Apple needs to change the way the iPod and Apple TV do video

Recently Apple sent out a newsletter to videocasters explaining how to optimize their videos for the Apple TV. A lot of it was pretty basic stuff but one section in particular caught my eye. Apple suggests only encoding for the highest resolution iPod and says that's good enough for Apple TV. I don't think so, and frankly I think Apple needs to overhaul their device support for online video.

The thought process behind Apple's suggestion is very sound. If a videocaster creates two versions of the same video, one for iPods and one for Apple TV, they they split the users up between the two formats. Rather than having one format with 5000 users you end up with two feeds of 2500 users each. Apple likes to feature popular videocasts on the front of the iTunes store's Podcasting section and if you only have 2500 viewers then you may have to double your viewership just to get mentioned (these are made up numbers for the sake of my example). Getting promoted on other sites will be harder too since it will look like your videos are less popular than they really are. The second problem is that some users, like myself, have both the iPod and Apple TV. Which feed should I subscribe to? Having multiple feeds can be confusing to end-users, waters down the popularity of the videos themselves and becomes much harder to manage. This is all true.

iPod video is only 1/2 the lines of resolution that the highest quality Apple TV video can be played at, assuming 16:9 content. On the iPod we're looking at 640x360 videos while on the Apple TV we can have 1280x720 video. You can imagine how much worse a 360 line video looks than a 720 line video being that 360 is under DVD quality and edging on VHS quality. This makes Apple's solution less than ideal. As a content creator I not only want to make it easy for my end-users to get the videos, but I also want to show off my material in the highest quality possible.

The solution to this problem is not the responsibility of the videocaster. Apple needs to step up and change the way video is done across all devices so that they match, or they need to change how iTunes deals with video.

Lets first try changing all devices. Apple should update the iPod to include the same hardware h.264 decoder that the Apple TV has. Now an iPod can have 1280x720 playback of video which would allow us to discontinue our iPod feed and go straight to a 720p feed. The same video that plays on a video iPod would play on an Apple TV. The other advantage of this is that now my iPod is HD ready so with an iPod to HDMI adapter cable I should be able to plug directly in to my HDTV and get audio and video in 720p. The disadvantage of this is that 720p is not the holy grail of online video. 1080p is pretty clearly where the iPod and Apple TV need to be. How does Apple deal with this in the future? Update the iPod and Apple TV hardware to support 1080p? What about all the users of the old hardware that only have 720p support? Do we end up with two feeds again? I'm not sure this is the most ideal solution, but it's better than having devices with different resolutions completely.

The second option Apple has is to change the way that iTunes works with video. Right now Technology Evangelist is working with about six different video feeds: 480p (iPod), 720p (Apple TV), 1080p, 3G phone, PSP and Zune. Imagine being able to drop everything but the 1080p video feed and have iTunes compress the video on-the-fly to the format that it needs. One feed from Technology Evangelist could drive any portable media player that works with iTunes, any media extender that works with iTunes and any local computer playback would be in the highest quality possible. The problem here is recompression time. Right now all iTunes has to do is move the file from your computer to the device you want to play it on. In this new model not only will iTunes have to move the file, but it will have to recompress it as well. The recompression can take ages. That's where Cringely's idea of hardware h.264 encoders in every Macintosh comes into play. Offload the h.264 onto a hardware chip so it can recompress the video in real-time or faster. Take that 1080p file and create an optimized iPod, Apple TV and computer playback version and we end up with a very powerful solution. We're left with a distribution problem of online video being 1080p, but that's for another article. What about Windows users, what do they do in this scenario?

Maybe there's a better way to do RSS feeds? No idea, but I do know that what we have right now is broken and someone like Apple needs to step up and fix it.

the tv shows and movies you download on itunes are 640xwhatever. What this means is a normal DVD is 640x480 ALWAYS, this means that even the black border of the video is included in that resolution. iTunes video takes off the black border which makes the video files 640x272 (Cars on itunes) or 640x344 (Lady Killers). This is fine since there is no black boarder taking up the screen. I find these downloads to be the same quality on my appletv as my standard dvds. I also run most of these on my computer monitor that is 1650x1050 and they look great.

Also Why does apple have to have 1080p content? Most tvs sold currently are 720p or 1366x768 (upscales 720p). Its pretty rare to have a 1080p set right now. 720p would be a better format to support for two reasons. 1. Everyone owns a 720p set, and 2. It is much smaller than 1080p content so it would be faster to download.

Im sure if apple released 720p content on itunes it could beat blueray or hd-dvd since its a much cheaper solution to HD movies. cheap digital download and $300 appletv compared to expensive blueray or hd-dvd discs and very expensive HD players.

Plus in a way itunes is on demand, you click download and you can start watching the movie in 5 min.

There is a common misconception about ranking well in iTunes. Your discussion of the iTunes store mentions that popular podcasts get featured and if you split your feed, you may not rank as well because you have to get twice the listeners.

Actually, the way it works, is that Apple tracks only NEW subscribers to your show over the past week. If you had 100,000 listeners but no new subscribers this week, you would rank lower than a podcast that had 1000 listeners but 900 new subscribers.

While this model may seem strange, it mirrors how the music charts have worked for decades. It actually gives more podcasta a chance to make the list.

So in other words, your reasoning that splitting the feeds is not a good idea because it hurts your rank in iTunes is incorrect in my opinion.

Jim, you raise an interesting philosophical point about bandwidth. I suppose one could surf the web with images turned off and avoid all rich-media if they want to do their part to address your concerns. I think the market will easily decide which content is worth the bandwidth and which is not.

Scott, thanks for the clarification on iTunes rankings. However, doesn't splitting the feed into multiple formats still apply regardless of the time span used to generate rankings?

Not 100% sure of internet users and bandwidth in America but I know that a lot of people in the UK are still on dial-up or 1meg broadband. I have only recently been able to get faster than 1meg - and I live within the "inner city" of Glasgow (biggest city in Scotland). 1 meg is slow for downloading 1080p video ... very slow (my current 5meg is better but not ideal). Some other countries are much better and faster; and some are much worse and slower. To make matters worse ... most providers in the UK have monthly download caps of between 15GB and 100GB - most are less than 50GB.

So my question is, Would you not rather that your podcast is more accessible? - more download options = more choice = more users. (users don't want to either download or store a file that is bigger than they need, and at the moment not everyone needs 1080p)

Comments

1. Posted by: jim teece on April 25, 2007 12:11 AM:

Thanks for your comments. I have to challenge you on one point. Bandwidth.

Can you tell me that your video podcast is worthy of being 4 times as large. (maybe not 4x but hopefully you get my point).

You worry about my management of the pod cast being in different formats. But how many are worth the high res format. How much bandwitdh will your 5,000 subscribers use?

Bandwidth is cheap, but the internet is not. Clogging it with crap makes no sense to me.

Maybe only a few podcasts are worthy of the bandwidth, the cost and the delay.

Most that I subscribe to are not. Timeshifting my viewing and listening is why I do it, not for the fidelity of the experience.

Also interesting CAPCHA below. What If I can't do the math? I'm afraid to find out, so I'll type in the right answer. Pressure, man... pressure.

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