Text 4992, 72 rader
Skriven 2006-07-27 11:35:00 av Robert E Starr JR (5489.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Babylon 5 on iTunes
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* * * This message was from Amy Guskin to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
         * * * and has been forwarded to you by Lord Time * * *         
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>>On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 03:30:50 -0400, Matt Ion wrote
(in article <KYZxg.245665$Mn5.30700@pd7tw3no>):

> patty1@wintertime.com wrote:
>> In article <UCVxg.242206$iF6.153551@pd7tw2no>,
>> Matt Ion  <soundy@moltenimage.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> I pointed out that at $2/episode, we could 
>>> just as easily simply buy the rest of the DVD sets (I have seasons 2 and
>>> 3), and 
>>> I'd rip them into an appropriate format for her iPod... then we could have 
>>> the 
>>> GOOD versions, AND the crappy shrunken thumbnail-sized versions!
>> 
>> 
>> Oh, is that what you get when you buy the iTunes or Google videos?
>> They're just little teensy versions? I had assumed that although
>> they could be played on handheld video players, you could view them
>> larger on a computer screen. As you can tell, I haven't actually
>> tried them...
> 
> Haven't actually downloaded video from iTunes, so I'm making a couple 
> assumptions:
> 
> 1. The video is INTENDED primarily for the iPod screen, which is very small.
> 
> 2. In order to allow users to cram as much video as possible onto their 
> iPods, 
> the video must be shrunk, either through resizing or heavy compression.
> 
> 3. There's little point to making the resolution any larger than the iPod can


> display (no idea what that is - 320x240, VCD resolution, I would imagine) - 
> either the software would have to rescale it for the iPod (time-consuming, 
> especially on slower machines), or the extra resolution would be essentially 
> "wasted".
> 
> Thus one would reasonably expect the video to be in a low-res format 
> (although I 
> would think they're using H.264 encoding, which can compress video A LOT with


> little quality loss, and is the basis of the latest Quicktime).
> 
> Besides that, if you wanted to watch it on a regular DVD player, you'd have 
> to 
> re-encode it to MPEG2, and transcoding between different compressed formats 
> will 
> always result in a loss of quality... and you just KNOW there's going to be 
> some 
> sort of hefty copy-protection designed to prevent just that anyway.
> 
> Nope... much rather go the other way, buy the DVDs and then create my own 
> iPod 
> files (if I actually had a video iPod... donations currently being 
> accepted...) <<

Except that the original version of "The Gathering" isn't available on DVD.  
I grabbed it yesterday; the resolution isn't the best, but it's certainly 
watchable.

Amy
                                 
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