Downloading "Lost" from iTunes Music Store to the Powerbook - how does it scale on a regular TV (and now, a plasma screen)?

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Downloading "Lost" from iTunes Music Store to the Powerbook - how does it scale on a regular TV (and now, a plasma screen)?

Date Created: 16 Oct, 2005, 01:22 AM

We were heading to the movies tonight, but kinda got caught up watching the latest Bit Torrent files.

They had taken all day to come in, and cost me twice the upload size as the download speed was molasses-like, but the upload speed was quite sprightly.

I had downloaded Episode 3 of Commander in Chief, and Episode 4 of Season 2 of Lost.

We tossed a coin and decided to watch Geena Davis playing the Pres. first. Good show getting better.

Lost needed Stuffit Expander to put the various parts together, and it played fine. Except - it turned out to be Episode 3 labelled as Episode 4. Now, what to do with a whetted appetite when it's too late to head out to the movies?

Well, why not try a little experiment and see if I can download Lost from the iTunes Music Store?

My iTunes account had enough money in the kitty, so I pushed the button and the download began, visible as for an audio file. About 15 minutes later, while I'm puttering around reading MacSurfer articles, I hear "... Previously on Lost ", and the small preview window bottom left of iTunes is showing Episode 4.

Now for the test.

I usually watch my Bit Torrented files using my Powerbook's S-video out into my Panasonic VCR using AV2 on the front panel, then out of the VCR rear into a Panasonic 22" CRT TV, and the audio into my Yamaha amplifier to play through B & W speakers via Griffin's iMic USB adaptor.

Bit Torrent files of Lost are usually HDTV digitised files, and so appear letterboxed on my regular non-widescreen TV.

I couldn't easily get iTunes to resize properly on the TV, so decided to open the Lost file in Quicktime 7.0.3 Pro.

I located the file in Music/iTunesMusic/Lost/Lost, Season 2/04 Everybody Hates Hugo/mv4

The file itself is the famiiar green iTunes icon, and an mpeg4 file.

Highlighting it, I then asked the Finder to open it in Quicktime, which it did in its native 320x240 resolution.

Now the Powerbook and TV were already operating in screen span mode, as I do with Keynote presentations, and it was just a matter of making sure the video would play on the TV, in full screen mode.

Which it promptly did, filling the screen with glorious colour and the speakers with high fidelity stereo sound.

The picture quality was excellent on the 22" Panasonic, and properly proportioned. There was no difficultly whatsoever with the picture. It played smoothly at 25 frames per second.

Looking at the Quicktime Movie info, you can see the statistics while the movie plays at 320x240.

The file size was 190MB, the data rate was 608kbits/sec and the AAC (protected) format can be clearly seen as well as AVC0 media. Also note the audio rate of 44.1kHz.

Essentially, this was a great experience. 15 minutes to download compared to days, a working file rather than a bogus one, 200MB download compared to 350MB down and 450MB or so up, and good enough quality for my purposes. Actually, surprisingly good. How good it would appear on a widescreen plasma screen I don't know, but I'm visiting a friend with one tomorrow and will report back on its appearance.

Naturally, I needed to check out the DRM on this baby.

Dragging the file into iMovie or Toast gave error messages. Duplicating then changing the file to .mov and .mp4 showed more error messages. Using Handbrake or mac the ripper was unsuccessful. Quicktime itself has its "Save as..." greyed out. ffmpegx the open source conversion app. didn't help.

What I didn't try but the only working solution might be to take advantage of the Powerbook-VCR connection, slap a VHS tape in, and record it in real time. From there, play it back (losing quality unless one used a digitising device) into the Powerbook using something like the Canopus ADCV series, requiring 85 minutes just in overall playback time, not to mention a further hour or two to digitise it on the Powerbook.

It would be cheaper for me to spend another 1.99 and "Gift it to a friend", but I'm not sure if another without an iTunes Music Store account could use it.

Overall, the experience was a fine one. I saved a huge cut of my monthly internet allowance and many hours by not attempting another Bit Torrent download, the iTMS download speed was fast, it autoplayed in iTunes (and looks good fullscreen) and it plays back in excellent resolution on my converntional TV, where the sound was also excellent.

There is no 5G iPod to play with yet, but I expect to have one in my hands care of Hillel Lithwick of Paleographics Elsternwick in time for the next iMUG presentation (October 24) and will try to upload it to the iPod so we can all see whether this is truly a paradigm shift or just a dinky toy.

On the basis of the experience so far, Apple has a winner.

UPDATE - October 16.

This evening we headed over to a friend whose home is equipped with a Pioneer Plasma screen, Pioneer set top box, and Bose sound system - a first class home theatre.

I plugged into the system with my Powerbook's S-video output, fired up the downloaded Lost using Quicktime 7.0.3 and had it play full screen on the Pioneer.

You can see the result in the picture we took below, complete with huge Quicktime control icon. That's me on the left.

We were all pretty much blown away how the 320 x 240 image filled the screen (no letterboxing) and played without stutter. There was a little graininess as you might expect, but nowhere near the amount others have described, more it seems in expectation than empirically. (I forgot to check the file info to see if the 25fps rate was maintained.)

For watching "disposable" weekly programming which doesn't demand visual high fidelity, the downloadable videos are perfectly adequate. It is a remarkable technology that allows the same file to be used on a 2.5" iPod screen then scale to a huge high resolution plama screen.

We also looked at a 350MB Bit Torrent file (using VLC) of a Commander in Chief episode, and its quality was marginally superior to that of Lost. But once immersed in the story, the difference is hardly noticeable.

What I saw tonight reinforces my view that both free to air and especially pay-TV ought to be worrying about now, if not sooner.