New iPod Released!!!

JLTucker · Post by **JLTucker** » 2006-09-12 09:40pm

Stark wrote:EDIT - holy shit, someone bought an episode of LOST for iPods (fucking madness, by the way) and it's not in widescreen? What did you expect? The iPod isn't widescreen!

Um, I have viewed widescreen videos on my iPod. The video featured in the screenshot below was downloaded from iTunes. It is a Short that won an Academy Award. It is called "Six Shooter"

What I really fucking HATE about the iPod is that the audiobooks that I transfer to my iPod will not show up under the Audiobooks menu. They only show up there if you purchase the audiobooks from iTunes. Apple, the cocksucking fuckshits.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-09-12 09:45pm

How does that change the fact that THE SCREEN ISN'T 16:9? Why would anyone expect a downloaded movie for iPod to be 16:9? Of COURSE it can display it, but it's not naturally 16:9, so why would anyone provide video that needs to be letterboxed on an already tiny screen?

How are you transferring the audiobooks? I don't have any, but every other form of media works without Apples stamp of approval. If you add it to iTunes or equivalent and synchronise, it should work. Just copying it to the iPod will NOT work.

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2006-09-12 09:46pm

Stark wrote:EDIT - holy shit, someone bought an episode of LOST for iPods (fucking madness, by the way) and it's not in widescreen? What did you expect? The iPod isn't widescreen!

And

How does that change the fact that THE SCREEN ISN'T 16:9? Why would anyone expect a downloaded movie for iPod to be 16:9? Of COURSE it can display it, but it's not naturally 16:9, so why would anyone provide video that needs to be letterboxed on an already tiny screen?

nBSG via iTunes is in widescreen, Lost is not. Why not? It should be in widescreen if the original showing of the episode was because people can still view it on a larger computer monitor. My monitor isn't widescreen either, but that doesn't stop me from getting all my DVDs in widescreen (if possible).

The point is, crappy video quality is not worth it for $10 or $13 unless you only watch your videos on the iPod. I don't only listen to the music on the iPod as opposed to my computer (more often I use my computer itself). I wasn't aware of how poor the video quality was before I downloaded the episodes, and until and unless it gets a lot better, I will never do so again.

Edit: Added to post.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-09-12 09:57pm

But, like, don't you own it anyway? On DVD or something? Why pay $10 an ep for poorass stuff when you already own it? I'm just not seeing why anyone would ever buy video from Apple, that's all.

And they really letterbox nBSG? Wierd. Makes a small screen even smaller. I wouldn't expect most of the market to use TV-out, either.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2006-09-12 09:58pm

Are you serious it's $10 an episode?

Wait, is that US dollars or Martian dollars?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-09-12 10:00pm

It's AU$1.60 an audio track here, and that's vaguely worth it. Video seems to be nuts priced.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2006-09-12 10:42pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Are you serious it's $10 an episode?

Wait, is that US dollars or Martian dollars?

$10 for a movie. It's $1.99 for an episode. *shrug* I just get music from there, mostly the free ones they give out every tuesday... hmm... it's tuesday...

Also the movies are apparently 640x480 rez, which isn't bad compared to a 4:3 DVD which is: 640x480.

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2006-09-13 12:29am

Stark wrote:But, like, don't you own it anyway? On DVD or something? Why pay $10 an ep for poorass stuff when you already own it? I'm just not seeing why anyone would ever buy video from Apple, that's all.

And they really letterbox nBSG? Wierd. Makes a small screen even smaller. I wouldn't expect most of the market to use TV-out, either.

Oh I agree. The only reason I have the nBSG episode at all was because there was a promotion last year in the US where TV Guide had included a coupon for a free download of an episode of the show. I downloaded a few episodes of Lost one night when there was nothing else on and I wanted to get caught up with episodes from the second season.

If I had a video iPod and could find a way to rip TV episodes or movies from DVD to it, that's fine. But I'm definitely not making a habit of downloading video from iTunes in general.

And yes, the nBSG via iTunes really is letterboxed.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-09-13 12:33am

Oh so you were watching it on your PC? This whole media revolution is confusing me, clearly.

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2006-09-13 01:19pm

Stark wrote:Oh so you were watching it on your PC? This whole media revolution is confusing me, clearly.

Oh, yes. Sorry that wasn't clear. I don't have a video iPod (just a nano). I suppose the video quality is adequate if you were to only watch videos on the iPod. My brother-in-law has a video iPod and it looks okay on the tiny screen, but blown up on a computer screen it's pretty bad.

Wyrm · Post by **Wyrm** » 2006-09-13 07:37pm

JLTucker wrote:What I really fucking HATE about the iPod is that the audiobooks that I transfer to my iPod will not show up under the Audiobooks menu. They only show up there if you purchase the audiobooks from iTunes. Apple, the cocksucking fuckshits.

Why do you need a special menu to store audobooks? They're just soundtracks, no?

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2006-09-14 01:11pm

Wyrm wrote:
JLTucker wrote:What I really fucking HATE about the iPod is that the audiobooks that I transfer to my iPod will not show up under the Audiobooks menu. They only show up there if you purchase the audiobooks from iTunes. Apple, the cocksucking fuckshits.
Why do you need a special menu to store audobooks? They're just soundtracks, no?

No, they're spoken word/books read aloud , or audio plays.
And it's due to some people not wanting to hear a book read out loud unless they plan to (Say while putting on shuffle, etc')

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-09-14 01:18pm

Wyrm wrote:
JLTucker wrote:What I really fucking HATE about the iPod is that the audiobooks that I transfer to my iPod will not show up under the Audiobooks menu. They only show up there if you purchase the audiobooks from iTunes. Apple, the cocksucking fuckshits.
Why do you need a special menu to store audobooks? They're just soundtracks, no?

The iPod's menu (and iTunes too, I think) has an audiobooks menu item, so it'd be nice to store audiobooks there...except apparently, you can't. I haven't tried it since I just put my audiobooks in my music folder but I can see how that's annoying.

.303 misses the point again, I see.

Singular Quartet · Post by **Singular Quartet** » 2006-09-14 02:05pm

My problem with an iPod is that mine, when playing a song encoded by iTunes, it suddenly decides it can't play that song and skips to the next one. And if I try to go back, it sits there and thinks about it for about half a minute. The damn thing is a pain in the ass.

Quite frankly, my PDA does a better job as a music player. I can just open up the music program and hit play. With the iPod, it's hit play, and hope it fucking doesn't skip halfway through the music that I actually want to listen to. And it's always a song I fucking love.

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2006-09-14 03:19pm

Singular Quartet wrote:My problem with an iPod is that mine, when playing a song encoded by iTunes, it suddenly decides it can't play that song and skips to the next one. And if I try to go back, it sits there and thinks about it for about half a minute. The damn thing is a pain in the ass.

Quite frankly, my PDA does a better job as a music player. I can just open up the music program and hit play. With the iPod, it's hit play, and hope it fucking doesn't skip halfway through the music that I actually want to listen to. And it's always a song I fucking love.

Software problem maybe? The only hiccup I've experienced with my nano is that while a song is playing, the menu navigation is slightly delayed and the normally smooth animation of the screens changing "stutters" a bit.

Singular Quartet · Post by **Singular Quartet** » 2006-09-14 09:58pm

Mine's a 5th Gen (iPod Video, 30gig) and it's a complete and utter pain in the ass.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-09-14 10:04pm

I've got audiobooks: they're regular mp3s, with genre 'audiobook'. Works fine for me. What extra functionality do you get from 'proper' audiobooks?

And Sing, get this. There's this thing called a 'warranty'. It's for defective merchandise, you might want to look at it.

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2006-09-15 05:24pm

I concur with Stark, Singular. You seem to have way too many issues with your iPod (frankly, one is too many, given their cost!) so go check out your warranty status.

Elessar · Post by **Elessar** » 2006-09-15 06:42pm

JLTucker wrote:What I really fucking HATE about the iPod is that the audiobooks that I transfer to my iPod will not show up under the Audiobooks menu. They only show up there if you purchase the audiobooks from iTunes. Apple, the cocksucking fuckshits.

Have you tried this?

http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/tur ... udiobooks/

I've used it for audiobooks I ripped, as well as ones from Audible. The books show up in the proper directory and speed-reading / resuming work properly now.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-09-15 06:47pm

So all that hopping around just for the 'resume playback' function? Crazy.

Elessar · Post by **Elessar** » 2006-09-15 06:54pm

Stark wrote:So all that hopping around just for the 'resume playback' function? Crazy.

Well, it resumes even if you decide to change gears and listen to music. It's an actual bookmark now, and you can listen to something else, go back and it'll be at the right position in the audiobook.

That was worth it in my mind, since it's mostly the computer's spare cycles doing the work.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-09-15 06:57pm

I can see it's use, but all my audiobooks are purpose-made hourlong things, not a proper novel-length thing. How many audiobooks can you store resume points for? Is it a characteristic of AAC, or something the iPod does to files flagged 'audiobook'? It's all very interesting.

Elessar · Post by **Elessar** » 2006-09-15 07:00pm

Stark wrote:I can see it's use, but all my audiobooks are purpose-made hourlong things, not a proper novel-length thing. How many audiobooks can you store resume points for? Is it a characteristic of AAC, or something the iPod does to files flagged 'audiobook'? It's all very interesting.

Honestly? I think it only flags one, and was buggy the last time I tried it (during that phase when I though, oh commuting... I could listen to audiobooks and be slightly productive). I don't believe it's an innate property of AAC, it's just that the iPod software only recognizes m4b extensions as audiobooks.