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16GB Flash-based iPod Video Player?

Flowbee said:
...a 16gb iPod for video doesn't seem make a lot of sense on its own...
Click to expand...

Why not?

You could fit a handful of movies and a bunch of songs on it.
Battery life would be longer using NAND rather than using a HDD
NAND is faster than accessing data from an HD... as fast as the iPod's little processor will switch the shift register on that thing. No seek times... little or no cache required.

-Clive
 
Yvan256 said:
Not to mention that 16GB would be enough to "buffer" about 8 movies in H.264, which is a bit overkill as far as caching goes, and easily puts 16GB back into the "storage" capacity.

A portable, flash-based video player with 16GB that can hold 8 Hi-Def movies or 16 Standard-def movies, a few TV shows and a some albums of music? Seems plenty enough to me, considering the size of portable DVD players + 8 or 16 DVDs + burned MP3 CDs...
Click to expand...

Is H.264 that efficient? You could compress an HD feature to 2GB? That's insane! I've not had the opportunity to work with HD content and H.264, but now that I read this, I really want to. Maybe I should borrow a camera and just mess around.
 
I think it's far more likely we'll see a 16 GB iPod nano, not a flash-based video player. People forget video files are huge in size and 16 GB won't cut it for video storage.
 
I think this is an analyst trying to bolster stocks of companies that sell flash memory. I agree with most that this is counter intuitive.

This isn't like a 1 gig shuffle, where the songs are each 5 mb. The average tv show is like 500 mb. This would be more like a 150 MB shuffle. This is a far smaller selection on the go. A 100 or 120 GB player makes much more sense.

My best guess: true video ipods will be hard drive based, the audio first ipod line will be switched to flash memory and merged with the nano line, giving you a range from 16 (20? 32?) GB down to 4GB. The larger capacities may be bigger and a different form factor. Then you've got the good old shuffle, pure music.

Any which way, I'll take 3 please. :)
 
SactoGuy18 said:
I think it's far more likely we'll see a 16 GB iPod nano, not a flash-based video player. People forget video files are huge in size and 16 GB won't cut it for video storage.
Click to expand...

Obviously you haven't read this forum otherwise you wouldn't be speaking so ignorantly.

For videos of very high quality, say DVD or better, then you are correct. 16GB won't hold much video content. However, encoded in h.264, 16GB may be enough for 8 full-length movies. Smaller still, Xvid & DviX offer greater compression with *slightly* less quality. (Unfortunately, though, I don't think iTunes supports them. Does anyone know off-hand?) Regardless, 3 hours of video can be compressed to around 1GB, implying that a 16 GB Video iPod could hold up to 48 hours of *decent* quality video.

DviX compression, by the way, would by far be sufficient for an iPod-sized screen... even if it was in iPod-length widescreen.

-Clive
 
What about the Airplane Connection?

I recall a rumor about Apple working with airlines in order to allow for iPod connectivity. Maybe, by increasing the Nano's capacity and giving it the ability to view video is just a way to showcase the iPod abilities and size.
"Make that transatlantic filght more enjoyable with your own shows - all in your pocket." 16 Gigs is easily a flights worth of video fun. :)
 
Spock said:
It would also be able to hold a nice Mac OS X install for lets say MacBook and MacBook Pros??
Click to expand...

I like the sound of that....seriously this is a feature that I am eagerly waiting for.

But as this is supposed to be for a video player...I would say an iPod video that follows the direction of the shuffle. Basically it is just 'take what you need today' and not 'carry your entire library'. I could see it working...I'd probly get one instead of the 80gig (depending on price of course).
 
Schroedinger said:
This isn't like a 1 gig shuffle, where the songs are each 5 mb. The average tv show is like 500 mb. This would be more like a 150 MB shuffle. This is a far smaller selection on the go. A 100 or 120 GB player makes much more sense.
Click to expand...

Songs are 5MB and last 5 minutes,
TV shows are ~500 MB (h.264 encoded) and last 60 minutes.

Thus:

1GB could hold 16.5 hours of music
1GB could hold 2 hours of video (thanks Eidorian)

Not too bad for a shuffle, eh? However, we're not talking about 1GB, we're talking about 16... offering you 32 hours of h.264 encoded content... Most people don't need that much at one time. If you do, buy a Zune.

Besides, this is speculation anyway.

-Clive
 
Clive At Five said:
Songs are 5MB and last 5 minutes,
TV shows are ~500 MB (h.248 encoded) and last 60 minutes.

Thus:

1GB could hold 16.5 hours of music
1GB could hold 2 hours of music

Not too bad for a shuffle, eh? However, we're not talking about 1GB, we're talking about 16... offering you 32 hours of h.248 encoded content... Most people don't need that much at one time. If you do, buy a Zune.

Besides, this is speculation anyway.

-Clive
Click to expand...
You might want to fix that. You have music on there twice.

Secondly, a good 60 minute show (minus commercials) usually comes in around 380 MB in XviD. That's in more or less iPod resolution.
 
Clive At Five said:
For videos of very high quality, say DVD or better, then you are correct. 16GB won't hold much video content. However, encoded in h.248, 16GB may be enough for 8 full-length movies. Smaller still, DviX offers greater compression with *slightly* less quality. (Unfortunately, though, I don't think iTunes supports DviX. Does anyone know off-hand?) Regardless, 3 hours of video can be compressed to around 1GB, implying that a 16 GB Video iPod could hold up to 48 hours of *decent* quality video.

DviX compression, by the way, would by far be sufficient for an iPod-sized screen... even if it was in iPod-length widescreen.

-Clive
Click to expand...

I think DviX looks like @$$. I've looked at several clips and even compressed some of my own. Even at half of SD Rez, I can't watch it for more that about 30 seconds before I wanna blow it up.

Also, what is H.248? That's a VOIP code right? When I googled it I couldn't find any actual video applications. It appears to be a signaling protocol for VOIP. Maybe you mean H.264? That's the shizznit. Anyone ever looked at the HD clips on Quicktime Trailers? Those are the best looking streaming content I've ever seen. You have to look really hard and long to find compression artifacts.
 
sartinsauce said:
I think DviX looks like @$$. I've looked at several clips and even compressed some of my own. Even at half of SD Rez, I can't watch it for more that about 30 seconds before I wanna blow it up.

Also, what is H.248? That's a VOIP code right? When I googled it I couldn't find any actual video applications. It appears to be a signaling protocol for VOIP. Maybe you mean H.264? That's the shizznit. Anyone ever looked at the HD clips on Quicktime Trailers? Those are the best looking streaming content I've ever seen. You have to look really hard and long to find compression artifacts.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I meant h.264. Whatever.

DviX and XviD would both look fine... especially on an iPod screen. Maybe not on a TV or monitor, but we're not talking about a TV or monitor. We're talking about an iPod.

-Clive
 
sartinsauce said:
I think DviX looks like @$$. I've looked at several clips and even compressed some of my own. Even at half of SD Rez, I can't watch it for more that about 30 seconds before I wanna blow it up.

Also, what is H.248? That's a VOIP code right? When I googled it I couldn't find any actual video applications. It appears to be a signaling protocol for VOIP. Maybe you mean H.264? That's the shizznit. Anyone ever looked at the HD clips on Quicktime Trailers? Those are the best looking streaming content I've ever seen. You have to look really hard and long to find compression artifacts.
Click to expand...
XviD looks fine to me. I wouldn't use XviD and MPEG-4 for anything more then standard definition. You'll save battery life not having to decode h.264.
 
Eidorian said:
XviD looks fine to me. I wouldn't use XviD and MPEG-4 for anything more then standard definition. You'll save battery life not having to decode h.264.
Click to expand...

I don't understand. Why wouldn't you use mpeg-4 for anything more than Standard Def? My experiences with mpeg-4 have been really positive. Mpeg-2 (aka DVD and H.263) is fine, but not nearly as clean and efficient as the Mpeg-4 I've used. I mean, h.264 is mpeg-4. Have you had bad experiences using it?

Good point about the h.264 decoding using up battery power!
 
HD on a 3" screen????

Yvan256 said:
You don't buffer streaming data with flash memory since it can only handle a limited number of rewrites (granted the limit is high, but if you use it as a buffer you'll hit that limit pretty quickly). Some type of RAM is usually used for buffering.

Not to mention that 16GB would be enough to "buffer" about 8 movies in H.264, which is a bit overkill as far as caching goes, and easily puts 16GB back into the "storage" capacity.

A portable, flash-based video player with 16GB that can hold 8 Hi-Def movies or 16 Standard-def movies, a few TV shows and a some albums of music? Seems plenty enough to me, considering the size of portable DVD players + 8 or 16 DVDs + burned MP3 CDs...
Click to expand...


Why would anyone watch HD on a 3" screen?

HD movies on HD-DVD and Bluray are running about 30Gigs.

The 8Gig Nano is $249, how much is a 16Gig going to be?

On my iPod, I have 15Gigs of video right now and it's growing...
 
I would buy one of these.

16GB isn't a tremendous amount of space, but it would certainly be enough for an iPod that is mostly being used for music, with occasional video watching, and a full-frontal screen.
 
music =/= movies

Music and movies are different mediums - you don't need your whole movie library on the go, you just need the next few films 'in your queue'. It sounds like 16gig will give you somewhere like 8 films at a time. That's more than enough choice for most people I would think. I bet this gets automated in iTunes synching...

I've been waiting for flash-drives/nanos to best my 3rd gen 10gig ipod (which keeps on ticking, and as long as it does I'm set, but sooner or later...). I'd like a smaller player, but I'm barely getting by on 10gig. 16 would be nice indeed...
 
Interesting...

Even though using flash memory over a hard drive could increase battery life. I don´t think 16GB is enough. Yeah, you won´t be watching more than 8-16 movies per trip. But the whole point of the iPod is availability of what you want. You may load up some movies or shows you think you are going to watch, but if you suddenly feel like watching something else, you are screwed! Go back to your computer and load desired movie. Movies and music do not work on the same way though, so 16GB could still have potential.

I don´t really know. Maybe a hard-drive and flash flash memory iPod? Load things from HD to flash memory, then watch. Would that consume more battery life than watching directly from the HD? I don´t know enough about the technology and power consumption, any experts want to comment?
 
jmbear said:
Even though using flash memory over a hard drive could increase battery life. I don´t think 16GB is enough. Yeah, you won´t be watching more than 8-16 movies per trip. But the whole point of the iPod is availability of what you want. You may load up some movies or shows you think you are going to watch, but if you suddenly feel like watching something else, you are screwed! Go back to your computer and load desired movie. Movies and music do not work on the same way though, so 16GB could still have potential.

I don´t really know. Maybe a hard-drive and flash flash memory iPod? Load things from HD to flash memory, then watch. Would that consume more battery life than watching directly from the HD? I don´t know enough about the technology and power consumption, any experts want to comment?
Click to expand...

battery life is important to me.
 
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