[geeks] iPad - NOT a 'Miss' for me I'm afraid

[gsm at mendelson.com]

On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 08:57:08PM -0600, Michael Parson wrote:
>Won't play at all? or you just won't be seeing all the pixels?  I've 
>never rented HD video from ITMS, the one and only time I rented 
>anything from there was a SD video, and my iPod Classic played it 
>fine.  All of the other video on it is either ripped DVDs or stuff I 
>pulled off my TiVo and converted to mp4 myself.  Apple does sell 
>component video cables for the Classic and iPod Touch/iPhone, which 
>makes me think that they are probably capable of decoding at least 
>something approaching HD, though I would accept that they probably 
>don't do 1080p, which is not, as I understand it, part of the HD 
>'standard' as defined by whomever defines that sort of thing.
>
My experience has been if the CPU or video chips are too slow, then it 
drops frames. It depdends upon the program and how slow it is.

>TV and video
>	.  Support for 1024 by 768 pixels with Dock Connector to VGA 
>Adapter; 576p and 480p with Apple Component AV Cable; 576i and 480i 
>with Apple Composite Cable
>	.  H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 
>3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, 
>.mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 
>pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 
>160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
>

Well that says a lot. It says (to me) that there is some sort of graphics
acceleration with hardware mpeg-4 (aka MPEG-4/Divx/H2.64) decoding.
The fact that it only decodes m4v, mp4 and mov files means very little to
me, it's just a choice of software unwrappers.

It also explains why there is no flash decoder, flash is also just a container,
but it can be used to contain so many video formats that the iPad could not 
process at anything useable that it was simpler to go without it.

Anyone else remember the days when Apple licensed the Soreson (sp?) codec
and there are bunch of quicktime videos that ONLY played on Apple products?

I doubt they want to be on the short end of that stick.

>720p is technically 'HD'

Ok, It's DVD resolution, but I think DVD's were 720i.
>Sure, it's the 'standard', but personally, if I was leaving a copy 
>behind, I would either leave a printed copy, or a PDF, something a 
>little less editable.  Using their equipment, I would either plug 
>into their projector, or be prepared, bringing the file in a format 
>that I know they can deal with, either save out of Keynote in 
>PowerPoint format, or PDF, which should be viewable on anything the 
>customer would have.


I agree with that, one having had a team leave a bunch of powerpoint and
word docs with a "strategic partner" in Korea and have them show up on
a competitor's website. It was flattering, but (a lot more than) annoying.


>And that is closer to what I would probably get for my needs.

There is a lot of competiton out there, and a lot of different devices
to fit everyone's needs.


>There are plenty of reasons to not like this device, I would rather 
>just discuss the points we know about rather than bits we won't know 
>until it actually hits the street and gets dissected.  There are bits 
>we do know, at least as much as we can trust the marketing literature 
>that Steve has made available to us.

But that ruins all the fun. It makes for long running discussions like
what we used to have on here before Mr Bill (and others, mea culpa) moved
to Facebook. 

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation. 
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.