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MEDIA CENTER PC NEWSFebruary 24th 2005 Will There Ever Be A Movie iPod?
Whispers have been around for years that Apple was planning an iPod that could play movies. These rumours built to a fever pitch around MacWorld this year, but there was disappointment again. Why would a movie-playing iPod be so desirable and why is Apple so resistant to producing one? Well, on one side, there’s the cool factor. iPods are cool, almost boringly so. We are finding that mobile phones are becoming convergence devices (cameras, mp3 players, PDAs), so what would be cooler than an iPod that was more that just a music player? Apple has already obliged by producing an iPod Photo that can show images stored on its hard drive on a colour screen. Movies are the next step, aren’t they? Maybe there are technical issues? The basic IPod certainly has the capability of storing movie data, after all it’s just a small hard drive in a shiny (tiny) box. Nyko will be taking advantage of this when they release their iPod Movie Player, which will play movies back on a 3.5 inch, 65,000 colour screen. But perhaps this shows us one of the limitations. The Nyko screen isn’t big – roughly the same as a Sony PSP screen in fact – and the potential size of an iPod screen is limited by the size of the case. Apple has been miniaturizing the iPod since its launch and a movie player would probably involve a reversal of this process. If the screen remained the same size as on the current range of iPods, it’s not going to be good enough to watch anything other than short clips. Entire feature films would not be an option. EnGadget has a tongue-in-cheek guide to playing movies on your iPod Photo in its current configuration using some deft thumb work on the click-wheel. Is this and the Nyko the closest we’re going to come to a movie iPod? Apple may just be biding their time. The current strategy seems to be to tie up the portable music market by marketing a range of iPods, priced in $50 increments. There are a lot of other players in the portable video scene, not least Sony with its new PSP console, and Apple is probably watching carefully to see if the market will take off. Steve Jobs hasn’t got it wrong with Apple for a long time and he won’t want to jump into the movie arena feet first if there’s a chance that the product will bomb. The launch of the Mac Mini is interesting. Apple is openly trying to sell it to PC users who own an iPod and therefore use iTunes. However, even the Mac Mini is overkill if all you’re going to do is use it to store m4p files. We’ve previously asked the question as to whether it’s a media center PC in disguise, but maybe it’s a sleeper agent, waiting for the day when Apple enter the video arena big time. The answer to our question may be to keep a close eye on iTunes. The day that you see it start to sell video, as well as audio, is the day that the iPod Movie may be getting off the drawing board. Until then, we’ll make do with other movie players and third party add-ons. It may be a long wait. |
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