Friday, February 10, 2006

The rumors peg the new iPod as having a larger, widescreen format — and some even suggest HD video capability that would tie into a new, HD-enabled AirPort Express and a Front Row sportin’ Intel Mac Mini.

Let’s put aside the problem of sticking decoding hardware capable of decoding HD video into an iPod form factor, which is simply 100% impossible right now. Let’s instead examine the particulars of this beautiful H.264 HD clip, and let’s even start the math with the “lower-res” 480p one**:

81.8 MB / 262 seconds long = .3 MB a second.

2 hour movie = 7,200 seconds.

.3 MB a second x 7,200 seconds = 2,160 MB, or about 2 GB.

So a 60 GB video iPod could hold up to 30 480p HD movies… which, to “buy” one online, you’d have to download 2 GB worth of video for apiece. Which would take upwards of: forever. Or, you could convert your DVDs to an iPod friendly semi-HD-resolution H.264 data format, which given how long Handbrake takes to convert one DVD to a MPEG-4 file of 320 pixels by 240 pixels to fit on the existing iPod, would also take upwards of: forever.

The main problem: neither “30 Movies in Your Pocket” nor “30 Movies on your Mac Mini” have the immediate marketing impact of “1,000 Songs in Your Pocket”.