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iPod To Eventually Hold All the Video In the World?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the one-miiiiillion-gigabtyes dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A senior Google exec has been talking up the prospect of iPods that can hold all the world's media due to the plummeting price of storage and its increasing volume-to-size ratio. Google's VP of European operations, Nikesh Arora, predicts that in as little as just over a decade's time, iPods will be capable of storing 'any video ever produced.'" From the article: "Arora believes, mobile is likely to follow the same path. 'Mobile is not going to be a different thing,' he added — and if the mobile industry is to capitalize on the growth of content, it would be wise to ape the development of the internet. He said: 'The mobile industry has to go through the same phases the internet has gone through... Mobile will have the same learning curve. It would be somewhat foolish to leapfrog the stages the internet went through.'"

11 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Really? by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yes, but we'll be stuck watching it on those teeny tiny screens.

  2. Apple and the Google by spellraiser · · Score: 4, Funny

    Apple: Gee, Google, what are we going to do tonight?

    The Google: The same thing we do every night, Apple ... Try to hold ALL THE VIDEO IN THE WORLD!

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    I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
    1. Re:Apple and the Google by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Funny

      Somehow that mental image lends itself more to Microsoft, don't you think?

      Ballmer: Narf! Poit!

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    2. Re:Apple and the Google by Josh+Lindenmuth · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is just as funny as the story is ridiculous.

      Historically and mathematically Google's claim just doesn't add up. Apple's iPod site claims that their 80GB video iPod can store "up to 6 1/2 hours" of video. Let's be very aggressive and assume that hard drives continue doubling in capacity every 2 years for the next decade. Here's where'd we be after 10 years:

      2006 - 80 GB, 6.5 hours
      2008 - 160 GB, 13 hours
      2010 - 320 GB, 26 hours
      2012 - 640 GB, 52 hours
      2014 - 1.28 TB, 104 hours
      2016 - 2.56 TB, 208 hours

      A 2.56 TB iPod would be quite impressive, but wouldn't even hold every season of The Simpsons, let alone "All the video in the world". Even if they ignored power/size requirements and used full 3.5 inch desktop drives, capacity would only be ~25.6TB or 2080 hours. This isn't even enough space to hold 1 year's worth of network soap operas.

      --
      Huh? Don't mind me, I'm just the new guy.
    3. Re:Apple and the Google by aftk2 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Heh, that's 6 and a half hours of video playback, on one battery charge.

      Sheesh.

      --
      concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
  3. Capacity. by commo1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What exactly is the estimated capacity for "all the world's [media]". This sounds like one heck of a bold statement when the numbers at the moment are unfathomable for holding a back catalogue of everything broadcast on network television and everything from blockbusters to B-movies from 1890 on, let alone net-generated videos, cable and alternative delivery methods.

    1. Re:Capacity. by grnbrg · · Score: 5, Interesting
      What exactly is the estimated capacity for "all the world's [media]".


      Interesting question... IMDB currently has records on:

      • 363,000 movies released theatrically. (Average of 2 hrs)
      • 367,000 TV episodes. (Average of 30 minutes)
      • 57,000 made for TV movies. (Average of 90 minutes)
      • 51,000 direct to video movies. (Average of 2 hours)
      • 5,300 mini seris. (Average of 3.5 hours)
      Averages are wild-assed (but somewhat reasonable) guesses. Given that the MPEG2 encoding used by DVDs runs at about 25MB/minute or 1.5GB/hour this works out to about 2,000 terabytes for all current known video.


      Assuming storage capacity continues to double every 18 months ( big assumption!), and that we currently have 500G drives commercially available, we can expect to see this capacity in a single drive in less than 20 years.



      grnbrg.

  4. 640k is enough for anybody by jandrese · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm really tempted to save that article just so I can pull it out and show how naive people were back in 2006. If there is one thing time has taught me, it's that the volume of information expands in relation to your available storage. I mean 10 years ago one of our 500GB modern hard drives could have probably stored all of the video available on the internet with room to spare.

    I do agree that an iPod like device could probably hold enough video (high quality video at that) to well exceed its battery life however (modern iPods have no trouble doing that with music).

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
  5. Re:Really? by Furmy · · Score: 5, Funny

    "I think that enough space to hold all the world's video should be enough for everyone"

  6. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  7. Re:It already can! by mgblst · · Score: 4, Funny

    The compression scheme has been available for years. It is the decompression that has proved to be a little tricky.