Apple iTunes Upsampling Higher Resolution Videos?

An anonymous reader writes "Engadget has a revealing look at Apple upsampling some of their new 640x480 videos from lower quality 320x240 videos. In fact, their upsampling appears to produce lower quality videos than quickly upsampling yourself with Quicktime. The worst part may be that Apple is charging people to download these new higher resolution videos even if they've already purchased the original, so people are essentially paying for nothing."

Comments

Why?

[Watson Ladd]

This makes no sense. Apple could use quicktime on all of the videos with ease, or resample. But instead they make the quality worse then if they had used Quicktime. I don't see how Apple wouldn't have used Quicktime in the first place considering they made it. Computer time really isn't an issue for Apple.

Re:Why?

[IAmAI]

The only logical purpose I can think of for them doing this, in conjunction with the possibility that extra will be charged, is to simply 'fabricate' a new product for effectively very little cost to them. No suprise that the end result is a poor quality product.

Re:Why?

[MicrosoftRepresentit]

Apple doesn't do the upsampling, their content providers do. Blame Apple for not putting more pressure on them (although Apple are still in the 'beggars cant be choosers' stage here, so they probably cant put any pressure on at all), blame the providers for crappy quality.

Re:Why?

[PowerKe]

Upsampling will not put more information in the picture. It just makes it look better. Possibly Apple is using the same way to upsample the video as you'd do yourself using Quicktime. However, when they have to recompress the video to distribute the upsampled video, there will be another round of quality loss. This is probably what makes the video from Apple look worse than just upsampling yourself.

Re:Why?

[aplusjimages]

I don't understand why they didn't forsee that one day i-pod screens would be larger, so they should keep everything in its native size (the largest SD resolution possible). I work at a mobile content company and we make video ringtones, but we have copies of all are videos at the highest resolution, because we know that one day cell phones and mobile devices will be able to handle the higher resolutions. It prevents us from having to re-edit all those videos. When the time comes, I just run a simple batch and all are videos are ready.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apple doesn't do the upsampling, their content providers do."

Actually, in this case, I believe they are doing the upsampling. Generally, the larger labels really don't care about reencoding what they've already put up there -- they only care about getting the new stuff up there.

I'm not sure why everyone thought that just because there is a new format, everything was going to be magically resubmitted to Apple.

At the same time, a good friend of mine just sent a note stating his lable just got word from Apple that at least the audio components of the iTS (I guess its no longer the iTMS) are going to need uploaded in Apple Lossless Format. Does this mean Apple is looking forward to holding the uncompressed files and transmitting compressed or are they going to do the lossless files to the customer? He didn't know because the note said nothing about it.

Personally, I've never worried about the quality of the videos and all that. The videos are almost always better than I get from my local cable station...whatever that may be. After Battlestar went iTMS last year, I stopped doing the torrent thing and bought them from Apple (I also bought them on DVD, so I was never worried about the torrent stuff...I buy when I have a legal alternative). The iTMS vids were lesser quality than the torrents, *BUT* you never really noticed unless you were either completely anal or had paused a shot. Either way, the content of the show was there and it wasn't like Apple was providing an abridged version of the content. Same with music...as a former professional musician (and by that, I don't mean I've played a few bars) I've never really worried about CD vs. MP3 and I know very few pros that do. I use to get all sorts of promos and prereleases and everything else on CD...now they all send URLs to pick up the MP3s and they are happy with what it is. The last time I got a CD was at a release party and even then it was hinted that since I wasn't a journalist, there were only limited copies available.

This just goes back to content over 'quality'. Bad pop music with a limited lifespan? Yeah, it better be 100% lossless and the video at HD quality -- I'm going to get sick of it with each passing listen, so it needs to be perfect each time or I'll discard it that much faster. True classics? Well, I just transfered some shitty reel to reel studio outtake from an old blues guitarist that had molded up in someones basement to digital...there are dropouts and songs that just end and a general dampness about the sound that distorts it and makes it sound like its playing through wet cardboard...and its PERFECT. I couldn't imagine listening to this in any other format.

I guess this is the difference between consumers and creators. Consumers can't add anything to what they buy...creators will fill in the blanks in their head and be satisfied without whinging endlessly about getting ripped off.

I've ranted too long on this subject...

Re:Why?

[LiquidCoooled]

The only possible reason for this I can see is that the larger higher resolution screens might be there, but the iPod CPU might not be able to correctly upsample whilst also decoding.
Just a possibility.

Re:Why?

[fartymenams]

Actually iPods can already downsample from higher-res videos. I play widescreen 640x360 MPEG4 videos I've encoded myself on it all the time with no issues.

Re:Why?

[omeg]

Lack of batch support in Quicktime, of course. Why use Quicktime to manually convert every video when you can use other (better) software to do 'em all with one command?

Re:Why?

[clifyt]

"Lack of batch support in Quicktime, of course."

There is PLENTY of batch support for Quicktime...you are probably talking the Quicktime PLAYER (which purchasing the pro version gives you access to simply the encoding portion).

You need to buy Apple's Cinema Tools (err...I think this is the right one) to do batch encoding pretty easily. Of course, you can only get it as part of Final Cut.

Beyond that, you can use Applescript to do a lot of this -- or use other third party software to batch encode this stuff. Its actually pretty simple to do it.

Re:Why?

[jcr]

Actually, in this case, I believe they are doing the upsampling.

Nope. Everything you can download from the iTMS today was submitted by the labels.

At the same time, a good friend of mine just sent a note stating his lable just got word from Apple that at least the audio components of the iTS (I guess its no longer the iTMS) are going to need uploaded in Apple Lossless Format. Does this mean Apple is looking forward to holding the uncompressed files and transmitting compressed or are they going to do the lossless files to the customer?

Neither. It means that Apple's getting too many complaints about the labels botching the conversion, so they want to do the compression in-house for quality control.

-jcr

Re:Why?

[cmdrbuzz]

Close, its Apple Compressor that does the conversion of formats.
It can also use Qmaster to use multiple machines in Batch.

Kinda like the Acrobat Distiller of movies, and its part of Final Cut Studio.

Re:Why?

[ZorinLynx]

No, you don't just "skip even numbered pixels". This results in major quality loss.

You want to take an average of every four pixels and use that to generate the new pixel. This results in a much higher quality image because you're using all the information in the original image to generate the final result, instead of only a quarter of it.

-Z

Re:Why?

[Tremor (APi)]

You're contradicting yourself here - which is it? "Everything you can download from the iTMS today was submitted by the labels", or "Apple's getting too many complaints about the labels botching the conversion, so they want to do the compression in-house"? Or is it both - Apple's gotten so many complaints that they hav the labels come into the Apple offices to do the compression & submission under Apple's quality-control eye?

Re:Why?

[jcr]

Currently, the labels are submitting compressed files. That will not be the case for much longer, because of the quality control issue. Clear enough?

-jcr

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why they didn't forsee that one day i-pod screens would be larger, so they should keep everything in its native size

Because they [Apple] don't hold any of the native videos. They only distribute what the studio gives them to distribute. This minimizes any legal messiness if and when a studio claims that Apple messed with their content.

Each studio has a different policy, process and procedure - and *surprise!* - some studios may not be that adept at technology, and think that up-scaling a compressed video is a good strategy.

Re:Why?

[fartymenams]

Do you know for a fact that this is how the iPod displays work when downsampling videos that are higher-res than the display itself?

Re:Why?

[aplusjimages]

- some studios may not be that adept at technology, and think that up-scaling a compressed video is a good strategy.

Anyone in the video industry knows that up-scaling video is never a good idea.

Re:Why?

[pclminion]

Upsampling will not put more information in the picture. It just makes it look better.

Sure it puts information in the picture. Anything that isn't just doubling pixels has to, by definition, put some kind of information in the picture. The question is whether that information is "close to" what the REAL information would have been if the video had originally been shot at a higher resolution.

I've played with neural networks that "upsample" an image to double its original resolution, and the results (for a network properly trained on the appropriate types of images) are pretty stunning. It's not a general purpose thing by any means, but it does show how interpolating upsamplers can actually insert information into the image. Does that information come from anywhere "real?" I assert that it does, because images are not entirely random (or even close to it) and extra information can be inferred from relationships in the data (this is why lossy compression works).

Of course, what you really care about isn't the information content, but the subjective quality of the upsampled image. There's no real relationship between "extra bits" and perceived image quality. This is why general case upsampling is a very arcane subject.

Re:Why?

[NekoXP]

http://www.broadcom.com/products/Cellular/Mobile-M ultimedia-Processors/BCM2722

The Broadcom MP4 decoder they use has a programmable decoder built into it, one of the abilities being you can throw any kind of picture subsampling you like. Apple probably have some stock IP bilinear filter for it. At 320x240, on a 2" screen, you won't be able to tell the difference between that and anything higher quality.

Re:Why?

[Fordiman]

"Upsampling will not put more information in the picture. It just makes it look better."

Upsampling at anything but the final-output end almost never 'looks better'; Essentially, you have to decode the video (and all it's compression errors), double it using some sort of interpolation / median filter (ie: make it blurry or make it blobby), and recompress it (hey, compression artifacts in TWO resolutions!).

Re:Why?

[Golias]

Same with music...as a former professional musician (and by that, I don't mean I've played a few bars) I've never really worried about CD vs. MP3 and I know very few pros that do.

Oddly enough, professional musicians tend to be much, much more tolerant of bad audio fidelity than serious music lovers who don't play or only play as non-professionals. As long as there are no obvious distractions (such as surface noise from a record or tape hiss), they tend to "listen around" missing data better than most people.

The best theory for this I've ever heard is the "dirty window" analogy. If you look out a dirty window from a living room you've never been in, you will notice it's dirty right away. If you look out a dirty window from your own living room, which you have sat in every day for decades, you are less likely to notice the dirt because your mind knows what to expect to see. You know what that tree looks like, and where the row of hedges meets the curb, and the color of all the stones in the rock bed at the edge of your yard. When you look out your window, your brain "fills in" the missing information for you, and you don't notice the obstruction of the dirt.

A professional musician, one who spends several hours a day honing their craft and rehearses daily with an ensemble that if you play a sub-par recording on a sub-par sound system, they will only hear the music, not the digital compression artifacts or the cross-over "bulge" of the speakers or the "edginess" of bad D/A algorithms. They can probably tell the difference between a top-line system and total junk in a direct A/B comparison, but won't really notice the subtle differences between different quality speakers, nor will they have any idea what you are talking about when you complain about a 128-bit AAC file mangling a track.

It's not that their ears are not as good. Their ears are (often) excellent; they make their living with their ears as much as anything else. It's simply a matter of psycho-accustics.

Of course, then there are the professional musicians who simply have bad ears. Many rehearsal spaces used over the last 50 years by universities and professional concert halls over the past few decades utterly failed to meet OSHA safety requirements for db levels. My own music prof was forced to retire early due to severe hearing loss and tinnitus. A lot of musicians avoid going in for regular hearing tests, because they simply don't even want to know what the news will be.

Re:Why?

[aichpvee]

You'd think, but I seriously doubt that's true. Same as I'd think that everyone in the video industry would know that taking a pan-and-scan video, cropping off the top and bottom, and selling it as "widescreen" is never a good idea, but that is clearly not the case either.

Re:Why?

[Westacular]

iPod screens still aren't larger; the latest ones are the same 320x240 resolution. And from the start, all video-capable iPods have been able to decode 640x480 files (and, I believe, output this on their TV adapter), on the condition that they do not exceed a certain bitrate and only use certain compression codec features (e.g., for 640x480 H.264 low-complexity version of baseline profile, 1.5 Mbps or less).

The only thing that has changed is that Apple has now started to actually sell files of this type.

(Of course, if Apple actually gave the user two files for movies instead -- one iPod-friendly 320x240 file, and one 640x480 file that's much more efficiently compressed with, say, H.264 main profile -- they could save on file size and improve the video quality for higher-end output.

The requirement that every video sold on iTMS be natively playable on the iPod is a very limiting constraint, and it will only grow more significant when they eventually introduce new iPods with more capable video decoders ... that don't get used, because everything must target 5G iPod playback as lowest-common-denominator.)

What's the point of paying twice?

[dohzer]

Another reason to buy physical CDs/DVDs rather than downloads.

Re:What's the point of paying twice?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say it is similar to paying for a CD of a record you already had on vinyl.
It seems to be well-accepted practice in the media industry to let the customer pay per distribution medium instead of per piece of work he wants to have...

Re:What's the point of paying twice?

[ShakaZ]

I would say it is similar to paying the price of a CD for an audio tape of a record you already had on CD.

Re:What's the point of paying twice?

[RalphBNumbers]

Yeah, because you know that when you're ready to upgrade to HD, they'll give you a free new set of disks if you already bought the non-HD DVD!

There are some perfectly good reasons to prefer CDs and DVDs the currently available download methods, so why do people insist on instead putting forth rationalizations for their preference based on topics where downloads and physical media have identical limits (i.e. you have to pay if you want another, possibly higher quality, copy)?

In any case, this up-sampling of old videos is a pretty lame move by Apple. But at least it looks like it may be limited to a few old music videos for which they simply didn't have access to high-res sources, while TV shows were all cleanly re-encoded from higher-res raws.

At this point it's probably in Apple's best interest to do whatever it takes to acquire appropriate high-res sources and offer free upgrades to whoever downloaded the up-sampled vids, to restore consumer good will and confidence for their next eventual upgrade to HD.

Re:What's the point of paying twice?

[kwark]

But only when the master used for the CD is the tape.

Re:What's the point of paying twice?

[glesga_kiss]

I would say it is similar to paying for a CD of a record you already had on vinyl.

I disagree. CDs offer some advantages over vinyl, such as track skipping and fewer quality issues such as rumble and warpage. This would be more similar to someone borrowing your vinyl record and converting it to a CD, then selling it back to you. Except that is also a bad analogy as in this example you are at least paying for their time. Upsampling a bunch of videos is a simple hands-off batch script.

Usually when you buy a CD of something you had on vinyl, the CD is taken from the original master. This is the biggest flaw in your analogy; the CD does not derive from the existing product. These "high-quality" videos are simply relabled low-quality ones. In any other consumer product that would be illegal due to false advertising; certainally that is the case under UK law.

It's always interesting seeing an Apple story first thing on a Saturday morning. The Apple astroturfers that post here aren't working yet, so the discussion is quite candid. Compare to how it looks in four or five hours. If anyone is really bored, you could do a little study on post time vs post point-of-view. I think slashdot is crying out for this kind of study; it's quite possibly the most astroturfed site on the net.

Re:What's the point of paying twice?

[kimvette]

Good turntables do not introduce much rumble at all. $50 turntables did.

Usually when you buy a CD of something you had on vinyl, the CD is taken from the original master.

That is true now; it wasn't true in the mid-80s when CDs were still fairly new; the original CDs were sometimes mastered either with the phono EQ curve, and had a very "harsh" sound ("brighter" doesn't describe some early CDs, they were downright jarring) relative to the vinyl or cassette releases.

What are the terms of use for videos on iTMS

[DrXym]

Apple made a big song and dance of the fact that you can transfer songs, and burn them to CD. Can you burn downloaded movies to DVD or are you restricted to play them on one or two devices?

Re:What are the terms of use for videos on iTMS

[ShakaZ]

Who cares, just don't contribute to their rippoff if you're a selfrespecting consumer who doesn't want to pay more for less quality, as is the case in this issue & with their crippled mp3 platform...

Re:What are the terms of use for videos on iTMS

[mblase]

You're not allowed to burn downloaded videos to a video DVD, but you can back them up as a file to a DVD and play it again on iTunes.

This is a restriction imposed on Apple by the video owners, and was pretty much the only way they could get video on the iTunes Store at all. Hopefully they're still negotiating to have that particular block removed.

moral implications

[Anonymous Coward]

To me, this is far more egregious than Sony's rootkit fiasco.

I've personally written software that had undesigned implications.
but...
I've never taken money, a second time, from anyone, knowing that I had already sold them that very same thing.

The difference is incompetance vs. intentional malice driven by greed.
I'll always choose to associate with a fool rather than someone I am certain is out to get me.

Re:moral implications

[Taimoor]

> I've never taken money, a second time, from anyone, knowing that I had already sold them that very same thing.

Obviously, you've never worked in the semiconductor industry. Then, you can even charge significantly more for it the second time around... just label it milspec.

> The difference is incompetance vs. intentional malice driven by greed.

I'm pretty sure Sony wasn't being altruistic when they installed that rootkit... It sounds like both companies are at fault... Sony more than Apple, because I don't think crappy transcodes are exactly a security breach of any sort. But what do I care? I get my music videos thru IRC anyway.

Re:moral implications

[Millenniumman]

Even if the fool unlocks all of your door and windows and invites criminals over, and the person out to get you sells a dinner plate you already own, but claims it is higher quality?

Re:moral implications

[Stealth Potato]

To me, this is far more egregious than Sony's rootkit fiasco.

I dunno about you, but I'd rather have somebody try to sell me useless crap than break into and compromise the security of my system...

Upsampling

[Random Q. Hacker]

In other news, Apple was discovered to have upsampled regular commodity PCs into more expensive versions with no real additional benefits. A source at Apple revealed that their upsampling engine, code named "marketing", could turn any piece of crap hardware into something people would buy. Cited as their greatest achievement was the "iPod", a device that had been upsampled and resold over five times, with it's users apparently none the wiser.

Re:Upsampling

[Scooter]

LOL - indeed - the things you see when you have no mod points :) Even then I'd have had to choose between funny and insightful.

Someone I know, caught up in the whole Apple marketing machine bought an iPod - but she has no means of populating it with music....

Re:Upsampling

[AgentFred76]

"caught up in the whole Apple marketing machine" please, this is just silly. maybe the real machine is complaining about Apple because it's the trendy thing to do. Tell your friend: Step 1: go to library. Step 2: borrow CDs for free to maybe .50 YMMV Step 3: Rip at rate you desire.

Re:Upsampling

[NosTROLLdamus]

Wait... You're saying that bashing apple is trendy? Apple own Ninety-Fucking-Percent of the MP3 player market, and you're saying the new, popular thing to do is to slag them?

Re:Upsampling

[drcagn]

It's called counterculture. It's equal to people slagging a popular band for "selling out."

Re:Upsampling

[Scooter]

Not sure how you rate that as "silly": her friends had them so she bought one without knowing what it it actually was. She has no PC and no intention getting one so I'm not sure how she will accomplish step 3. Of course someone will help out but it still struck me that marketing and brand presence can be so powerful as to persuade someone to buy something without really knowing what it is, let alone if you actually need one.

I'm not anti Apple btw - I do think that there's a ot of hype surrounding their products (after all, why don't they own the desktop market?) but if I was in the market for a portable MP3 player than I'd certainly be looking at them, but then I know what I'm looking at, and can make an objective comparison with players from say Creative, iRiver, Arhcos et al, and consdider more multi purpose devices too. If I did buy an iPod or any other apple product it wouldn't be because it said Apple on the front.

Cheers,

Scoot.

Re:Upsampling

[Paradise Pete]

My kingdom for mod points!

You have a kingdom?

Re:Upsampling

[Neoncow]

her friends had them so she bought one without knowing what it it actually was.

People actually do that? I mean, I wouldn't spend $100 dollars to buy a device that I had no purpose for. That's a pretty expensive piece of techno-jewelery. There must be more to this story, no?

Re:Upsampling

[protohiro1]

Hey, why do you even care? Newsflash: marketing == propoganda. I mean, why does this even shock you? And why are you so personally offended by the ipod/mac? Who the f cares what other people use? I like macs, not using any right now, but I like them. I don't watch any commercials, so I can comment on apple's adverstising, but I like OS X and i think the hardware is decent and the price seems reasonable. Also, what games are available for mac really isn't the most important criteria for a lot of people. But I suspect you will one day realize that computer choice isn't a religion and its not a personal insult. And most people aren't shocked that companies make ads that aren't just an honest description of the products merits.

Re:Upsampling

[Scooter]

That's pretty much it - I mean she new what it was for (it's a modern day equivalent of a Walkman right?), but never considered how the music actually got in there - they're sold as a piece of consumer electronics so I guess she thought the answers would present themselves when the box was opened....

Re:Upsampling

[DanielNS84]

I care because 4 members of my family have now bought these pieces of trash now and they've all regretted it once they realized it's a highly restrictive low quality marketing ploy. If I had warned them they would not have bought them. Hence, warn others...

Re:Upsampling

[protohiro1]

Ipods have a one year warranty. If you want to make your life easier, tell your clients to go here: http://depot.info.apple.com/ipod/. You just type in the serial number, describe the problem and an empty box will arrive in a few days. Put your ipod in the box and a new one will arrive in five days or so. (they try and repair the one you sent. If they succeed they send it to the next person with a broken one or sell it as refurb). This process takes two weeks at most (and is free). I don't know what possible reason you would have to wait three months, unless Apple is just shafting best buy. I wonder, what kind of fool would call the geek squad when their two day old ipod breaks? The thing is 100% under warranty. Word to the wise: if you buy any product that is covered under a manufacturers warranty, call the manufacturer, not best buy. (not counting RMAs from newegg. They rock)

Re:Upsampling

[DanielNS84]

Yes, I bow down to Newegg's RMA process...however, I challenge you to check into best buy's procedure regarding iPods and you'll see what I mean. As far as the mp3 player itself, it's still horrible in terms of being user friendly in loading and unloading songs, as well as needing proprietary software. Having said all that, and assuming you're correct (5 days total to try and fix, then ship it back? Seems waaay far fetched), that's still no excuse for making a product that breaks constantly.

Re:Upsampling

[protohiro1]

They send you a new/refurb immediatly to replace it, they don't try to repair your specific ipod.

Re:Upsampling

[DanielNS84]

All music lost and a questionable refurb in return? Ouch!

Message to Apple:

[10Ghz]

You are becoming retarded. Stop it. Please.

Re:Message to Apple:

[babbling]

Becoming?

Re:What?

[ziggamon2.0]

At least RTF Summary...

Re:What?

[Chucker23N]

I did. That's what I quoted from. The notion that Apple ought to provide higher-resolution videos for free to those who bought lower-resolution ones is silly. They could do it as a nice-gesture service, but they have no obligation to whatsoever, and I would have been surprised if they had. Millions bought videos at 320x240, not because they were expecting them to miraculously have four times the resolution somewhere down the road, but because they were perfectly happy with the quality as-is.

Not to be an Apple apologist, but...

[Chucker23N]

...as far as I know, encoding is handled not by Apple, but by the providers. Which, as a matter of fact, explains the discrepancy in the Engadget post: some videos look good at higher-res, whereas others appear to have been upsampled.

Most likely, not Apple is to blame, but the content providers, some of whom were apparently too lazy or stupid or stingy to provide truly higher-res versions.

Re:Not to be an Apple apologist, but...

[ronanbear]

I don't care if the content isn't encoded by Apple. The fact is that they are selling something that isn't good quality. They're supposed to check and ensure that the encoding is as good as possible within the constraints of the codec and compression ratio.

If they don't fix this it is going to be very damaging.

Re:Not to be an Apple apologist, but...

[maxume]

It isn't expecting a whole lot to think that Apple would have some quality controls in place though. It isn't 'evil' as it were, but it isn't real impressive that Apple is allowing it.

Re:Not to be an Apple apologist, but...

[mei_mei_mei]

But it's Apple who are charging you for this stuff.

Re:Not to be an Apple apologist, but...

[jcr]

...as far as I know, encoding is handled not by Apple, but by the providers.

That is correct. This has been confirmed to me personally on several occasions by iTMS staff.

-jcr

Re:Not to be an Apple apologist, but...

[maztuhblastah]

But why look at where responsibility lies when you can be trendy and bash Apple? After all, bashing big media is soooo 90's

Re:Not to be an Apple apologist, but...

[mrchaotica]

The studios provided the crap videos, but Apple was still responsible for deciding to sell it anyway!

(Posting from a Mac -- they make a good OS and decent hardware, but their DRM store can go fuck itself!)

You are dense

[marx]

The 640x480 videos, which people have to pay for even though they've bought the 320x240 version, are identical to the 320x240 videos because they have been upsampled from that source. Do you understand this complex news item now?

Re:You are dense

[fartymenams]

I know, it's so unethical of Apple to hold a gun to poor iTunes users' heads and force them to buy that higher-res video.

Re:You are dense

[taskforce]

That isn't the issue. They advertised as selling a higher res video, but they're realling selling it at the same res, only upconverted. So they're selling the same product again to people, and claiming it is a different product.

Re:You are dense

[Blondie-Wan]

1) Remove 320x240 video from library.
2) Check for purchases.
3) Download 640x480 video for free.

Whoa! That's very interesting; this is the first reference I've seen to being able to do that. Where'd you hear this?

Re:You are dense

[bestinshow]

I read it on a forum somewhere earlier today, in fact it might have been in the comments to the Engadget article itself.

I cannot validate the veracity of the statement sadly, I don't buy videos from iTunes, and the few bits of music I have from iTunes have been obtained via free iTunes coupons on bottles of coke. Me, a cheapskate?! Never :)

Re:You are dense

[dfghjk]

Just tried it and got the following dialog:

"All purchases have been downloaded for this account

Purchases can only be downloaded once. You can burn a CD, DVD,
or use shared folders on your local network to transfer them to
another computer"

Re:You are dense

[fartymenams]

That makes it sound like every single video in the iTunes Store has been upconverted and marketed as "newer better faster more," instead of a couple of screenshots on Engadget's website indicating that a couple of videos *might* have been done poorly encoded. That does not in and of itself prove the existence of a scam.

Re:What?

[Chucker23N]

Maybe you ought to read the piece I quoted and responded to. I'm not responding to Engadget's article, but to:
"The worst part may be that Apple is charging people to download these new higher resolution videos even if they've already purchased the original, so people are essentially paying for nothing."
, which has little to do with Engadget's article.

Reminds me of waxless floors

[Green Salad]

We always need a continous stream of new products to consume. I'm old enough to remember an innovation called "waxless floors" that would save money on maintenance costs as tough shiney flooring could merely be swept with a broom. Then, Johnson wax company come out with a new product we dubbed "waxless wax." It was for shining your waxless floors.

This illustrates my problem with pay for download

[SCHecklerX]

I'd prefer reasonable prices for the DVDs and CDs. Paying for content that has been compressed and indexed in a manner that may or may not suit your needs seems pretty stupid to me. Charge reasonable prices for the stuff and then let me use it however works best for me under existing fair use laws. Get rid of the DRM, charge a fair price. Maybe people would buy more of it then.

Re:Am I the only one

[ShakaZ]

What are you waiting for, there are already several linux distros that can install on your powerbook ;-)

no burning to video DVDs.....

[johnpaul191]

just as data disks for backup. that part kind of sucks. it seems to be a deal they could not make with the TV studios and now movie studios. considering every Mac is available with a DVD burner (except some base models), and includes DVD burning software, that would have been great. maybe it'll be cracked soon enough.

kind of OT
there are some TV shows available free from the TV station as well as iTunes. i read somewhere (possibly here on /.?) that those shows (like LOST for example) are viewed many times more for free than sold as downloads. not sure if it is the same comparison. i would hope people that buy the shows watch them more than once? the free versions are only available for streaming and include commercials that i don't think can be skipped. all that aside, it sounds like it is still worth putting the shows up on iTunes. i also guess it was the stepping stone to full movies. the iTunes distribution channel is really optimum for more indie or oddball programs and music that may have a hard time getting distribution to a scattered audience. it's also great for people that are too impatient for mail order.

iTunes has turned to crap

[Amani576]

Personally, I am not too fond of iTunes anymore as it is. And, I'm actually losing favor with Apple. But I updated iTunes to 7 the other day, and aside from it being somewhat simpler looking, it's alot slower than previous versions, and I've also had issues with it not playing songs (Playing a song until it reaches the end, and then not finishing the song or changing the song, and manually changing song only ends up with that song starting at 00:00 and not playing at all). I've never actually used the iTunes Music Store (er... video store, whatever they call it now) aside from previewing songs for CD's that I would actually buy hard copies of. And even then, the samples they use, at times are not that good. So having low-quality videos does not surprise me. I love my iPod, and there was a time when I loved iTunes. But I guess that was back when the iPod wasn't a media-hog do-it-all portable media center. "Back in the day" when all an iPod did was play music, and all iTunes did was play music. iTunes and Quicktime were relatively seperated and it worked fine. I think sometimes Apple needs to realize when a system is broken, and when it isn't... But then again, so should alot of people.
GR

Re:iTunes has turned to crap

[AmberBlackCat]

I don't know about all that but it seems to me that a few versions ago, I used to be able to play a song and it wouldn't skip even if I was loading and using other software. Now additional hard drive activity makes the song skip. It's like they just eliminated music buffer. Version 7 has a limited download manager, kind of like Firefox and it's way better than what they had before. And the way they make it scroll through the album covers is really nice. It's like looking into one of those 400-disc DVD changers as it switches discs. I bought some of the music videos while they were the smaller size. They struggled to play but it was tolerable. But I haven't been able to get any of their 640x480 videos to play at all, even though they're low-quality. I just get still frames and maybe some audio. It's strange because the h.64 version of DL.TV is almost as big, much better quality, and plays fine. Large high-quality videos from outside sources play fine but little crappy videos from iTunes hardly play and the big ones just don't play. It doesn't make any sense. I suspect the performance issue is coming from the DRM. Maybe the overhead of having to decrypt and decompress at the same time is bogging down the video player, especially at higher resolution. I can't imagine anything else that would explain this.

Nothing new here

[nchip]

When CD's came out, many CD's where mastered directly from a LP lying around. Basicly the result was worst of LP and CD, LP's noise and limited dynamic range, and CD limited 44Khz frequence response. Later on record companies noticed that people will actually pay for a third time for their record, if they dig up original master tapes and relaunch the record as "digitally remasted". Perhaps they only sound better than the first generation CD's because they have been compressed to sound better on average joes tiny speakers but that's beside the point.

Same way studios did not really try their best on first DVD remakes, and probably many current HD releases are just upscaled as well. Upscaling 320x200 to 640x400 is quite spectucalar new bottom for entertainment industry. Claiming that finding something better than 320x200 would be too hard or expensive does not really fly with current all-digital producing.

Re:Nothing new here

[NormalVisual]

CDs have a dynamic range of a little over 20 KHz, not 44. They have a sample rate of 44.1 KHz, but you can't physically have a frequency response that is more than half the sample rate.

I'd also be interested to see some kind of documentation that reinforces your assertion that some early CDs were mastered from vinyl LPs. *Every* CD I own (and quite a few date back to the early days of CD) was mastered from the original studio tapes or first-gen copies of them, or from digitally remastered versions of those. Probably the most unique is the my copy of the soundtrack from "Star Trek II", where the original master was laid down on a very early digital recorder, and as a result it sounds like nasty, unwiped ass.

Re:Nothing new here

[derflammenhund]

Dynamic range is a measure of volume response, usually discussed in decibels. I think it's the bit-count that determines the DR for a given digital medium, which is why people care about 24 bit audio instead of 16 bit (for example). Frequency response is what you're thinking, with two samples determining the highest frequency reproduction possible.

Re:Nothing new here

[NormalVisual]

Oops. I'd just gotten up when I posted that, so thanks for the good catch. I did mean frequency response. You're right about bit count determining dynamic range, where you optimally get an additional 6db increase in the S/N ratio for every bit of resolution.

And before anyone mentions oversampling - that doesn't give you a better frequency response as the same samples are repeated unless you're interpolating, but the higher sample rate does allow you to digitally filter the signal much more sharply, resulting in less aliasing and other noise. It also saves money as regards analog filtering for the DAC.

Re:Nothing new here

[kimvette]

22,050hz to be exact, although during the mastering process engineers will roll off the highs gradually starting somewhere between 18khz and 20khz to avoid the "harsh" cutoff that some people (who haven't destroyed their hearing with headphones) will be able to hear.

Re:Nothing new here

[NormalVisual]

22,050 is the Nyquist limit, but there's almost always filtering in the player that will prevent it from being reached in order to preclude artifacts like aliasing, and usually the output amp isn't linear up to that range anyway unless you want to shell out some dough.

Re:What?

[DanielNS84]

But what if someone sold you that same 200mhz PC rebranded as a 2x2.33 GHz Merom? That's what Apple is doing, so before you go into asshat mode try RTFA.

Re:What?

[MSTCrow5429]

There aren't any. Pentium, Pentium MMX, Pentium Pro, AMD K6, Cyrix 6x86MX (PR rating), Cyrix MII (200MHz, PR233) Centaur WinChip ran at 200MHz, not including the 6x86MX PR200.

True to form

[LaughingCoder]

Look, Apple has always emphasized design, appearance and usability. And they have always catered to the less technical among us ("computers for the rest of us)". Of course that doesn't mean their machines don't also appeal to techies. In fact now that they don't carry as steep a price penalty, and now that it is possible to dual boot to Windows, their appeal has grown in that regard. But still their bread-and-butter is people who don't want to fuss with their PCs and who don't want to become computer geeks. This upsampled "hi-res" video ploy, then, would seem to indicate that Apple knows their clientele is largely technically uninformed, and so they believe they can get away with it. Sure, some techies will notice and scream (witness this forum), but frankly most of Apple's customers are not techies, and most don't even associate with techies. That's one big reason why they bought Apple in the first place.

Re:What?

[Nasarius]

Are you honestly that stupid? The quote is entirely correct. If they already bought the 320x240 video, then later purchased the 640x480 one, they just paid Apple for an upsampling (ie, nothing). Again, read the fucking summary.

Re:Am I the only one

[avalys]

High-res videos from iTunes run fine on my 28-month-old PowerBook. Maybe there's something wrong with yours?

And do you really think Apple is releasing episodes of the Daily Show late on purpose? What possible motivation would they have? Just to piss you off? It's certainly not because they're greedy and looking for profits - this obviously causes them to lose sales. More likely, Comedy Central is slow at actually sending the episodes to Apple.

Trendwhores

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one thing to be a fanboi, the it's far lamer to be a trendwhore, and you, my friend, have bought into the current anti-apple trend hook, line and sinker.

iTunes is the best music management software given away with any >1% market share digital audio software. Whine all you want, but that's a fact, even despite Apple's tendancy to release new versions with a few too many bugs.

If she's got no friends and no car and lives in the sticks, then that woman is fucked. How did she get an iPod in this situation anyway? I've had friends using iPods with Windows 98 computers without a problem. A Google search will provide you with countless Linux solutions. And street vendor - are you having a fucking brain aneurism?

This is pretty much one of the lowest, lamest, trendwhoriest posts I've ever seen on Slashdot, and that's saying a lot. I hope your dick grew because you followed the trend to diss Apple's products and suckle up to Microsoft's Zune because it isn't an iPod even though it's a rebadge of a shitty Toshiba MP3 player. However what more could you expect from a lowly repair tech, then again it isn't as if you understand real world economics. Get a real fucking job, learn that it makes sense to have an iPod repair division when >75% of the market is iPods, and if a company is making 8 MILLION iPods a quarter, they can have leading-edge failure rates and you'd still get thousands of devices with issues. Also portable devices tend to have user-failure issues such as being dropped, etc, hence they'll be brought in for repair more often than other devices.

Re:Trendwhores

[daenris]

I'm not even going to comment on the rest of your post, because it's more rant than debate. However, this:

If she's got no friends and no car and lives in the sticks, then that woman is fucked. How did she get an iPod in this situation anyway? I've had friends using iPods with Windows 98 computers without a problem. A Google search will provide you with countless Linux solutions. And street vendor - are you having a fucking brain aneurism?

Is just stupid. The first two sentences have no bearing on anything. The main issue was that she has no way to get music onto the iPod. This has nothing to do with where she lives/etc. It was suggested that she go to a library to borrow cds and rip them. First off, that's going to be illegal. Second, if the issue is that she has no way of getting music onto the iPod, then ripping music isn't going to help. And sure, maybe you do have friends who run it on Windows 98 without problems, however the requirement as posted by Apple is Windows 2000 or later. So there are some hoops you'd have to jump through to get it running on 98. Hoops probably beyond typical 'consumer' PC users.

Re:Trendwhores

[DanielNS84]

It's one thing to be a fanboi, the it's far lamer to be a trendwhore, and you, my friend, have bought into the current anti-apple trend hook, line and sinker.

So by applying my real-world experience to this situation I'm a trend whore? If you say so...

iTunes is the best music management software given away with any >1% market share digital audio software. Whine all you want, but that's a fact, even despite Apple's tendancy to release new versions with a few too many bugs.

Assuming I want my music "managed" I'd use windows media player, winamp, or xmms...iTunes is EASILY the worst piece of music software I've ever used. That said, I put my music in mp3 format directly onto my mp3 player using whatever OS I want...and if you're curious, I have a $40 256mb MPIO with a non-color screen and a rechargeable battery that gets badass playtime on a single charge and can be dropped without fear of a hard drive dying.

If she's got no friends and no car and lives in the sticks, then that woman is fucked. How did she get an iPod in this situation anyway? I've had friends using iPods with Windows 98 computers without a problem. A Google search will provide you with countless Linux solutions. And street vendor - are you having a fucking brain aneurism?

I was including windows 95 in there as well and it's damn near impossible for the average user to get it working in windows 98. As far as the street vendors go, my mother was offered an iPod on nearly every street corner on her recent trip to columbia so this situation isn't as far fetched as it might appear...and also, who's to say she has an internet connection? I used my mp3 player without one for quite some time when I was in a tougher financial situation than I currently am, I simply used wmp (preinstalled on all windows xp PC's) to rip the songs then I transferred them over.

This is pretty much one of the lowest, lamest, trendwhoriest posts I've ever seen on Slashdot, and that's saying a lot. I hope your dick grew because you followed the trend to diss Apple's products and suckle up to Microsoft's Zune because it isn't an iPod even though it's a rebadge of a shitty Toshiba MP3 player. However what more could you expect from a lowly repair tech, then again it isn't as if you understand real world economics. Get a real fucking job, learn that it makes sense to have an iPod repair division when >75% of the market is iPods, and if a company is making 8 MILLION iPods a quarter, they can have leading-edge failure rates and you'd still get thousands of devices with issues. Also portable devices tend to have user-failure issues such as being dropped, etc, hence they'll be brought in for repair more often than other devices.

We had plenty of other mp3 player types which sold probably %50 of what iPods did and we got nowhere near the same return rate. We also had probably %25 of the iPods come back from Apple unrepaired or broken more than they were, it was the worst of our DTV (Direct To Vendor) repair centers. As for you insulting me about my job, well, that doesn't speak well for your confidence level, not to mention your upbringing.

Re:Trendwhores

[DurendalMac]

Whoa, you mean Apple isn't supporting an operating system that's about 8 years old? An OS that damn near ANY piece of new software or hardware no longer supports? If she bought an iPod and her computer is too damn old to work with it, how the hell is that Apple's fault? Check the system requirements first. Hey, I can't get my iPod to sync with my Commodore64! Goddamn Apple!

Re:Trendwhores

[daenris]

I'm not saying it's Apple's fault. However, their software for use with the iPod doesn't work on these systems. So if someone has a system like this they shouldn't buy an iPod. Of course a large issue is that this woman apparently didn't read what was required to use the iPod, so I have no sympathy for that. But on the other hand most consumers really aren't that observant, and if they go out to buy an mp3 player, usually the most they know is that they need to hook it up to their computer. I personally don't own an iPod and won't because they're tied into iTunes and because of the restrictions on music purchased at the iTunes music store. If Apple would open up the iPod slightly, just to allow it to work with other software, I'd have no problem with it, and cases such as this woman who bought it and found out she couldn't use it would almost never happen because there would be options for the software.

Re:Am I the only one

[jcr]

Not to mention Apple's policy of "we will give it to you when we give it to you"

That's not Apple's policy. If you want your shows in a more timely manner, write to the networks that own them.

-jcr

RTFA - It's only some of the viedos...

[Kalak]

Which means that it is probably either the content providers who are not going back to the maters to encode high quality, or it is stuff that Apple probably doesn't have access to the originals, which then the shouldn't re-sell it.

My guess is that it's the content providers who haven't re-encoded. I don't see Apple as being *that* dumb.

They're still the ones selling them

[tentimestwenty]

Even if content providers are responsible for encoding the files (which I doubt) Apple should still be professional and ensure they meet a certain standard. It just makes them look bad.

Re:They're still the ones selling them

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Yeah, and they shouldn't let Britney Spears upload her latest single, it sucks! ...c'mon, dude, you know that if some video podcast show started whining that Apple wouldn't let them post their shows because it didn't meet their "high-res quality standards," the Slashdot whining about Apple arrogance/Naziism would be twice as long and virulent.

Re:They're still the ones selling them

[NuGeo]

My thoughts exactly. Apple should have some sort of quality control. It might also be wise to have some kind of visible "stamp of quality" for content that has been inspected by iTS staff.

Re:They're still the ones selling them

[mrchaotica]

That's just stupid. There's no reason Apple couldn't just let them post their 320x240 videos; they just need to be labeled as such. An upsampled QVGA video is still a QVGA video, and calling it otherwise is dishonest.

provider's responsibility

[Teth-Adam]

"...as far as I know, encoding is handled not by Apple, but by the providers."
Yes the info was leaked in 2003, Cd Baby reports on itunes meeting re: indy music: It's up to the partner/label to submit all the metadata (artist name, release date, song tiles, etc.), do the audio encoding, and upload the materials.
Should be the same for videos, and realistically Apple won't check every song or every single video. This is the provider's responsibility.

Re:provider's responsibility

[dfghjk]

"This is the provider's responsibility."

Apple may make it the provider's responsibility, but it remains Apple's responsibility to the customer. Apple is the one who advertises a certain level of quality and Apple is the one who collects money and distributes. If there is a misrepresentation of the quality of the product it is Apple that makes it.

Re:provider's responsibility

[Teth-Adam]

I was arguing about the encoding, people say "OMIGOD Apple is upsampling teh video!!111" when this is the provider's responsibility. But of course it's still Apple's duty to handle the mess with their customers if the content is deficient.

Re:provider's responsibility

[dfghjk]

That's right, and when a customer sees video quality that doesn't meet a reasonable standard I would imagine Apple would want to know. 100% auditing of such a vast library isn't practical.

Re:Apple Poopy Video Quality For Walmart

[dfghjk]

I'm not an Apple apologist but I'll give it a try...

"According to Cringley - Apple has to keep video quality POOPY to please Walmart."

Just because Cringely offers an opinion for sale doesn't mean it's true. Furthermore, he never described the video quality as "POOPY". What he said was:

"Apple deliberately repositioned its movie offerings to be better than broadcast quality but less than DVD quality and quite a bit less than HD-quality."

- http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060914. html

Better than broadcast quality isn't poopy. DVD rips that are recompressed are less than DVD quality too and that's what you typically see on P2P networks. In fact, they are typically less than 640x480.

"According to Streaming.com 2006 video transcoding study, Apple's video is POOPY to begin with - in comparison to Real."

Perhaps "in comparison to Real" but that doesn't make it POOPY. Here is the announcement:

http://www.streamingmedia.com/press/view.asp?id=43 36

The reports themselves are for sale. You may buy them if you like.

No matter, since this was a streaming video codec study, not a downloadable one. The results of these tests say nothing about the quality you can get from video purchased from the iTunes store.

"So we get POOPY on top of POOPY. Quite a dog pile!"

That wouldn't be true in any case. Neither of your claims are actually true, but even if they were, you could only claim that the result was "POOPY" not "POOPY on top of POOPY". Apple could have achieved "POOPY" by using their "POOPY" codec. They wouldn't need to make it "POOPIER" still.

"The Streaming.com study mentioned above - stated that Micro$oft's WindowsMedia video sucked even more than Apple's H.264 and that folks interested in video needed to forget about Micro$oft."

It didn't say that either. It said "Companies using or considering Windows Media really need to evaluate other technologies." and it never said that any other the tested products "sucked". As I said before, this was a streaming video test and doesn't represent what is achievable in different formats.

What retailer on earth inspects every item?

[SnowDog74]

Best Buy is one of the largest retailers in the world, yet one out of every five or ten DVD's I purchase from them is defective. I gurarantee you they do not inspect stock from the distributors and subdistributors. In this case, I inspect the discs at the purchasing counter. I have held up other customers in the process... one of them may be you.

The Gap is one of the largest clothing retailers in the world, and one out of every three shirts I have purchased from them ends up discoloring badly in the wash in just a few months. Even though the clothing is their own brand, I guarantee you they do not inspect every shirt for quality. I no longer buy shirts from the Gap... Incidentally, I haven't had a problem with the Faconnable or Ralph Lauren polo shirts I paid $40-$70 for... you get what you pay for.

Apple is one of the largest retailers of online music downloads with global load-balanced hosting operations worldwide, and every 50 to 75 downloads I come across a music track that is encoded from a defective source. I guarantee you Apple does not inspect the contents of every item published to its library. Incidentally I've had even fewer problems with purchased physical CD's, or better yet, DVD-Audio, but I find there's a level of quality I'll accept to take advantage of certain conveniences over going out to the store and paying $20-$25 for a DVD-Audio disc.

Now, mind you I'm not defending Apple but I'm saying they're not unique at all in this regard. Obviously if there's a considerably high frequency of upsampled videos, then they've either got a problem they weren't aware of ... or this is simply something they accepted and are willing to deal with it as long as customers are. The solution is to complain to Apple in a constructive way so they have an idea of what customers really want.

If the majority doesn't care then the majority doesn't care... and Apple will offer products as they see fit. I don't recall anywhere in Apple documentation that they ever stated that products in the 640x480 library were remastered from the source. So, all the energy expended whining here on slashdot about it should be spent sending complaints to Apple so that they get the picture and do what needs to be done to retain their bottom line. If a large enough percentage of consumers call them on this, they will change their practice and require all 640x480 content to be remastered... but don't expect them to be inspecting the contents of every file submitted to them, as the process to verify whether or not the content is upsampled cannot be derived from looking at the metadata... Each file would have to be inspected manually, at length. The end result is that you'd have to wait a hell of a lot longer for new releases and you'd be paying much more for them to make up the difference in labor expenditures. Then again, if you're willing to pay $10 a single and wait until three weeks after its initial release to obtain it, who am I to question?

Re:What retailer on earth inspects every item?

[bogie]

To paraphrase you:

"You can't expect companies to actually know what they are selling to consumers at all times."

What the fuck kind of logic is that? You'd make a great spokesperson for the Spinach grower's association.

Re:What retailer on earth inspects every item?

[MoneyT]

It's perfectly reasonable logic. It's not cost efficient for your or the company to do so. Let's say a cheap QA intern costs $15/hour. In order to ensure that each video is in perfect condition, that means your average QA intern can verify 2 videos per hour, maybe 3. Are you willing to pay an additional $7.50 per $2 episode?

Re:What retailer on earth inspects every item?

[SirWinston]

2 videos per hour?! Are you mad, sir? To weed out ~95% of problems you only need to view a few seconds of video from a transition point between bright and dark. 2 videos every 30 seconds is more like it (excepting whatever time it takes to flag a video as bad and write a problem description).

Re:What retailer on earth inspects every item?

[MoneyT]

You assume that any such point in the video is representative of the whole video, which is just a finer grain method of just sampling every few videos rather than all of the videos. Just because it transitions from dark to light well doesn't mean the rest of the video is any good. The video could be missing whole parts in the middle, and without watching it all the way through you would never know.

Re:What retailer on earth inspects every item?

[SirWinston]

But we're talking specifically about assuring the quality of the sampling and encoding, not some hypothetical missing content. Checking a few seconds of video during a transition between dark and light would weed out about 95% of poor video quality.

Re:What retailer on earth inspects every item?

[MoneyT]

Right, but the question becomes is that significantly better than holding your providers to a standard and randomly sampling the videos rather than checking them all? IOW, would checking every video give you a 95% catch rate as compare to something like 50% or would it only give you 95% compared to 93% and is that extra 2% worth the expense?

Re:What retailer on earth inspects every item?

[SnowDog74]

Business is not about what consumers might expect from the marketplace. In other words, it's not about what consumers want... It's about what they're willing to settle for.

Academically, intellectually and philosophically speaking, I acknowledge there's little that is honest, equitable or just in such a model. But that doesn't mean it doesn't serve its intended purpose... which is to generate an optimal level of profit for the investors concerned.

Financial statements are not impacted by what you might like to see in a product or service, but what you pay for it... which is to them a demonstrable record of what the market will bear. If they think they can get away with less quality for more profit, they sure as hell will test the waters.

Customers often say one thing and do another. This is why customer satisfaction surveys with automobiles never seem to parallel the actual sales trends. In fact, while people were very dissatisfied with gasoline prices during the summer, as prices went up, consumption kept going up... not down.

Further complicating the issue is that executives are not compensated on the long-term sustainable growth of an organization. They are paid on the quick and dirty... monthly and quarterly results. If the long-term picture looks ugly, that's when they collect their golden parachute and play musical chairs, moving on to the next company so they can fuck up the lives of more employees and customers in the long-run while they enjoy the bonuses and other benefits of a short-term compensation model.

No, they do not care about your need for a third knob on the stereo. If research demonstrates that the average customer pays just as much money for two knobs, don't count on a third.

Re:What retailer on earth inspects every item?

[SnowDog74]

If the idea is to be capable of assuring customers of the pristine quality of every frame of video, then every frame of video has to be expected... otherwise the assurance is based on a a falsehood and therefore that puts you right back to square one and you might as well not guarantee it at all, because you can't.

The problem is, the more elaborate the claim made by Company ABC, the more it invites lawsuits and therefore the less cost effective it becomes for the company and therefore the consumer. Any consumer who thinks that such costs aren't always passed on to the customer is simply deluded. Whether that is right or wrong morally is a whole other discussion, but misguided is he who believes that any company is in business to profit its customers more than it profits itself.

And foolish is the person who thinks that the customer isn't made to pay the marginal cost of guaranteeing products against defects, etc. and also the legal defenses needed for the lawsuits that arise when such guarantees fail to be fulfilled. Just as surely as insurance companies charge much more for policies which pay the value of a brand new replacement versus the depreciated value of the owned item, products and services with superior SLA's or warranties are going to cost you more as well.

That's not an argument against higher expectations... that's me telling you that you can get more, but as long as the majority of consumers are willing to settle for any less, you will inevitably pay more for that superior product or service you so desire.

I was told that my statements were absurd for telling it like it is. How absurd is it to think if you buy an $18,000 Ford you'll get the same level of service as if you buy a $47,000 Lexus? Equally insane is the Lexus customer who thinks they will get the same level of service as someone who buys a $400,000 Maybach 62...

Economies of scale...

Re:Am I the only one

[yabos]

Troll much? I have a Sawtooth G4 with an upgraded CPU to 1.4GHz 1.5GB PC100 SDRAM and I can run the videos completely fine. They look as good as any SDTV rips I've downloaded. Your Powerbook if you even really have one has DDR RAM and a faster system bus than my computer and mine plays videos just fine.

And they wonder why torrents are popular.

[Inoshiro]

At least I can burn stuff I torrented to a DVD for playback, should that be the thing I want to do.

Why restrict your paying customers to less use than non-paying copyright infringers? Chewbacca is a Wookie! It does not make SENSE!

Re:And they wonder why torrents are popular.

[OverlordQ]

Why restrict your paying customers to less use than non-paying copyright infringers?

Why make a law saying you can't kill people, when murderers do it regardless? Your comment made no sense.

Re:And they wonder why torrents are popular.

[Lehk228]

actually your comment makes no sense, the GP makes perfect sense.

selling a product that is worse than an illegal rip-off is a stupid business practice, especially when it is artificially worse than an illegal ripoff.

Re:And they wonder why torrents are popular.

[OverlordQ]

It's the copyright holders decision to say what can and cannot be used to distribute their content. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Re:And they wonder why torrents are popular.

[Lehk228]

are you high? or just stupid? my point is that their decision is dumb not that it's illegal for them to decide that way

Not the only one

[dafing]

I am in NZ (no music store AT ALL), and have a 2.4ghz P4M laptop. I have added videos (mpeg) to itunes, and when i play some of them in itunes, they are .....way off, maybe playing at 40% or something, its just upsets me so much to watch. If i put the size of the video playing down, as in, to a tiny dot or there abouts, they will play fine. That would normally suggest it was my pc being too slow right, but its 2.4ghz and the damn things work fine in WMP or anything else! hell, my dvd player could play them just fine, how come the fastest thing in the house wont?

and so begins...

[namekuseijin]

...M$'s Zune "grassroots" campaign...

hey, it's doing wonders against Sony! Apple is next in line...

Worst part

[ThurstonMoore]

"The worst part may be that Apple is charging people to download these new higher resolution videos even if they've already purchased the original, so people are essentially paying for nothing"

Weren't they doing that when they paid for the original?

Huh?

[Warlock7]

Jobs said that you would be getting the new resolution videos for free as long as you had purchased them before. I've been getting mine for free and the picture quality was an improvement. I wonder if it's the studios involved in the process that are doing it wrong.

Upsampled or just piss-poor encoding?

[Iluvatar]

In the Madonna video, the background circles actually do look better (more round and evenly coloured) in the iTunes video. In the Elton John video, the faces in the dark background look better (the "main" face on the right has more grain and the face on the left is slightly more visible). This seems to indicate that there is more information in the hi-res versions, just not in the right places. I'm not an expert with modern video encoders, but could it be that whoever did the encoding of the video did a poor job at properly allocating the bits to the relevant portions of the image?

Apple was doing some encoding

[tentimestwenty]

I remember at the beginning of iTMS Steve Jobs said that in some cases the record companies were delivering studio tape quality files to them which they were converting to 128 AAC and thus some of these files sounded better than even the CDs put out by the record companies because the source files were that much better to begin with.

You my friend...

[msimm]

Have obviously not read any of my posts.

Anyway, I call your trend whoring claim with a counterclaim > calling out trend whores is now nearly equally trendy on /. as is being one. And since you're technically now doing both. You win! :P

Although making absurd observations is also very trendy here, so by sheer volume along with this post I'm afraid I trump you both.

Better luck next time my friend.

So Much Ignorance, So Little Knowledge

[Absentminded-Artist]

I'm not surprised this Engadget piece was picked up by Digg in the usual OMG!!!!@#!!!!111!!! fashion, but here on slashdot? C'mon, guys.

Apple doesn't do any of the encoding. They provide a software kit for the vendors to do that. This is obviously a case where vendors have cheaped out. And are we surprised? Oh no! The same people who support the RIAA have unethically upsampled low quality vids to make believe they are high quality! They're ripping off their customers! Like this is news?

Have any of these people who repurchased upsampled music been given the brush off by Apple? Now THAT would be news. But in this day of fly off the handle news reporting I shouldn't be surprised this made front page on Digg.com. I am disappointed slashdot editors didn't show any savvy before posting the very same news story. This is debunked in digg.com AND Engadget comments. If common sense didn't prevail a moment of research would have shown this to be simple link baiting by Engadget. Again.

Apple? Say it ain't so!

[neilyos]

I, for one, am *shocked*!

Re:Apple Poopy Video Quality For Walmart

[dfghjk]

"Do you need a brain transplant?"

No I don't. Companies make major infrastructure investments in streaming video and don't just switch on a whim. Furthermore, technology leads can change rapidly. When someone says "you need to evaluate other technologies" they aren't saying "forget about Microsoft", they are saying that you may need to be considering options. I realize you may be incapable of understanding that, but then, what do you even know about streaming video?

"Oh and what you say is true."

Yes, it is.

"...Do you need explained further or can you now figure it out?"

Sorry, but your argument, if you can call it that, isn't compelling. I never said Cringely was wrong, I simply said he was offering opinion, not fact, and that he makes money offering opinion.

"Aside from transcoding upwards in size (GEEEEEZ) - the fact is that Apple uses a low quality profile of H.264 - there is no Apple Quicktime High Profile H.264. YES/NO?

Not only would be the High Profile H.264 quality be as good as MPEG-2 - but at a fraction of the data. YES/NO? Makes sense for download or true streaming YES?NO?"

You are suggesting that I make a qualitative evaluation of Apple's product based on absolutely no actual information or experience with it. If you are so convinced that Apple's encoding is POOPY times 2, then I'm sure you are qualified to perform testing and produce documentation of that "fact". I look forward to you detailed review. No, I don't count quoting unavailable tests on unrelated encodings, wild-assed conspiracy speculation and posturing on your part as proof.

This mirrors the level of experience I've had with

[drDugan]

... with Apple and video on Itunes:

see
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=179695&c id=14886135

Never did buy any more video from Apple; probably won't.

Re:Am I the only one

[toddestan]

That's actually a pretty nice machine there. I would guess that if the original poster is not lying, and his Powerbook is not broken, that he's running the stock 256MB of ram in the machine.

Re:Apple Poopy Video Quality For Walmart

[dfghjk]

"Look jerk off - you keep going in dialetic circles."

No, you just don't accept any argument other than your own inflammatory one and you can't respond rationally so you throw insults. Perhaps you should just relax and enjoy the video.

"Since you now admit you know f-ck all."

Actually I didn't; I pointed out that you offered no information whatsoever to draw the conclusion that you demanded. I'm not the one making qualitative judgements without any facts, you are. I have no personal position on whether Apple's products are of poor quality or not, but I do know that Real's codec has no bearing on Apple's quality and streaming formats don't matter in this instance. Apple is not going to use Real's product (and neither is MS).

"Go and read StreamingMedia's completed study which says Apple's low quality H.264 video sucks..."

I'm not paying $295 in hopes of finding that someone else says Apple is POOPY besides you. I already know I won't find that and it's not worth a penny to me either way. Since you clearly have a copy, why don't you post some relavent quotes?

"Then use something called Google - as do some research. Hmm you might find Doom9's info."

Why don't you do that and post the results here? One would think that you'd want to provide evidence to support your claims. Instead, all you're offering is flamebait.

Not only upconverted, but recompressed

[Animats]

It's even worse. Look at the examples in the article. The upconverted versions have big rectangular compression artifacts. So not only were they upconverted, they were decompressed and recompressed, which generates terrible artifacts. (See most files on YouTube for examples.) If they'd just been upconverted from low-rez source material, they'd just be blurry.

Re:Apple Poopy Video Quality For Walmart

[dfghjk]

No, I'm asking you to make your case rather than having you tell me to do the research for you.

I never challenged what Cringely or StreamingMedia said. I challenged that the supported your opinion (which they do not).

I am not the prosecutor. You've made statements. Now it's time for you to back them up.

Re:Micro$oft announces new advertising campaign!

[dfghjk]

We see how you treat people who take issue with your mindless arguments. No wonder you're so popular and have so many /. friends.

"Windows Media had started to fall behind. Usually it was at or near the bottom of recent objective studies that Microsoft was directly involved in. Companies using or considering Windows Media really need to evaluate other technologies."

I'm sure all the streaming video providers will now "forget about Microsoft" because you said they should.

Re:Apple Poopy Video Quality For Walmart

[dfghjk]

I've refuted the "evidence" you offered in your original post already. No need to do it again. You've already been proven wrong to everyone but you.

If only we all could make unsubstantiated, inflammatory claims then declare that they are right until proven otherwise. Good luck in your debate class. I'm sure the judges will respond well to your insults.

Re:Micro$oft announces new advertising campaign!

[dfghjk]

"Okay Apple/Jobs/Quicktime lemming apologists - let's hear it!? And Gates's Apple smashers - don't start yet. The Streaming.com study mentioned above - stated that Micro$oft's WindowsMedia video sucked even more than Apple's H.264 and that folks interested in video needed to forget about Micro$oft."

This was your statement. Please point out where StreamingMedia said that or STFU. I quoted you correctly.

Re:Apple Poopy Video Quality For Walmart

[dfghjk]

But everyone knows you're a bold faced liar, including me. The facts are on my side. Here's what you said:

"...Apple's video is POOPY to begin with - in comparison to Real.

So we get POOPY on top of POOPY. Quite a dog pile!"

Nothing in the StreamingMedia press release (yes it's just a press release, not the actual report which you evidently don't have) supports your wild-assed claim. Yes, the press release says that Real's products did well, but saying Apple's and MS's did less well is not the same as saying that their quality is "POOPY". Of course, you know that. You're just an argumentative asshole and troller.

Re:Micro$oft announces new advertising campaign!

[dfghjk]

I'm not the one with reading comprehension problem. Does the cold weather effect your brain?

Re:Apple Poopy Video Quality For Walmart

[dfghjk]

I guess MS wasn't POOPY when they offered more competive codecs, but now that one publication (apparently) claims that others have made greater improvements than they have (in an unrelated application no less) suddenly MS's quality has dropped to the POOPY level.

You are either an idiot or you feel entitle to redefine the meaning of POOPY.

cunnuck is an idiot. YES/NO

Prove me wrong.

Re:Apple Poopy Video Quality For Walmart

[dfghjk]

Thanks for proving me right.

Re:Apple Poopy Video Quality For Walmart

[dfghjk]

What's a "spacial ocassion"? Is that prom for you guys on the short bus?

Re:Apple Poopy Video Quality For Walmart

[dfghjk]

Oh I see. I'll put that trophy on my mantle next to your balls.

Re:Apple Poopy Video Quality For Walmart

[dfghjk]

You're not going to take away my linguistics award or get your balls back when you can't even form a complete sentence.

Canuck (k-nk') pronunciation
n. Often Offensive Slang.
A Canadian, especially a French Canadian.

Offensive? Mostly definitely. See Cannuck's profile

Q.E.D.