| Home > Technology > Two different takes on the 5G iPod - while Bit Torrent meets .m4v |
| Two different takes on the 5G iPod - while Bit Torrent meets .m4v | | Date Created: 19 Dec, 2005, 03:52 PM |
 As the rush to buy holiday gifts revs up, more eyes and thoughts will be turned to things electronic as the things to give - or be demanded to receive.
This is especially so with Apple's iPod, which together with gameplaying devices, like X-Box and PSP, are the big movers this season.
This weekend (hey, it's already Monday afternoon here!) I noted two contrasting takes on the iPod 5G, plus an observation of my own.
The first piece comes from mainstream media, the New York Times specifically. Essayist David Carr writes about his discovery of the iPod's video capabilities in a (reg.reqrd) piece entitled, Taken to a New Place, by a TV in the Palm.
Carr writes about how he uses the iPod for his daily commute and how immersive he finds the experience, especially watching ABC's Lost. It echoes some of the sentiments I have blogged about here, and this quote especially resonates:
There are other drawbacks to personalized, portable video. "Lost" is a program with a background plot of visual clues that don't scan on an iPod, and one and a half hours of video battery life seems precisely designed to frustrate a movie watcher. But as a device for taking in a single episode of a serial drama, sitcom or soap opera, the video iPod seems perfectly conceived.
Carr "gets it". (Go read the entire article if only to marvel at his quality of writing.)
Someone who is struggling and isn't getting it is Dave Winer over on his Scripting News blog.
Dave continues his ambivalent relationship with Apple and its products, having recently purchased both portable and desktop Apple computers, and more recently the same 5G iPod.
In a blog entry entitled Verdict on the video iPod -- hmmm (here) Winer opines:
"Watching movies on such a small screen is hard on the eyes. And it's not easy to hold it steady on an airplane, where a laptop can be placed on the tray, you have to hold the iPod in the air for long periods, which is uncomfortable. And, where you thought it would shine, battery life, it's really no better than a laptop. Video is video, and just because the screen is small, well, so is the battery. Net-net, iPods are nice for audio, unproven for video."
Quite a contrast to Carr's thoughts, isn't it? I don't want to respond to Winer's concerns (he has no area for comments, so I guess responses for publication are not invited) but it seems to me Dave is sorting out for himself the best way for his 50 year old eyes to watch media. Given the choice of a plane with business class with power-supply for the Powerbook, I'd watch Lost on it too - which I have on a few occasions.
And since I take the Powerbook with me most places, I'd use it in preference to the iPod. But on a bumpy bus ride with people crowding me, no, the iPod is the better tool for watching "throwaway" TV shows.
For a while now my sources of video content have been standard fare I have converted from Quicktime (.mov or mpeg) into .m4v files playable in iTunes and on the iPod. It's a slow process, although some software does allows you to create a "watch" folder where batch processing can take place in the background.
Other sources have been the iTMS video section for Lost and Desperate Housewives, as well as Bit Torrent for Commander in Chief and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
The Daily Show might be on the Comedy Channel, which I don't subscribe to in Australia since I gave away cable TV in favour of Bit Torrent. Despite its sharp acidic focus on US politics and entertainment, I keep up with US affairs so the biting satire doesn't go over my head, and I lean Stewart's way in any case, politically speaking.
In the past, I have downloaded the show by Bit Torrent, with each file being around 175MB. The torrent of the last show of the year (December 15) came through this morning, notified by my RSS reader.
But how pleasing it was to see that finally those kind souls sharing American cultural values via The Daily Show have made a torrent for the iPod! And it plays perfectly, after coming in at around 80MB. Because of its popularity, it also downloaded in the same kind of time I might expect Lost to come down via iTMS. Remember, with Bit Torrent the more people download, the faster is your own download since we're sharing, not queueing.
So some kind soul has gone to the trouble of digitising the show, either by an extra step of converting, or using an iPod 5G-helpful codec from say Elgato or some shareware developer - or even Quicktime Pro, although its conversion speed remains desperately slow.
Now I'm not so silly to think that this is the first iPod-intended Bit Torrent file, but it's the first time I've seen one appear in my RSS feed so it caught my eye. But a cursory search of some of the Bit Torrent sites showed no shortage of material for the iPod which I shall merely comment exist rather than link to.
You can do your own follow-up, thanks very much.
Here's my point: Shows like The Daily Show are ideal fodder for the iPod. Talking heads, interviews, occasional action and comedy routines, and witty dialogue to help pass the boring trapped moments of daily life such as commutes or queue waiting are ideal uses for the iPod. Watching Harry Potter isn't.
The iPod will gather its critics, but I fear some will miss the point that we are all grasping with new ways conceiving of producing and consuming media. I have many ideas I will follow up on in 2006 for how I wish to create content (the distribution models are in place with more to come), and I am sure I will be surprised at what others will come up with in the next year.
One final thought: I showed my iPod with Lost to a friend who previously saw no value in the 5G. He had videod an interview with me for a local TV program he hosts, and after I let him play with the iPod. He was astonished at its quality, yet seemed flummoxed when I asked why he wasn't podcasting his show on iTMS. And he will be buying one.
We're also both fans of Seinfeld, and know lots of dialogue and scenes by heart. Often we discuss some recent moments when we each could have referred to a particular episode to illustrate to the other what occurred. I even sometimes refer to scenes in therapy sessions if I know the client is a fan. How neat would it be to have the whole DVD boxed set on the iPod, somehow catalogued for easy recall. (I'm aware that a service exists which will sell you an iPod and DVDs of series of choice for the retail price of each, with the shows converted on to the iPod. They convert once, transfer many to make their money).
The same thing happened at a formal function recently when someone used the word, Vessel.
Someone (it was a convivial but formal function) leapt in with, "Is that the vessel with the Pessel?", and from there the table of 10 joined in with dialogue they could remember from Danny Kaye's The Court Jester. Someone then got all nostalgic and asked who knew of Kaye's The Little Fiddle.
It's on my partner's iPod. She wasn't there, and I had not yet loaded it on my iPod, which was with me. I can only imagine the look on the faces of those at the table had I said, "Just a second. Is this what you mean?" and handed her the iPod with it playing with a picture of Kaye displayed.
What will happen when we can take all our media with us? Will there be scenes like the one from Annie Hall where Woody Allen calls on Marshall McLuhan to rebuff a know-all nerd in a queue? A virtual Marshall to keep the peace (Ahem!)
We are in for interesting times!
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