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Video iPod Screen Test
Carl Bialik writes "The Wall Street Journal's Walter S. Mossberg has an interesting review of Apple's video iPod. From the article: 'It's a surprisingly decent video player, with crisp, smooth vivid playback of TV shows, music videos, short films, video podcasts and home videos. We wouldn't want to watch a full-length movie on this iPod -- the screen is just too small. But, for short things like music videos, video podcasts or even hourlong TV shows shortened by stripping out the commercials, as Apple is doing, the new iPod provides a pretty good experience.
However, there are some significant downsides to the video function on this iPod. Some of them are due to Apple's design decisions, while others are due to restrictions imposed by media companies, or to the simple human factors that go into watching video.'"
Can it play divx's/xvid's?
.m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats MPEG-4 video: up to 2.5 mbps, 480 x 480, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats
Nope.
From http://www.apple.com/ipod/specs.html
H.264 video: up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in
For $399 plays videos such as Xvid, Divx. Can do pictures as well.
Official Site
Digital Life TV Review
Might be a worthy rival to the iPod.
"A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age." -Robert Frost
Yes, but how does pr0n look on it?
like this
You can still charge over firewire. If you have the plug-in charger that has the firewire adapter on it, you can still use it. So what are you waiting for?
Zing!
It's porn.
Although what I'm wondering is, what's with the 21+ years old restriction? I thought you could legally watch porn at 18.
But aren't divx and xvid just MPEG-4 video in an AVI wrapper
DiVX and xvid are the DiVX codec and the xvid codec (in an AVI wrapper)
THAT is crazy, I did NOT read that article either, but using pspVideo9 to create iPod videos is something that I have been wondering about for a while, and amazingly, I was right! It is possible. Awesome, free (LEGAL, as apposed to stealing QT7Pro) ways to make iPod vids.
Actually PSPVideo9 adds some strange MP4 headers to the .MP4 files that the PSP requires. The iPod Video may require some strange headers too, but it is unlikely. It is unknown if it will play the PSP MP4 files with the odd headers, but it is likely.
n -guide/
Then there is the fact that the iPod can play H.264 Baseline Profile Level 1.3 while the PSP can play H.264 Baseline Profile Level 3. You can compress video for the iPod with FFmpegX if you are using a Mac: http://diveintomark.org/howto/ipod-porn-conversio
It uses the great open-source h264 codec X264.
Well, now they can:
http://www.apple.com/ipod/specs.html
Two recording formats:
Low Quality Recording: 22.05 KHz, mono - Speech Recording
High Quality Recording: 44.1 KHz, stereo - Music Recording
Ask and you shall receive.
I've Been using Pogo Products to do direct to MP3 recordings for over two years now, and I have been very happy with the results (Radio YourWay LX - built in microphone / mic in/ line-in):
http://www.pogoproducts.com/
What I REALLY like about the Pogo Products is that they record directly into an MP3 file (encoding levels / quality is user selectable)
Recording directly into MP3 saves time, and makes good use of a 1GB SD card. (1GB holds quite a long speech recorded at 56/44!)
So your musical friends can now record to their iPod or make quick demos using a Pogo Radio YourWay LX 512 MB + 1GB SD/MMC Cards...
http://www.pogoproducts.com/radioyourway.html
( I've been hoping that if Pogo Owns that technology (hardware MP3 encoding), that Apple would buy the whole company just to add MP3 recording into the iPod. But I don't know if Pogo owns the technology,
or if they are repackaging someone elses chips into their products...)
Yes, Divx and Xvid are MPEG-4. H.264, however, is not the MPEG-4, as least not as you know it. H.264 is different, and far more complex than MPEG-4.
You'll have to re-encode videos, and H.264 encoding is very slow.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The power charger connects using the FireWire dock connector, not the USB one. No FireWire dock connector cable means that people who would get this would end up with a power brick they weren't able to use. As for a USB version, any $10 powered USB hub will do the trick, so the expense to Apple (eventually passed onto the consumer) for the brick exceeds its value.
Not if you don't want XP to spend the next five minutes whining at you for not wading through three different popup menus for the "Safely Remove Harware" wizard. Clicking Eject in iTunes is lovely in comparison.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Well, let's hope that there weren't any pending operations in the filesystem when you pull your device. Especially if your device is formatted with a non-journaling filesystem! Say good-bye to data integrity.
Filesystems always need to be unmounted before physically removing them. I hope there haven't been too many times when you've lost data and blamed it on the hardware (or you haven't discovered it yet).
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)