New shows available for purchase/download for ipod video.

[Sobelius]

New shows available for purchase/download for ipod video.

Includes the new Battlestar Galactica! Might be a reason for me to get one of them new-fangled video-gizmo whatchamacallit ipod thingies.

[schild]

The new iPod will introduce you into a world of DRM pain like you've never been introduced. Also, screen is le tiny. You'd be better off getting a PSP gigapack. Seriously, costs the same as an iPod, comes with a 1gig Memory stick and you can buy games for it. New, fun games. Not like the old boring once that arrived at launch.

[UD_Delt]

I got one of the new iPod video 30gb thingies for my wife for Christmas. When she asked for it I was a bit annoyed as I thought that there were better things available and it was a bit of a waste.

Once I got it though I started messing with it to get it loaded up with some music and whatnot so she could pull it out of the box Christmas morning and check it out. I have to say the thing is pretty damned cool. I now have about 38 hours of music loaded into and have used about 3GB of the available 30GB. The iTunes interface is easy to use, the transfer speeds are quite nice as well. I got the whole 3GB transfered in less than 15 minutes.

And the setup and size of the thing are amazing. I wasn't too sure about the click wheel until I started messing with it. That is one of the coolest designs I have seen recently. The thing is also tiny, not iPod Nano tiny but about large wallet tiny, although much thinner than a wallet. I'm not sure of the size of the PSP but I don't know if it's small enough to say strap to your upper arm while you go for a jog...

I haven't loaded any video on it yet but the screen does appear a bit small to watch very much. I can't imagine using it for video very often. Maybe if you're stuck on a plane for 4 hours or something...

My biggest complaint is the same as everyone else's. The damned back panel smudges way too easily. It's a shiny silver panel and you cannot touch it without leaving a very visible fingerpring. In order to keep it nice and shiny for presentation purposes when she opens the gift I've taken to handling it while wearing gloves or handling it with napkins and such.

[Righ]

DRM? I hear the PSP has that too if you want to swing that way with more promised in future firmware upgrades. It even has a disk drive for which no writable media will ever be released. Its easy enough to rip media from your own collection of CDs and DVDs to an iPod using free software. It may not have anywhere near as good a screen as a PSP, but it is more convenient to record to than expensive Memory Stick Duo cards. The DRM thing was ah... an unusual hate-on. Neither device (I have one of each) are great portable video devices, the Apple mostly because of the screen, the Sony mostly because of the media format. Both suffer from coming from companies that have lousy product support and expensive repair programs.

[schild]

I'll admit this. I'm a huge fan of the UMD movie format. And full TV series (aside from goddamn anime) is less expensive on the PSP than DVDs (if you shop at Fry's that is, who bundles up the discs). Also, I like playing games. There's really no reason not to upgrade your firmware anymore unless you REALLY love your roms. I, for one, will be upgrading pretty soon most likely.

[UD_Delt]

Hmmm... What DRM is there for the iPod? Or is that only for iTunes stuff?

I haven't downloaded anything off of iTunes yet. I just loaded the existing music I had on my HD. None of the existing stuff had any associated DRM stuff I don't think as I ripped most of it using AudioCatalyst.

Also, from my reading you can also convert any existing movies into quicktime format and then into an iPod loadable format.

Does DRM only come into play when trying to get stuff off of the iPod because I've had no problem getting anything and everything onto it?

[schild]

Basically the real problem is that you can download anything off the web. But when you download a TV show from iTunes, you get it in a tiny resolution (for the iPod obviously) and it's only really playable on the ipod as viewing it anywhere else would fall under the category of "retarded." In other words, the incentive to purchase single TV shows at the iTunes cost just doesn't make sense. Now, if you could pay $7 for a full season because of the crippling DRM and size, I could see it being worthwhile. I'd like an iPod with every episode of 24 or Dead Like Me on it, but not at $1.99 an episode or whatever it is. DVDs are cheaper.

[Righ]

schild is talking mostly about buying unique media from places like iTunes or in stores. You can buy licensed movies and such on UMD for the PSP. And I'll grant you that they are nicer than the DRM products you download from iTMS. However, I'm still more of a fan of getting a slightly less compressed product in the form of DVD (which is still a bunch of DRM controlled shite) and ripping that into a format for lesser quality, more portable playback.

Same concept is true with the music on iTMS - 99c for a song, $9.99 for an album. This might be something I'd pay online for  instant product delivery were the music format close to the quality I can get in the shitty CDs I have to buy. I'd rather move to SACD and get more fidelity (how 70s) next than to lesser even than MP3 quality compressed DRM crap. The discount for lower quality is not enough for any portable music or movie formats being sold. It's like buying 20 second low-fi ringtones for $5 each. How dare they charge me more for less just so I can play it on some rubbishy small device. I want to kick their heads in.

[UD_Delt]

Gotcha... I didn't even check. Do you know what Bitrate iTunes mp3's are created? Are they at least 192kb/s?

Hell... Guess I could just check myself.

[Righ]

Technically, iTMS sells MPEG-4 part 3 AAC protected audio files at 128kbps and uses Apple's proprietry FairPlay DRM. Recent tracks may also use AAC with VBR (and thus only play in iTunes 5 or later). To the best of my knowledge, nothing on iTMS uses the AAC-SSR format Sony added to the MPEG-4 standard. In theory 128kbps MP4 AAC is supposed to be as good as 160kps MP3s. Funny thing is, Apple sourced a very good MP3 encoder when they put iTunes together, and it can generally outperform its AAC encoding at similar bitrates.