File this one under FACT - MacNN.com Reader 101291
1/4/03, 12:29 am EST
Through his connections in the movie industry via Pixar, Jobs has negotiated with most major studios so that they are ok with the new device. Basically like an iPod with video. The color screen is not great, the device is meant to be used with external video sources. It has S video out with an adaptor to use RCA style video out. It also has DVI and a VGA adaptor for running monitors, the obvious problem being no native ADC support.
Uses various Apple proprietary schemes to compress DVDs to a much smaller files that generally look better than divx files. But for this go round, the audio out is a basic headphone one so don't expect to hook it up to a surround sound system. It's more like video to go with the obvious inherent compromises. And because the biggest drive they can use for the size of the device is 40GB, don't expect to hold your entire movie collection on it. However, it will be great for showing off your own stored videos, quicktime movies, etc, and take them with you. E.g, you film a presentation with a DV cam, process it in iMovie, then transfer it to your device and show the presentation at the meeting you traveled to across country. Yes you could just burn a DVD and take it with you, but how many offices have DVD players? With some external speakers and by hooking it up to a projector, you can replay it for whoever in most offices around the world.
Here's the bad part. In order to copy your DVDs, each one will need to be verified. When you attempt to copy, you will be required to register your DVD. Because of the unique copy protection on DVDs, no DVD can be registered more than once, so people won't be able to rent at blockbuster and transfer the movie to your device, nor will you be able to extract the DVDs from the device to another computer. People may be annoyed by having to register all their DVDs, but Apple has made it pretty painless. People will be amazed and of course a few years down the line, things like DTS decoding, better quality video, and larger capacity hard drives will be part of the package. At nearly $1000, people will be hesitant until they learn that it also has TiVo like capabilities!
anyway, I've said too much and I don't want the person who I go this info from to get in trouble.
