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Thoughts on the Apple TV: Format Woes

Part of the Thoughts on the Apple TV Series

Thoughts on the Apple TV: Hard Drive Perils
Thoughts on the Apple TV: Format Woes
Thoughts on the Apple TV: A Possible Alternative

Apple TV and Philips’ DVP642

When it comes to digital video, I’m no novice. Several years ago, I made my own VCDs and, as the technology developed, moved to the DivX/XviD codec. I also already own a Philips DVP642 DVD player, which can play DivX/XviD-flavored AVI files in addition to standard DVDs. In fact, I have a much-neglected site dedicated to Mac users who own the DVP642.

The conundrum is that, out of the box, the Apple TV will play Apple-approved video formats, M4V using mpeg-4 and H.264 codecs, but not AVI using Divx/XviD, while the opposite is true of the DVP642. Additionally, the Apple TV, of course, does not have any kind of disc player, which makes it hard to use my existing video collection.

I already have a substantial number of files in DivX format, tucked away on DVDs, ready to be played on short notice. I’m not exactly keen on the idea of having to spend the time to convert those files to M4V, store them on a drive and then manage them in my iTunes library, which is already bursting with music alone, especially when I can just watch them on my DVD player with zero additional effort.

Now, I’m not entirely dissin’ the Apple TV. Paul points out that if you can get the full Mac OS X installed, the thing makes an attractive file/web/torrent box and Apple Gazette says that it’s well-suited to watching video podcasts. But after more than a year and a half of owning a DVP642, I must say that I find the DivX+DVD to be both an excellent usage method and an expedient storage scheme. It does lack the polish and finesse of Apple’s solution, but it works, is cheap and scales well.

Complicating matters, however, is the fact that I also own an iPod with video. Like the Apple TV, it only plays M4V. After six months of use, I’ve discovered that iPod video is great for temporary content, videos that I’m going to watch and delete, whether it’s a recent episode of The Daily Show or a movie for a long plane ride. When I’m finished with it, into the trash it goes, freeing me of management headaches and storage concerns.

The downside is that it can be unwieldy to watch an M4V file (or iTunes Store purchase) on my TV, should I so desire. In a pinch, I can connect my iPod to the TV using a cable that came with my six-year-old camcorder, but that’s a bit of a hack.

If only there were a device that would let me easily watch (read:no hacking) both my more timely M4V files, as well as archival AVI and regular DVDs.

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Thoughts on the Apple TV: Hard Drive Perils

Part of the Thoughts on the Apple TV Series

Thoughts on the Apple TV: Hard Drive Perils
Thoughts on the Apple TV: Format Woes
Thoughts on the Apple TV: A Possible Alternative

So the much-anticipated Apple TV has shipped and, of course, the extreme early adopters are having a field day tearing the thing apart to find out what it can do. Some clever folks have already been able to install larger hard drives, more video codecs, and even the full version of Mac OS X, rendering what Cult of Mac calls a “Mac Nano.”

To be sure, it looks like an impressive device. But I probably won’t be buying one for two principal reasons, neither of which is the fact that I don’t have an HDTV set.

Reason 1: The perils of hard disk storage

Having been a participant in the digital media revolution for 10 years, I see some parallels between the state of video today and the state of audio in the late 90s. A decade ago, you were lucky if you had more than 10 GB of internal storage in your computer. With the overhead of operating systems and applications, there was a limited amount of storage on that drive for the MP3 scene’s early adopters. Even at just 3 MB per song, that drive would fill up fast. An external drive would cost you $300-400 for 6 GB of space, but that too would fill up before too long. At the time, one solution was the small, but growing market for writable CDs, which cost about $2 for a single 650 MB disk (in addition to the several hundred dollars for the 2X burner itself).

Similarly, while storage conditions have kept pace with growing file sizes, today’s digital video market faces some of the same logistical hard disk challenges for the end user. Apple’s own estimates say that a 45-minute TV show will run you 200 MB and a full-length movie is 1.0-1.5 GB. A modest collection of 100 movies will cost you 100-150 GB of hard disk space. Add to it complete TV seasons and expect that to grow substantially. Using Apple’s numbers, the entirety of the Star Trek franchise would use ~155 GB of disk storage.

To be sure, today’s hard drives are indeed up to the task of holding a large video library. 500GB disks can be had for less than $200, ensuring plenty of room for an expanding selection of movies. But whether you encode videos yourself or buy from the iTunes Store, that library will represent a hefty investment of time and money. And the most dreaded event in computerdom can wipe it all out in an instant: a hard drive crash.

Any reasonable, non-risk-taking person is going to want to implement (and practice) a regular backup plan for their media. The most convenient choices are to purchase a second (and possibly third) drive to house copies of all the video files, or make regular trips to the DVD-R burner for offline backups. The hard drive option would offer nearly instantaneous recovery to an iTunes+AppleTV-based media system, but it would double (or triple) your upfront costs. Additionally, if and when one of those drives fails, it will have to be replaced at the current market price for hard drives.

True, the arguments I made in defense of digital music can apply to digital video as well. But, for the present, there’s a matter of scale which makes the effort more cumbersome for video. Plus, a music library containing a large number of songs with short playing times benefits more from the instant accessibility and portability of the iTunes+iPod model than a video library with relatively few entries and long playing times.

Thus, for me, the more appealing scenario for personal digital video is that of the burned DVD because, with the right DVD player, your “backups” can double as working copies. Thankfully, it’s also much, much cheaper per megabyte than CDs were 10 years ago.

Which brings me to:

Reason 2: Incompatible video formats.

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A Big List of MP3 Patents (and supposed expiration dates)

So, by now, large portions of the internet are abuzz with the Federal jury decision that Microsoft has been violating some of Alcatel-Lucent’s patents on the MP3 file format, which ahas been the backbone of the digital music revolutions and without which iTunes and the iPod would not have been possible.

I couldn’t help but note the timing of the ruling, since I had been been researching MP3 patents a couple weeks while working on a recent post. I came across the realization that the MP3 patents will soon start to expire, as early as this year in one case. So last week’s news got me wondering two things:

whether there is an aspect of “cashing-in-while-possible” going on with the current suits
just what the are all the MP3 patents, and when do they expire?

I can’t really speculate to that first point, but for the second, it’s fortunate that Thomson, the company that handles MP3 licensing has a neatly compiled list published at mp3licensing.com. Of the twenty patents listed there, eighteen are filed in the U.S., to which this list is limited. These are the patents that everyone who makes an MP3-related product has licensed. We’ll get to those.

First though, here are the Alcatel-Lucent patents that Microsoft was found guilty of violating. This information was taken from the US Patent and Trademark Office. Since I’m no patent attorney, all expiration dates are best guesses based on quick summary research. Changes to U.S. patent law and the GATT treaty in the mid-90s (while mp3 was being developed) complicates matters. Additionally, I have not a clue as to how to handle continuations of abandoned applications, so some of these could be way off.

If anyone more knowledgeable wishes to correct any of my guesses, I will happily revise this page. These are much too technical, both in legalese and technology for me, but still I find them fascinating from a layman’s point of view.

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Let’s Speculate: Apple vs Cisco in the courtroom

What’s more fun than speculating about the outcomes of court cases? Well, most everything. But it does pose an opportunity for a healthy debate. So let’s play What If…

What might happen if Cisco and Apple in up in the courtroom?

Leaving aside for the time being that “iPhone” is a pretty weak name for a product that’s much more than a simple phone, it does appear that Cisco has been the proper registrant of the iPhone trademark since 2000. Based on my understanding of trademark law (note: not a lawyer), there’s no legal mechanism for Apple to seize the mark for itself.

However, Apple’s argument seems to be that the product category of cell phone is sufficiently different from Cisco’s offerings that it’s not infringing at all. That’s the reason why Dodge Viper and Viper car alarms co-exist peacefully, even though they exist in the same industry. However, considering that the iPhone is more than just a cell phone (revolutionary communications device that uses WiFi and IP when available) I’m not sure a judge would agree with that claim.

So based on what I know (again, not a lawyer), here’s what I think could happen, if the two companies don’t settle out of court:

Judge agrees with Apple

In this situation, the court decides that the products are not enough alike and Apple’s use of the name does not constitute infringement of Cisco’s trademark. Both companies can then legally use the same name on different types of products. Cisco cries a bit and is prevented from offering a product similar to Apple’s iPhone.

Judge agrees with Cisco

The reverse happens. The distinction between the products is held to be too fine and the iPhone name is deemed to be exclusively Cisco’s mark. The company is possibly awarded damages. Apple then has to negotiate for use of the name, or rename its product.

Judge rules that iPhone is too generic for trademark protection

Wired Pete at Cult of Mac makes the argument that because “the public,” after months of speculation and fantasizing, already identifies the iPhone name with Apple.

One could make the argument that the incredibly small portion of the general population that trades rumors about future Apple products hardly makes up “the public,” but lets run with it. Popular sentiment would not be sufficient grounds to award an exclusive trademark to Apple. In this case, a judge could rule that the trademark is now too diluted and generic for any one entity to own. “iPhone” would then mean “any kind of internet-enable communication appliance” not any one specific device.

Apple is not likely to argue this. “iPhone” would not mean much to the company then and any other company could release a similar product with the same name. Plus, it could lay the groundwork that i- product names in general are too generic to trademark protection. Admittedly, that’s my largest legal stretch, but once again: not a lawyer. Feel free to debate it though.

But that all just fun speculation. This is not likely going to make it to court, but it is providing a lot of press for both companies.

That’s my take. Feel free to kick it around.

Update Jan14: Check this post at TechnicallyTrue for lots of deep background on the iPhone fight.

Initial reactions to Apple’s iPhone: Mixed

So the mythical iPhone was unveiled yesterday and by all accounts, it is a revolutionary communications and portable computer device. The user interface alone is light years ahead of anything else on the market. And the technology behind it really looks phenomenal… for a phone.

But even with all that legendary RDF action in effect, my own reaction is surprisingly lukewarm. Bias Alert!: I abhor the telephone in general and mostly use a cell phone for short calls to my wife. On most days, I don’t use the phone at all. So that aspect of the device is rather immaterial to me at this time. If I didn’t already have a cell phone, that feature would be a nice perk.

As a portable computing and communication device, the thing looks awesome. When I think of it as a portable computer the $499 price tag doesn’t seem as bad just a little bad, even though it’s not a “full computer,” being currently limited to the apps provided.

Constant web connectivity would be great for looking up info at any given moment, whether it’s looking up traffic while already on the road, settling disputes at the bar, or checking the Scrabble database of words.

The ability to live-blog an event with pictures is revolutionary.

Some questions though. Can it print? Will the device detect a bluetooth printer and allow me to print an email, text message, map or photo? Can I network with computers and other iPhones on the same LAN via WiFi? I know I can text message and send email, but can I type up quick reminders and notes and transfer them between computers. Can I copy files to it directly without having to email?

A GPS receiver plugged into the dock connector would be a killer app. And a PDF reader for ebooks would be, quote, da bomb.

Ironically though, the thing that bothers me about the iPhone, is its branding as an iPod successor. With its current storage capacity, the device takes us back five years, while trying to perform many more functions.

The iPod’s ability to hold mass quantities of songs (and now videos) while also being usable as a portable hard drive are the two greatest features of the iPod line (the full size models anyway). The iPhone minimizes those functions. The argument can be made that it’s impractical to listen to 30GB of music, but that’s not the point. The point is choice. I like being able to keep a large number of playlists synced up and ready to go, depending on my mood, at the push of a button. Alternately, it’s fun to press play and not know what I’m going to get.

Then there’s the fact that I use my iPod to cart large files between home and the office as well as store copies of projects I’m working on so I can pick up from whatever computer I may be near.

And 4GB is laughably small when thinking about full-length movies and TV shows.

So that aspect of the iPhone leaves me non-plussed.

However, I tend to agree that the concept of the iPod proper maybe near the end of its evolution. The form factor seems to be at the limit of what it can do with the only potential improvements being increases in hard drive size.

Now if the iPhone can stream music to an Airport Express, then we might talk. Which leads to another thought: an iPod HiFi with built-in 802.11 wireless, WiFiHiFi anyone?, to receive music from an iPhone or any wireless equipped computer with iTunes. That would be rad.

Until then, I think the 80 gigs in my pocket will do just fine.

Why December is the Most Musical Time of the Year

I recently had the realization that December is the best time of year to discover new music. This notion came as a recognition of a couple of trends that have been building for the past few years.

Firstly, I’ve by-and-large stopped paying attention to the cutting edge of artists and albums. In fact, unless an artist already has a trusted relationship with me, I’ve essentially been ignoring them, no matter how highly recommended or heavily buzzed they may be. When you have 14,000 gems in your collection already, there’s not much incentive to grasp onto every new upstart trend. However, it’s not that I’m staid; I really do enjoy discovering new, interesting and talented acts. I just tend to wait until the glow has faded before checking them out.

The result of this practice is that I tend to be about a year behind the scene, save for those trusted artists. While the bloggy-blogs are talking about what’s hot right now, I’m busy investigating last year’s music, or off on my own musical tangent.

The other effect is that I usually end up avoiding artists whose “buzz” makes them seem momentarily more appealing than they rightly should. That is to say: I avoid peer pressure.

Take, for example, The Strokes. I didn’t start listening to them until well after their status as “saviors of rock” had eclipsed. Once the buzz had died down, I was able to evaluate their music on my own terms. In the absence of external influences, I believe I found a truer appreciation of their music.

Contrast that to Arctic Monkeys. About a year ago, this group of British teenagers came out of nowhere with a heavily-buzzed debut record. With favorable online musings and a hearty recommend by KCRW’s Nic Harcourt, I decided to give it a listen. I guess I got caught in the excitement, because I initially thought that the album was pretty good. Not mind-blowing, but competent enough to hang on to.

After being sidelined by the tunequest, I picked up the album again a couple days ago and honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking because it wasn’t really as good as I remember it being. While the boys are technically proficient and produce some moderately engaging rock music, everything from the album cover, to its name Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, to the songs’ lyrics reeked of a kind of amateur misanthropy. I couldn’t help but be struck by the idea that the band is a new-millennial Silverchair.

So perhaps I was lead astray by that one.

Which brings me back to December. Throughout that month and into January of the next year, everyone begins compiling their various “best of” lists, whether it’s Rolling Stone, a blog post, or even a torrent file of great songs or albums. With an attitude toward the retrospective, these lists act to filter the explosive amount of new material released each year. As time has passed, each list presents a more critical look at each record than would normally be given when the hype machine is in full effect. As the long tail keeps demonstrating, the number and variety of lists is breathtaking, from Rolling Stone’s more mainstream list, to ArkivMusic’s best classical, to any random blogger’s most underrated albums of the year.

And so it is right now. It’s the end of the first week in January and my list of bookmarked albums looks daunting. But I have to remember that I have the rest of the year to explore it. Early indications say 2006 was a great year in music.

And by 2008, I’ll have a whole new list.

Learning to listen to music again

Even though the finale of the actual tunequest was a foreseen event, the end itself turned out to be quite abrupt. One moment there was music to listen to, the next I was all done, staring at an empty playlist. I took a day to revel in the accomplishment, then I ran into an interesting side-effect.

What’s next?

For nearly eleven months, I had abdicated my ability to choose for myself what music to listen to, relying on the tunequest Smart Playlist to select albums for my consideration. To be sure, I had freedom within the confines of that playlist, but for the most part, it was a press-play-and-see-what-we-get experience.

I’d been on autopilot for so long, that making a decision about what to do next is seriously challenging. Logically speaking, I know I have some acquisitions from the past year to revisit. And hours worth of podcasts to re-subscribe to and catch up on. There are audiobooks and iPod videos as well.

All of which I’m looking forward to tackling, but where to start?

For the time being, I’ve reactivated a couple playlists of randomly selected tunes. So I’ve at least got music to listen, but once again I’m not really in control of it. Which is fine–it’s all four and five star songs, but the casualness feels weird, not having a purpose behind it.