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'It's Showtime': September 12th, 2006

supermacdesign said:
Don't forget the 42" HD monitor Apple will drop at the event. What else did you think Apple would let you watch a movie on? (beside your iPod of course)
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Bring it on!
 
psionic001 said:
How big would a high quality feature length movie be?

And no, I havn't read all 6 pages of the posts, so sorry if it's been discussed.
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Worth revisiting.

The raw uncompressed bitrate for 720p = 1280*720*24bpp*30fps/(1024*1024) = 633 Mbps for 1080i it's ~711 Mbps 320x240 it's more like 53 Mbps.

720p compressed in H.264 with 5.1 sound seems to work out to about 1100 MB for your typical 45 minute drama show (i.e. compressed down to ~3 Mbps). This compares to 200 MB for the same show from iTMS in 320x240 H.264 (700 kbps). Not bad when you consider that 720p has 12X as many pixels (1280/320=4, 720/240=3)

Basically your typical movie would be about 2GB.

B
 
3 Mbps for a 720p movie? That's actually pretty close to a typical broadband download rate... neglecting the 2 GB storage requirements, all they would have to do is add the ability to watch a video as it is being downloaded (I'm pretty sure iTunes currently doesn't do that, which seems rather stupid, although the iTunes video player is also quite clunky) to make that feasible. I would still guess that they'll only do 640x480 or something like that, because it would be "good enough" for most people. If they stick to 320x240 for movies nobody will buy them.

If they can put the menu logic into iTunes, all the "Airport Express A/V" would have do do is add an H264 decoder chip and video DAC to the current Airport Express, that would be a pretty cheap solution. I think there is already a way to plug a remote control via USB into an Airport Express and remote-control iTunes. I don't see any reason why they couldn't fit this into something roughly the same cost as the current Airport Express ($130). Have iTunes for Windows handle simple movie and music playback, have the Mac version do a more full-featured FrontRow experience. Can most current Macs encode 640x480 into H264 or at least MP4 in real time to handle the UI? I suppose they could use a more quick & dirty compression technique for the UI, perhaps something that could take advantage of the large amounts of black background.

The only sticky part is the current AirportExpress is designed to sit on your powerstrip, where an IR receiver wouldn't work. So either you need a receiver on a cord, use an R/F remote instead of IR, or turn it into a "box with a cord" design more like a cable box.
 
Given the truly abysmal quality of Hollywood's 99% offerings, I say a big, "Who cares!" to any effort to pipe ever greater quantities of drivel into my life, however slickly and hyped.

I do, however, look forward to a new 23" iMac--oh yeah!
 
soapsuds said:
If they can put the menu logic into iTunes, all the "Airport Express A/V" would have do do is add an H264 decoder chip and video DAC to the current Airport Express, that would be a pretty cheap solution.
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Just note that the H.264 decoder chip in the 5G iPod is what sets the resolution and bitrate limits for current iTMS videos to no more than 320x240 and under 768 kbps. Any more powerful chip would put out more heat and require a larger box to dissipate it. If they went with MPEG-4 they could already handle 2Mbps 480x480 files which is competitive with current digital satellite offerings.

B
 
dongmin said:
I'm also not sure about the bittorrent thing. It's nice in theory, but even with bittorrent, movies will take a while to download. The problem with that is that you can't watch a bittorrent movie until the whole thing has downloaded, whereas with traditional quicktime downloads, you can start watching as soon as you have a decent enough buffer. And iTMS is all about instant gratification.
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Well, the good thing (as far as Apple is concerned) with Bittorrent is that it makes it easier and cheaper to distribute content, the fact that it can make RECEIVING the said content faster is just a nice bonus. And who is to say that they couldn't combine the good parts of Quicktime (instant-on) with the good parts of Bittorrent (distributed distribution).
 
I'm not sure that this is an entirely novel thought, but I thought I would test my psychic abilities a little.

The mac mini seems like the target for movies here, not iPods. There's a lot of talk about Airport express and how that might be the killer hardware, but there's more to it than that. Apple is competing against rental stores and netflix to watch movies. No one is just going to want to watch movies on an iPod, they are going to want it on they're TV. So why not have a network box that saves and plays the movies that is attatched to your TV? The mini is already positioned to do exactly that. No keyboard or monitor, maybe just a remote to run Front Row.

Download the movie to the mini, watch it on TV at your convenience. Mac video on demand. Start doing that with TV shows and all of a sudden, Tivo has got a serious contender, too.

The hard bit will be having full-quality movies sent to your home, VOD style.

The new iPod is a phone. There may be a video ipod, but I doubt that it's a main target for the movies.

I have this wonderful feeling that it'll be even cooler than this, but this is what I am expecting.

Dr. Z.
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I like the sound of that!! as for downloading the movies, the bittorrent protocol is almost perfect, but maybe a customized apple algorithm, because the beauty of services such as sky box office (no ones mentioned this so far) is you only have to wait 15 - 30 mins max for your film.

realistically, a 6gb or heaven help us 12gb download will take absolutely ages, even if it maxes out your connection. so streaming the media would perhaps be the way forward, although i dont know enough about the bittorrent protocol to fully understand the effects of prioritizing consecutive pieces.

Phil
 
I have just had confirmation of one of our suppliers that new iMacs are on the way next week. He didn't elaborate on the details though.

Next week is gonna be expensive.
 
boncellis said:
This is what I had anticipated a while back, but Apple went and invested in the Mini as the quasi-set-top-box. I'm not saying it's not possible, but I wonder if they would change horses mid stream, as it were. I think the video AE would be cool, but it's not quite mainstream enough for regular folk. The Mini, on the other hand, would be sufficiently mainstream if Apple cut the price a little bit and made Front Row a little more robust (and included a DVI to HDMI cable ;)).
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The mini isn't really any more of a set top box than any other mac, other than it being small. I don't see going with an airport as a change in direction, they've been pretty adamant that it's not a set top box all along. For a TV unit to become mainstream, it would have to be $200 tops, and even that is pretty high. A mini will never get that cheap - and even if it was, it would still be a waste to have a whole computer used for just TV when a cheap, simple streaming device would do the job.

LaMerVipere said:
I agree with everyone here who says that when Apple starts their own movie store they should also release a new Application along with it.

Playing video in iTunes is pretty bad.
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They don't need a new app, they just need to fix iTunes.


donlphi said:
I guess I was thinking if they up the resolution too much on the movie it may look better on the big screen, but it will no longer be compatible on the ipod.

I don't think the problem would be fixable in the firmware either. How big are we going to make these files?

Right now, I can rip a DVD (that I own of course) and crunch it down to my iPOD's size 320x240 (roughly 600MB for a couple of hours) . Now... it supports up to 640x480, but that turns it into a pretty hefty file.

I don't see apple changing the resolution for movies unless you want rediculous download times. Just downloading some of these HD trailers takes forever, and they look terrible on the displays at the apple store (tried it there only because I thought it was my computer, not the technology).

I guess I would rather see an on demand viewing solution for the hi-def stuff, which I can already do through comcast, and stick to low res for my iPod Video when I am traveling.

Either way... like I said in another post... you are going to see an updated iPod Nano, upgraded processors for some of models still using the first generation intel chips, and a worthless video streamer that lets you feed your video to a TV without hooking your computer up to it lo res (which will look terrible on a 1080p television)... oh and the Movie downloads - probably from Disney Pixar only at first.

This would suck for me because the last thing I want to do is tie up my computer so somebody in my house can watch INCREDIBLES with bad picture and average sound in my living room.
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My guess would be that they'd offer two versions of the movie, one for TV and one for iPod (either giving the user a choice or letting them have both). If download time is an issue, another option is having the user's computer render out the smaller version, if the machine is fast enough.

They pretty much have to up the quality if they want to sell movies and promote them for watching on a TV. I assume they'll go NTSC and not HD, the size for that is still managable for people with high speed connections.

I disagree that the airport will be "worthless", because I don't think they will ship one that is low rez. NTSC (dvd quality) at minimum. I don't think low rez is even an option for TV viewing, apple wouldn't release something they'd know was doomed to fail.
 
Wasn't the year of HD 2 years ago?

I can't remember. Anyway, I still can't see Apple magically being able to offer HD films and all this wireless streaming malarky of gigantic files at this point. I've got a 10 meg net connection, but I don't want to not be able to use the internet for 6 hours or so while iTunes downloads a 6gig movie file.

All I'm looking for is a way to play my archive of DVD backups straight to our HDTV. Sure the quality will only be comparable with current DVDs, but for me, at the moment that is fine. In the UK I don't think you can even buy any dedicated HD players yet? I may be wrong (I think Toshiba is releasing one in October). Actually, being in the UK the whole Movie Store idea isn't going to affect us for at least a couple of years.

It annoys me that my iTunes music collection is slowly being taken over by Podcasts. I wish there was a way of having them listed in a seperate library. I hate listening to a tune and then it moves onto a Podcast without me realising.

I also hate the way that iTunes is being expanded into visual things. iTunes Movie Store is like saying iEars iEyes Store. I hope they rebrand the movie aspect; the 'Showtime' name to me seems perfect.

Also, if it really is 'Showtime', I hope Apple have thought of every angle over the last year or so and release the fabled iPod Video with touch screen to compliment the streaming solution.
 
donlphi said:
Either way, what are you going to do with a HD version of the movie on your computer?
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HD is not going to happen, at least not next tuesday.

balamw said:
Worth revisiting.

The raw uncompressed bitrate for 720p = 1280*720*24bpp*30fps/(1024*1024) = 633 Mbps for 1080i it's ~711 Mbps 320x240 it's more like 53 Mbps.

720p compressed in H.264 with 5.1 sound seems to work out to about 1100 MB for your typical 45 minute drama show (i.e. compressed down to ~3 Mbps). This compares to 200 MB for the same show from iTMS in 320x240 H.264 (700 kbps). Not bad when you consider that 720p has 12X as many pixels (1280/320=4, 720/240=3)

Basically your typical movie would be about 2GB.

B
Click to expand...

So what would be the size for a decent encoding of 480 (p or i)? Basically about DVD quality, but with a more efficient codec, which is the most likely format for release next week.
 
milo said:
HD is not going to happen, at least not next tuesday.
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I can't see Steve releasing anything but HD if it's meant to be viewed on a big screen. If there isn't a new 48-inch screen or a way to get the movies to a Hi-Def television I would then venture to guess they'll keep the resolution the same as it is currently :cool:
 
milo said:
I don't think low rez is even an option for TV viewing, apple wouldn't release something they'd know was doomed to fail.
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uh...

Apple III
LISA
The Newton
The G4 Cube
The Apple Hi-Fi (who the hell got suckered into that one?)
I swear steve jobs had a nephew or something that he let design a product for the iPOD. What a worthless system that is. IT FITS ON THE SHELF, BUT NOT WITH AN IPOD IN IT!!! GENIUS!!
APPLE REMOTE??

Do I really need to keep listing things?

All this Disney talk and it could get ugly at the iTUNES Movie Store.
:D
 
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