Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Ipods - 5th Gen

Okay. So as soon as I get my cheque in the mail for my income tax rebate, I will be going out (or buying online) to buy a 30GB 5th Gen Ipod. In white, I think.

Anyway, what I was wondering (after talking with various people that have one over here) is whether anyone that has one has ever had any trouble with it? And also, someone mentioned to me that when they converted avi video files to mpeg4 so that they could play them on the Ipod, they wouldn't work (or not unless they had 'Sample' stamped across the top the entire time). Has anyone had this problem?

Thanks guys! I just want to be completely informed before buying one.

~Anna.

I don't know much about the ipods... I opted to go with a Creative Labs Zen Vision M instead... and I've LOVED IT! It's been awesome. I have all the LNC vids on there that I want (along with wallpapers) and of course all my music I want. I also put my favorite season episodes on it and I watch them on long trips or airplane flights.

So I can't say anything about the ipods, since I haven't had one. But I can tell you that the Zen M (or Zen W - my friend has that one and loves it... only difference is that the screen is bigger and it's widescreen - well "main" differences anyway, there's a few other ones) are both great players. They run anywhere from I think around $200 to $360 on Amazon depending on the model and amount of storage space you get (30 gig or 60 gig)

-- DJ <who seems to be a fountain of useless info at the moment>

There are lots of applications that can convert your music/videos. The problem you're describing is more of an issue with the application being used than of the iPod, itself. Whoever had SAMPLE stamped on their video probably downloaded some shareware package and didn't pay for it.

I've owned a number of iPods, currently having two 60GB black 5th generation iPods and a second generation iPod shuffle. One of the black iPods pretty much sits in my car all the time using a Harman Kardon Drive+Play to connect it to my car's stereo. The other travels around with me wherever I go. I even got myself a nice high-end set of in-ear earbuds that sound really good and are even great on airplanes since they shut off just about all outside noise.

As for the iPods, themselves, it's all a matter of opinion whether they're the greatest thing since slice bread or just another MP3 player. They have a nice interface but so do a number of other portables.

If you like accessories, the iPod is for you. It's got well over 3,000 accessories ranging from zillions of iPod cases to FM tuners to just about anything you can think of. More and more cars these days also support iPod hookups. In comparison, the cupboard is practically bare for every other music player out there. But that's what you get for a player that holds 70% of the market.

There's also the matter of iTunes and the iTunes Store (iTS). Selection there is second to none, but if you're one of those who gets 99.9% of your music by ripping your own tracks from your CD's, then who cares? iTunes is a nice application by itself even without the store, so I recommend you play around with it to see if you like it even before you buy a music player. Try out Cover Flow. It's rather cool. Cover Flow is a way iTunes presents flipping album covers.

iTunes can also rip tracks from your CD's for you in a number of formats. It supports Dolby's AAC format primarily (the native format of the iTunes Store) but can also rip in MP3, WAV format, AIFF (Apple's non-compressed format), and Apple's Lossless compression format. There is no support for WMA, Microsoft's music/sound format nor WMV, Microsoft's video format. Sensing a pattern?

Video-wise, the 5G iPod supports MPEG-4 and a superior variation of MPEG-4 called H.264, a very high-quality codec that's used quite often in high-definition Blu-Ray and HD DVD movies. Video resolution from the iTS is essentially 640x480 while videos you make yourself have similar limits based on bitrate and a bunch of other techy stuff that I won't go into here.

On the Macintosh, two of the best free programs used to make iPod videos are Handbrake and iSquint. iSquint's big brother, Visual Hub (~$23), is excellent as well, plus it can make PSP, Flash, AppleTV, AVI, WMV, DVD (create VIDEO_TS) and other types of videos. I'm not as sure about the Windows side since I primarily use Macs for music and video. My Windows machines have been sitting around powered off lately. I do know there's also a version of Handbrake for Windows.

iTS is also home of many movies and TV shows you can buy. I've gotten a number of TV shows, though no movies, and they're fairly decent, just shy of DVD quality (720x480 for DVD versus 640x480 for iTS). Since you'd be playing them on a small 320x240 screen, they don't need to be super high-caliber. The video screen is very nice. Some other players have larger screens, but not necessarily higher resolution (e.g. Zune).

All in all, I'm quite happy with my iPods. I know there will always be a lot of accessories for it, plus I know that my investment in a music/video library will be good for a long while since Apple isn't going anywhere and years later I can upgrade to a newer iPod (still waiting for that true video iPod like the iPhone except with more storage and no phone) and still be able to play my stuff. Plays For Sure, anyone?

If you don't know that reference, Microsoft was trying to compete with Apple by introducing their Plays For Sure music format, complete with proprietary copy protection and the Urge store, accessible from Windows Media Player. Lots of music players supported it, only to see Microsoft abandon it a year or so later in favor of another system for the Zune. So lots of people ended up getting the shaft on that one.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.

On the other side of the coin... iPods can lack for features. It took them a few generations to introduce "the iPod shuffle" (as if that was some grand new thing that required top billing in the name of the product), which was the first iPod with the ability to randomize playback order... something that otherwise has been pretty much taken for granted since CD players were introduced. More advanced bells and whistles... well, they do have the iPhone coming out. And they also eventually introduced video and multimedia capability to some of their players.

As for accessories... it's true that a large number of them are made specifically for the iPod, but you can find some options in every category for other devices. Maybe you won't have 10,000 options for exactly which external speakers to get, but you will have a couple of good ones to choose from.

Then there's iTunes. I haven't checked in a while, but last I heard, their music format was proprietary. An iPod would play it just fine, but try to load the file on just about anything else (another mp3 player, Windows Media Player on your comp, etc) and you're out of luck. Even though you bought the copy of the song (and, thus, the right to play it wherever and whenever you want), you're stuck using your iPod and nothing else to listen to your music.

Not sure what the big deal about selection is. Most popular songs will be available on just about any major music-buying service.

But... there are still reasons that iPod has such a large market share. And if you're getting the brand that everyone else has, then you'll have an easier time getting stuff for it that works.

Something else to be aware of - iPods are hard drive based, which has its advantages and disadvantages. You get a much larger storage capacity, but memory access speed can be significantly slower. You also can't remove or replace the memory module. There are other brands of hard drive based players, too, but there are also a number of players that use removable (and thus easily transferable, replaceable, swappable, upgradeable, etc) memory cards. You can't store as much on them, but you get faster load speeds and a lot more flexibility.

It comes down to what you need. What's important to you. What features you want. How much storage capacity you need. How important accessory options (number of choices and ease of finding them) are to you. Etc etc.

If you need more help deciding, you may want to check out some review sites, like cnet or epinions .

The native format of the iTunes Store and the iPod is AAC (Advanced Audio Coding, with the extension .m4a), which is a format created by Dolby Laboratories. The extension stands for MPEG-4, Audio Layer 10. It's not proprietary to the iPod or Apple, actually. Apple uses it because they believe it is far more efficient than MP3 (MPEG-1, Audio Layer 3) or other compression methods. But keep in mind the iPod can play MP3's and WAV's as well. AIFF and Apple Lossless Encoder formats are the only two proprietary Apple formats the iPod supports, except the iPod Shuffle which doesn't support those two lossless formats because of its small capacity.

When people say music can't be moved to another music player, that's because of the DRM (digital rights management) software, i.e. copy protection, built into the songs and videos you buy from the iTunes Store or other online music service. An unencumbered song, like the EMI tunes you can buy from iTS or songs you rip yourself, can be moved to any other music player that supports AAC or whatever format you rip your song in. Apple's version of DRM is called FairPlay. You can tell a song has it because the extension is .m4p instead of .m4a.

There is only one other store at the moment that sells music without DRM, eMusic. Most of their music is from independents or small labels. Every other LEGAL service has DRM, mostly because the big record labels, with the exception of EMI, won't sell digital music without it. Amazon.com has announced a deal with EMI as well for DRM-free music but haven't started up yet. Any music that is encumbered with DRM cannot be moved to any other player that doesn't support it. For instance, anything bought from the Zune Store cannot be played on anything other than a Zune even though it uses WMA, a format many music players support. So forget the Sansa or the Zen because they can't play WMA files with that kind of DRM. Ironically, the Zune can't play music bought from Urge, Microsoft's other online music service.

Note that the Zune supports AAC and can play songs ripped by iTunes in AAC form or the DRM-free tracks by EMI purchased from iTS. Songs on many services that support Plays For Sure tracks won't play on iPods or Zune.

Also, not all iPods are hard drive based. The 30GB and 80GB 5'th generation iPods with video do indeed have 1.8" hard drives but all the other iPods are flash based. The iPod Shuffle (2nd generation) is the size of a postage stamp and has 1GB of flash. The iPod Nanos have anywhere from 1GB (first generation) to 8GB of flash. The upcoming Apple iPhone comes in two versions, a 4GB and a 8GB flash version. Prices are coming down on NAND flash but it is still prohibitively expensive to use in large quantities. It may be a while before we see a 32GB flash player. It may happen by the end of the year, but maybe not. In the meantime, hard drives are here with large enough capacities to hold video.