Looking at the new iPod, I start wondering why Apple claims it plays everything… but movies. Apparently, Apple made Hollywood a proposal they couldn’t resist, yet somehow Hollywood did resist it. I wonder why.
For starters, let’s look at the tech specs: it sports a 2.5-inch LCD display (320 x 240 pixels) that supports 260,000 colors. That’s good enough for downloadable porn but I don’t think it cuts it for movies. It’s not widescreen (being 4:3 instead of 16:9) and there’s limit on the resolution of the movies that can be imported (480×480).
Just consider that Sidney Pollack brought a lawsuit against a Danish TV station for the use of its pan-and-scan (4:3) showing of his film “Three days of the Condor”. The court ruled that the pan-and-scan was a “mutilation” of his work and a violation of Pollacks ‘Driot Moral’, his legal right as an artist to maintain his reputation by protecting the integrity of his work.
As an even more extreme example, imagine you somehow get “Lawrence of Arabia” on your new iPod. How long would you wait until you see the black speck that Omar Sharif is in the famous scene? It takes a while to spot it even on the DVD edition.
Despite its shortcomings, the new iPod sets a trend that might eventually lead to an alternative means for distributing “pocket” movies. This could enable indie producers to distribute their movies cheaply and easily. Even now you can find plenty of sites that have torrents for iPod.
The Zen Vision from Creative Labs already sports a 640×480 LCD. I’m hopeful SONY will have the last word on this one. I love the LCD on my SONY VX2000, I’m sure I’ll be able to find Omar Sharif in under a minute if I manage to play it there.
Update: You can read my tips on producing video for iPod. A must-see for your video iPod is Steve Ballmer’s Developers video.
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