yeah, it does video, but that's not what it's really about. If the feature takes off then expect to see something new, but if it doesn't then who cares - it still costs the same.
The new iPod is what I was holding off for - a regular iPod using the latest PortalPlayer chipset to up the battery life, and maybe some new features. I suppose they might have waited for Hitachi's new 80gig perpendicular drive to up the content, but otherwise I'm happy.
And BTW, I ordered white because it's the One True iPod color. Anyone who orders black is a heretic and should be beaten.
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
This glass is only half full!
I want it thrown out! Give me one that's half empty!
Come on. The device isn't even out yet.
I see this as a great opportunity for the smaller people out there to provide unique content. Podcast subscriptions should point out that people don't want "popular" all the time. What's in itunes' top 20 podcasts?
There's only 2 podcasts that could be tied to a commercial show. Everything else is talk, news, or NPR!
I see a forbear of people willing to give original content a chance here. It's worked out well for ifilm and atom films, why couldn't it work here?
The paid content will come. It's a revenue stream, and there's nothing to suggest that other studios wouldn't follow. It's easy money and they don't have to produce a physical product unlike a DVD. If NBC gets their act together, they'll get WB up with them and get Friends on there. You want to see sales? Get that or Simpsons on there, and you've filled the ipods of every potential future client. That and some CNN broadcast videos and no one will ever complain.
The only misstep I think they made with the ipod is the current paid content. LOST is a very dark show. It's not easy to distinguish jungle environments on a small screen. They should have started with a lineup of more comedy and less drama. They could put "Whose Line Is It Anyway" on there and it would have been a lot better choice that something from the disney channel.
Nothing like low-res porn on a 2-inch screen to get the wife all hot and bothered.
Dude, that just means you look big in comparison.
This is not a losing situation.
The two are entirely different beasts. The price of one has nothing to do with the price of the other.
Realize that a CD of whatever band costs about as much as a DVD of some feature film. The costs of making the content for the CD are *vastly* smaller than the costs of making a feature film, the CD has MUCH less content (and most of it is filler) and there are usually not a lot of extras. Yet it costs... $20. The costs of making a feature film are huge - $100 million isn't uncommon nowadays. Some of them have a huge amount of extra content, and if it's a good movie, it isn't like some scenes are just filler, as on a CD. Yet it costs... $20.
I'm sure Apple did some heavy focus group stuff and found that people would pay more for a tv show, but not that much more. My guess is a lot of it has to do with replayability. I can listen to a song quite a few more times than I will watch a movie. So that's why I would pay almost as much for music as I would for a DVD.
But, my whole point is, other than them both being "entertainment" it isn't like they're actually all that similar from a marketing standpoint.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Okay, here's what a lot of people aren't quite getting:
1. It's not a 'Video iPod', it's just an iPod. This iPod is replacing the previous bunch of iPods. It's the same price, with slighty better features. And it's smaller than the old top-of-the-line iPods.
2. Video is an extra bonus feature.
There is no downside here if you don't think of it as a dedicated video player but rather just think of it as a music player that can also view videos. Apple isn't bringing a video player to market too early, they're bringing out a new version of their extremely popular music player which will also give them the opportunity to capture a big chunk of the portable video market if and when it ever actually appears.
My main complaints with a "Video iPod" when the idea was first breached was that I didn't want to have a player that was too bulky to use as a normal music player like I do with my current 4th Gen 20gig iPod. What Apple actually came out with was a player that was less bulky than the old iPod for the exact same price. And while I wouldn't want to watch movies on the iPod screen, I would be up for watching episodes of television shows and video podcasts (e.g., Rocketboom and the like) on it.
Far from being a mistake, Apple has taken the crappy situation of how to market a portable video player where there's no real portable video player market and has reduced it to the problem of how to sell a music player, which they already know the solution to.
I may be very, horribly wrong about this, but didn't Apple ease into the music buisness by doing what it does best: enabling people to get stuff done? Take something complex and make it simple? I used SoundJam with my old PowerBook, mp3's all over my PB and G3 and then Apple came along, snatched up SoundJam and gave birth to this stupid-simple way to - wait for it - rip, mix, burn all my music. To be perfectly honest, I don't own all the music I've ripped. I have heaps of stuff from ex-girlfriends (glad I always ripped 192kbs w/variable bitrate on) that I never bought. Apple enabled people to do what they've always done in the era of albums and mix tapes - and go one better! Then they brought out a way to transport the music - iPod - and slowly but surely tried to confer legitimacy on something that hitherto had been something slightly dodgy. Now how does this affect video? I wonder ... to me, the test is: does it help me store/view/manipulate stuff I've 'found' on the internet like, say, REVENGE OF THE SITH (hehe) and use it in a meaningful way. Hell, what is meaningful and how do people really want to work with video?! This whole thing strikes me as a mindshare/market research exercise.
Apple wants to know how we consume video and what we want to do with it. And THEN they'll find a way to exploit it for maximum profit.
Best idea I prediction I saw was for movie download/burning stations at Apple Stores across America, creating a wholly new distribution channel for movies.
Discuss!
Obviously you won't find this in any Apple corporate presentations, but pr0n - pornography on the video iPod will help make it a success.
Experiences from countries with 3G cell networks show that a substantial portion of the additional bandwidth available to subscribers is consumed for sex or adult related content. With an efficient distribution and sync mechanism like RSS in the form of podcasting, or should we say pr0ncasting, I am sure the video iPod in current and future incarnations will be a success.
The future is in beta
You're both right, so settle down. You are correct that one can rip DVDs for fair use purposes. Tepples is correct that it's illegal for someone to sell or give you software which actually performs this task.
Since we're talking about an integrated product line from a major corporation, it is correct to point out that the DMCA prevents Apple from selling a "Rip. Mix. Burn." setup for DVDs.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Not very many people were buying music online or music players at the time the iPod came out. But that's irrelevant from what I can tell. It seems to me that Apple finds markets where people think there isn't one by taking a good idea and making it accessible to non-geeks. End of story.
There are other analogs out there to this. Remember what the Internet was like prior to the World Wide Web and Netscape and AOL (shudder) making it accessible to normal human beings? The popularity of the Internet utterly exploded when those came about because suddenly non-geeks could use it. Prior to that, I bet lots of people who use the web on a daily basis would have claimed no need for a computer in their life. A market was created by de-geeking it.
Once they've done that and once they do it in a way that makes sense to people who don't live and work 24/7 behind a keyboard, then they've got a hot product on their hands and a market where nobody saw one before. That's why all these "iPod killers" that have come and gone have failed to make a dent in Apple's dominance. It's not the hardware superiority. It's the overall design, the iPod and how easy it is to use with iTunes and the music store and how well designed it is and the interface and blah blah blah.
So anyone who thinks Apple is going to flub the video iPod is failing to learn from history. Now that TV shows can be downloaded and watched without having to use torrents or Usenet or complicated tools to reassemble large files or download codecs that make it playable, it will certainly be a success. And there are loads of people out there more than happy to pay $2 to avoid all that hassle.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
or as the blurb put it: "who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of 'Lost' from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free?"
People who missed taping an episode?
Screw TV. That's a neat feature, but not why it's going to be a big seller. Its big market is parents with digital cameras. Here's a case study based on my own life.
:-)
We bought a pocket-sized midrange digital camera last spring, with a single 1gb memory card. Like most midrange digital cameras, ours can capture 5 megapixel images and it can record continuous video at TV resolutions up to the limit of its memory. An empty 1gb card can hold abot 700 5-megapixel images or about 700 seconds of video in any combination. It's so powerful and so small that we have pretty much abandoned our other film and video cameras.
We have kids. Kids do cute stuff which we want to show grandma, so we take gobs of digital stills and video. Grandma lives over the river and through the woods and has neither broadband internet nor even a computer. But grandma does have a TV. So to show grandma videos or unprinted stills at her house, we must have a portable player that connects to the TV. The camera came with a cable that lets it output to a TV and it works well enough for playback of both still and video images. The playback interface is rudimentary, but it works so long as someone familiar with the camera is running the show.
But there's a problem with this. When we have the camera full of images to show grandma, we have little or no room on the memory card with which to take more photos or video of our kids or grandma's myriad other grandkids. This is a much bigger problem than those without kids might think.
To solve this problem, we could buy more memory cards and swap them in and out of the camera. It would suck for usability: "Hang on while I swap cards... blast, that's not the right one either. Honey, which card has the video of baby's first cookie?"or "Yeah, I forgot to turn the camera off before I put in the card... but why is the card blank now?" It'd also rapidly become very expensive. Gigabyte SD cards cost about $75 each at Costco, last I looked.
For the price of four additional 1 gig cards, I could get a 30 gig iPod photo. For the price of six, I could get a 60 gig model and still take the kids to see Wallace and Gommit. With even the 30 gig model, we could cart all of our photo and video library to Grandma's house or wherever else we go. We could keep the camera empty and ready to shoot pics of the cousins even while playing videos for granny, instead of tying it to the TV and running down its battery as a rudimentary playback device. And I bet the video iPod's UI will be simple enough that grandma herself can browse the content, instead of one of us running the show while boring her with a typical slideshow monologue.
We needs a video iPod, precious. And we are far from alone in this need.
And that's why TV is just a marketing gimmick. Sure, they'll make money on video download sales. But that's not the killer app... that's just a demonstration that will make the general public take notice of the device's capability to play back anything. Apple is first to market with a general digital media playback device that has a grandma-compliant user interface, and they have incredible brand recognition at the outset. They are going to make an absolute killing off of the digital camera user base, which is just going to keep getting bigger.
This will not be a flop.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Its not video iPod or iPod video. Its a 5th Generation iPod with Video.
iPod video would have its primarily purpose for playing video. The 5G iPod is still primarily music player with some video functionality. Apple is testing the waters, unfortunately way too many ignorant people are calling it a "video iPod" or a "iPod video" when it is not.
The pornpod will be a yanking success. While you will not want to be watching porn in the Mall (according to CNN) you will be subscribing to loads of serial porn. Go porn go! Once again porn drives innovation.
Added Pressly: "Oh, and by the way, milk is nothing but liquid meat."
Smartest post I've read here. Apple was doing well with the iPod, but they screwed up by releasing the a new iPod, with all the old iPod's features, plus some more, at the same price? Huh?
From the consumer's point of view, the iPod has lost *nothing* with the addition of these features-- except maybe some of the bulk, since these new ones are *thinner*. If the iPod was a good device before, then these features don't make it any more complicated or problematic. It just adds a couple features which you might not use. There's no downside here.
Whether or not selling videos for it becomes successful, it's simply a new and improved iPod, and that alone is enough.
Now, if the video capabilities successfully create a market, Apple wins even more. It doesn't make sense for them to ignore that unproven market, when it's obvious that competitors won't. If the market doesn't materialize, Apple has only lost some relatively minor development costs and a couple of bucks/unit in COG.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Except, the $1.99 TV show you might watch once or twice. The 99 cent song you might listen to 100s of times. Plus, you can transfer songs to CDs to play anywhere. You are actually getting a lot more value for money out of the music.
This is typical Apple bashing that we see every quarter. The formula is some pundit picks out the next "threat" to iPod's dominance in the hopes that this will be the quarter that he will be hailed as the person that had the "foresight" to predict's Apple's demise and save his investors lots of money. Before it was the fact that other players that had "more features" which only served to confuse users that wanted something simple. Then it was players that had FM radio.. you know that broadcast medium that plays the same rotation of 20 songs between commercials. Then it was Microsoft's mafia of mediocre media devices, which have yet to get off the ground. Then it was the cell phone. You know, the same cell that can't keep a connection for more than 10 minutes was supposed somehow become the streaming platform that crushed the iPod. Since these pundits have had so much trouble finding another company that can destroy iPod's dominance, they must now look at the only enemy that could possibly defeat it... ITSELF. Problem is, Apple's strategy is perfectly brilliant. First off, they picked television shows instead of movies. I dismissed the video iPod at first because I agree that no one wants to watch movies on a two inch screen. BUT, catching up on a television show you missed is a completely different thing. The primary goal of downloading a television show is to get fill in information before the next episode comes. If that means watching it on a small screen so be it. With the video iPod you get to catch up on your show on the subway or during a lunch break. This is a good thing and a winner that no one else thought of doing. The biggest loser in my opinion is AOL because for years they've been sitting on a huge library of content that they could done the same thing with YEARS AGO. But instead, piracy paralysis kept them from doing anything. Now AOL has egg on its face as it watches Steve Jobs gloat on stage as the *forefather* of video download distribution. AOL could have been giving its client away for free to broadband users and used it as a storefront to download this library. But they failed to sieze the opportunity and they have no one to blame but themselves.
But then who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of 'Lost' from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free?
The same people who pay $5-10 a month for program guide info so they can use their TiVo and record the show, instead of using a VCR for free?
The same people who spend $20 a season to own it on DVD (note: these same people could rip the DVD and convert to a format/resolution for use on their iPod, without having to purchase it again)?
It's not the content, it's the ease of getting the content.
Hey, here's an idea, let's pretend the iPod can't play video...
Mock Press Snippit:
CUPERTINO- This week, Steve Jobs unvieled an update to Apple Computers popular iPod, currently the world's highest selling digital music player, at a special invitation-only press event. The new models are slightly thinner than the previous generation and have larger color screens. They also boast five hours more estimated battery life, and for the first time are now available in black as well as the original white. Prices are unchanged from the previous models, with the 30GB model priced at $299.95, and 60GB for $399.95.
Yeah, that has failure written all over it.
I think the real "breakthough" with the Video iPod is that Apple is resetting the stage for how consumers should approach digital video. Until now, with PVR's, TV Tuner cards, et. al. the conventional approach has placed the burden on the consumer to understand all the different video formats (AVI, MPG, Tivo, DVR-MS, DVD, DivX, etc.), which ones work on which platforms, how to convert between formats (where allowed), how to crack formats where not allowed (DeCSS, cracking TivoToGo, etc.), and most importantly, each user is on their own to transcode the file to fit a different target device. (i.e. DVDShrink to make a full movie fit on a single-layer DVD, or downsample a video files to play on a small screen, etc.) This is a consumer nightmare and even for techies. I tried Tivo ToGo and sure, it's cool to be able to view the contents of your Tivo through web services, pull files across (slowly). But grabbing a 1 hour TV show across a fast wired lan and then transcoding it so you can view it on a PDA or other device takes forever. Even just transcoding to burn it to an official Tivo sanctioned DVD for offline viewing takes much too long. With the video iPod Apple is saying that for a nominal fee they will arrange the transcoding/encoding for you and have the file ready to download. Seems to me very similiar logic to music file sharing - instead of the hassle of Kazza, spyware, pop-ups, and the RIAA police, for a nominal fee you can download a song reliably. So in this vein, the video ipod is really about setting consumer expectations for easy-of-use and simplicity. I'm sure the content floodgates will be opening soon enough.
Honestly, the new iPod seems like a proof of concept more than the destination. It is going to have to support HD, or at least HD output in the near future to be relevant. The two situations are not perfect parallels. There are several other differences, including the ability to rip CDs vs DCMA protected DVDs and the presence of the iTunes store (there at launch for video, not there for iPod). Some consumers really care about HD. Many don't right now. This will be more of an issue in two years, by which time there will be a product to accomodate HD. I wouldn't be surprised if the next rev (in a year?) has a widescreen and HD support.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Apple has made several bad moves, such as the Lisa and Apple III.
Apple survived, mainly because of their culture to innovate.
As others have said better than I can, the Video iPod is probably not a bad move.
It isn't the first pocket video machine, and isn't the best.
And who needs a pocket video machine anyway?
But it is too early to label it a "bad move". The recent history of the iPod makes me think this thing will be wildly successful.
I don't think it's disingenuous at all. There is NO DIFFERENCE between a Tivo and a computer, apart from the user interface. If the user interface is geared towards recording and watching video, there's no "psychological aversion" to watching programming on a computer.
Apple is taking baby steps. They're not making Huge Revolutionary Steps, because the last company that did that (Tivo) is getting jacked by the content owners and the cable companies. I think Apple's caution is very wise.
Is the current remote/Front Row/iMac combination going to replace Aunt Tillie's VCR? Obviously not.
But, it is a proof-of-concept, and it's easy to imagine Apple adding functionality until it can, and will.
Or maybe I'm wrong and you're right...but I don't think so.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!