There’s been a lot of noise around the net over the past few days surrounding the new iPod and particularly its ability to play video as well as audio. It’s been largely well-received, I think, but there are quite a few who seem to be missing the point and the bigger picture. The video functionality of the iPod is regarded by Apple as a feature, rather than a raison d’etre; it’s still a music player first and foremost but it can also play video, as opposed to a video player than can also play music. Apple aren’t even calling it iPod Video in order to distinguish it from iPod ‘proper’ - it is iPod Proper and from here on in it’s the only large format iPod available. Again, the video functionality is just a feature.
People have been quick to point out that Apple aren’t really innovating, that other devices byArchos or Sony have been playing video in a portable setting for months or even years. But they’re missing the bigger picture - the real news isn’t that the iPod can now play video. This was inevitable. The meat of the story is that consumers can now purchase, download and play video content using iTunes. There are millions of iPod owners, which means that there are millions of iTunes users. That’s an absolutely massive potential audience for this kind of thing and Archos or Sony can only dream of that kind of reach.
I read this article a few months ago and was intrigued by what the author said, largely because it makes a huge amount of sense but also because at the time it seemed like pie in the sky. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve been torrenting episodes of Lost and The O.C. the morning after they air in the US (OK, I’m a little ashamed about The O.C.) so the concept of watching what I want to watch when I want to watch it is something that I am already familiar with and that really appeals to me. But at the time I had difficulty seeing a way in which TV programs could be distributed while bringing in money for the producers.
The current non-producer-sanctioned (or, illegal) distribution model doesn’t really fill the producers’ coffers (at all), and isn’t exactly user friendly. Downloading something from the P2P networks can be hit and miss at the best of times, with no guarantee that what you have just spent hours downloading is what it is actually described as and the fact that those pesky warezors insist on RARing every gottdamn file - disregarding the fact that they are probably just increasing the file size by adding an extra header onto a format that won’t compress any further - just adds another obstacle to the casual downloader. Which is of course the point: determined downloaders will always find a way; the best anyone can hope to do is make things difficult enough that the casual pirate will be discouraged and look to legitimate sources. Which, up until iTunes 6, wasn’t really worthwhile if you were trying to download video to watch on-demand.