nc10's Full Review: Apple iPod 5th Generation White (30 GB) MP3 Player
The 30GB White iPod (video) is one of Apple’s new (5th) generation of iPod digital media players, featuring video and audio playback, a 30gb hard drive, and a terrific 2.5” diagonal 320X240 QVGA color LCD display. The new display should help Apple take advantage of the iPod’s new video playback capabilities by selling videos from the iTunes store.
The video iPod comes in two colors (white and black), and two sizes (30 and 60 gb). The 60gb model also features a larger battery than the 30gb model, allowing 20 hours of music playback, vs (a real) 14 hours for the 30gb model. Video playback pushed the batteries to their limit, on a full charge I got about 2 hours and 36 minutes of video playback on my 30gb model (the volume set at about 75% and all other options turned off). I’d expect the 60gb model to allow about 3.5 hours of video playback on a full charge.
My wife, a teacher, recently purchased the white 30gb iPod from Apple’s educational site, taking advantage of a 10% discount to teachers and students. Apple also offers two two lines of engraving on the back of each iPod purchased, which we took advantage of. Our iPod cost $269 plus tax, with free shipping. I also ordered an Apple A/V cable, which would allow us to connect the iPod to a television to watch video’s and view images stored on the iPod. The iPod was shipped 3 days after the order was placed (from China) and was delivered 1 week the order placed. FedEx had tried to deliver it one day earlier, but we won’t home to receive it.
Other key spec’s and features of the 30gb (video) iPod include:
-4.1 inches X 2.4 inches by 0.43 inches in size, weighing 4.8 ounces
-2.5 inch (diagonal) QVGA transflective 65,000 plus color liquid crystal display w/ white LED backlight, 320 x 240 resolution
-plays MPEG-4 video up to 2.5 Mbps, 480 x 480 at a very smooth 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile (mpeg-4 SP) with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 KHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats, or H.264 video up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec. (I use Nero Recode to create MPEG-4 video which works well on the iPod)
- Plays AAC, mp3, AIFF, and wave audio files
- TV out (with optional $20 cable
- 14 hour battery life when listening to music, a little over 2 hours when watching video
Setup
The iPod comes in a very minimalist package about the size of a cd case 1.5" thick. In the box are the iPod, a white slip case, USB cable (which doubles as the only charging cable), earbuds, dock adapter, iTunes CD, and a very small, reasonably effective quickstart guide. Most will be impressed with the appearance of the 30gb iPod, its surprisingly thin, with a high gloss white face place and polished stainless back and sides. The slip case is not so impressive, and was described better than I could by a reviewer at the Ars Technica website, who mentioned that the case looks like a bad summer camp project. The controls are few, the large clickwheel below the color display on front, a locking switch on top (disables the controls), headphone jack on top, and the usb cable connector on the bottom.
Installing the iTunes software on my 2.66 ghz Dell 4550 desktop running Win XP gave me fits. The install locked up near the end on my first attempt, leaving a few unwanted lines in my registry which kept my cdrom drives from working. I found a registry patch on the internet which solved this problem, and with a second attempt I was more successful, finishing the installation of iTunes 6 and the latest version of Quicktime on my PC. (Good thing, since iTunes is required to transfer files to the iPod.)
After installing iTunes, I plugged the iPod (which came with a full charge), into the USB port on my PC. (Normally, charging an empty battery via the double duty USB cable takes about 3 hours) My PC recognized the iPod, and launched iTunes, which walked me though the registration process, after which I was ready to download tunes, pictures and video’s to my iPod.
Listening to Music
Copying tunes from CD’s to the iPod is a two step process, first import the tunes to your PC and encode them to AAC files, and then use iTunes to transfer the tunes to your iPod.
Importing/encoding a cd’s worth of music is a little slow, I timed ripping a cd (using a 52X cdwriter) containing 16 tunes (47 minutes worth) to 128kbps AAC files, and it took 8 minutes, about twice the time required to rip a cd and encode it to mp3 with other programs. iTunes required almost 100% of my systems resources to rip and encode a cd. Transferring the 16 tunes (about 45mb worth of files) to the iPod was really fast, requiring only 9 seconds. Transferring mp3 files is similarly fast. ( If you’ve got unprotected wma files, iTunes will transcode them to AAC files prior to transferring to the iPod.) I don’t expect this iPod’s lack of a firewire port to be much of a problem, as the USB 2 transfer speeds are fast enough for me. (Though I’ve not tried it, you can also buy tunes from the iTunes website, using the iTunes software, for 99 cents a tune.)
I’m not an expert on judging sound quality, but with good earbuds or headphones, I find the iPod does quite well in the audio quality department, excellent frequency response, adequate bass and clear clean highs. The iPod can play very loud, 20% - 30% volume is soft, but adequate for a quiet room, 50% is comfortable, and 80-90% is loud enough even if I’m running a lawn mower while listening.
This is my first experience with a iPod, previously having used a Creative Labs Zen Micro. Though the iPod doesn’t sound any better than the Zen Micro, and it lacks a few features that most of the Zen models have (no microphone, FM radio, etc), its significantly easier to listen to, and it responds to commands more quickly, making my Zen Micro feel a little sluggish. Unlike the touchpad on the Zen Micro, which took me a couple of weeks to get comfortable with, the iPod’s click wheel takes only an hour or two to become intuitive. Its responds instantly and feels more “precise”, its easy to jump to the right tune or menu at any time. If its someone’s first mp3 player, you’ll still have a learning curve, but anyone switching from another player to this one will find the learning curve almost non existent.
Watching Video’s on the iPod
I’ve got an Hauppage external TV tuner on my PC, and use it to time shift my TV watching, recording and saving shows to my PC's hard drive. I tried out a couple of different programs to convert those TV shows to the MPEG4-SP format supported by the iPod, Videora iPod Converter
(http://www.videora.com/en-us/Converter/iPod/), and Nero Recode, part of the Nero Ultra CD/DVD authoring software package (www.ahead.de). I’ve also ripped a few DVD’s (that I own!) and reencoded them for transfer to the iPod. Videora is easier to use, but I’ve had no problems with Nero Recode and one encode with Videora did not work on iPod. The video’s I’ve created with both programs, all at 320 X 240 resolution, look great on the iPod’s screen, no hesitation at all, smooth movement and great color, details. Sound quality is also excellent. When I’ve connected the iPod to my TV, the video playback (of the shows I've encoded) on the TV screen is only mediocre, slight blocky with a “low resolution” appearance. As I note later, shows purchased from iTunes look pretty good on my TV.
Apple claims the 30gb iPod battery will only last about 2 hours when watching video’s. I made a copy of The Return of the King DVD that I own, reencoded it with Nero Recode, and transferred the 3 hour video to the iPod. I then started watching the 3 hour movie, to test battery life. Volume was set at about 75-80%. At 2 hours and 36 minutes, the iPod screen displayed a message telling me the battery was drained, and then shut down. Apple’s 2 hour estimate is conservative, but its way too short to allow you to really use the iPod’s video capabilities on a long trip. Its fine for watching a 1 hour show on a long bus ride to work or school, though.
Transferring video’s from my PC to the iPod is really fast. The copy of the Return of the King that I transferred to the iPod was 680mb in size, and it took only 64 seconds to transfer the movie to the iPod.
Many users will be buying videos from iTunes, at $1.99 each, rather than using their own encodes. iTunes currently has only a limited selection of videos, the TV shows Lost, Desparate Housewifes, Night Stalker and a couple of others, a few music videos and a handful of Pixar animations. I purchased the pilot episode of Night Stalker TV show, a 209mb 44 minute video file, which took about 10 minutes to download. Watching this episode on the iPod was impressive, as you might expect, but when I hooked the iPod up to my TV, I was surprised to see the picture quality was still excellent, very little blockiness, similar to a VHS recording.
You don’t have a lot of control over the video playback. You can pause, and there is a single speed for FF and REW, which appears to be about 8X, so it takes about 15 seconds to fast forward through 2 minutes of the Night Stalker episode mentioned above, while skipping ahead to the middle of the show takes a couple minutes (and it seems longer). There’s no color adjustment, you can’t zoom in, resize the screen, etc. Fortunately if you quit watching a video, when you restart the iPod resumes playback at the same point.
Photo Viewing
Photo viewing on the iPod is a lot of fun also, primarily because images look great on the iPod screen, and there are a lot of professional quality transitions between image displays. You can also play music, adjust display times, for each image, or output the images through optional A/V cables to your TV screen.
Other features
- The iPod also offers a few games, a breakout clone, a multiple choice music quiz asking you to identify the names of tunes as you listen to them, solitaire, and a game called parachute which could be called a “missile command” variant. The games are nothing special, but work pretty well with the click wheel and look good on the color screen.
- You can store and synchronize contacts and calendar info with Outlook or Outlook Express, or with your Mac and iCal if you have OS X 10.4 or later
- You can use the iPod as an external drive for storing files, the iPod shows up in Windows explorer and you can drag and drop data files to the iPod. You can drag and drop music and video files, but the iPod won’t play them.
- The iPod comes with a 1 year warranty, and a "single incident telephone support for the first 90 days". A hard copy manual is not included, though an electronic version is copied to your PC during the iTunes installation.
Other resources:
Ars Technica article on encoding video for the iPod:
http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/ipod-video.ars/1
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