Apple is going to make a new dock with HDMI-out so the millions around the world that have an iphone (and not the appletv thing) will use as a cheap HD movie player with iTunes.

Is gonna happen, believe me.

Shadowlayer

"running videos at a higher resolution than needed isn't ideal for processing or syncing times"

@Mark Wilson: And memory, it's a downright waste of memory in my opinion. Great way to show the power of the iPhone though.

joandrade

@Everyone: The key here is that owners of multiple devices (i.e. AppleTV and iPhone/iPod Touch) won't have to encode different file sizes for different devices! You can encode one video, and that same file will work on ALL of your devices! It's not about appreciating the detail on the mobile device, c'mon!

fivepoint

@N@tedog: Your question is, in large part, what this article is exactly about.

Mark Wilson

@Monty: There is no downgrading going on. It's like the 1080P video is running but the display can only see part of it.

Mark Wilson

What's an iPhone? Some kind of HD-DVD player?

Con Seannery

If the iPhone can handle 1080p and since it has 620 MHz processor, it would be nice if Apple would make a docking station and allow this to be an iMAC with an external keyboard. Could you imagine the possibilities in a conference room… nothing getting done because Super-Monkey-Ball is up on the smart board. And the upcuming gesture cam (@billy-g) on the back row.

pcyoung

A two hour movie encoded h264/MP4 or whatever is still 4+ GB.

That's hard drive only territory.

jrbd90

@Monty: good point if the entire frame is being shown then it would have to be a downscale image which would mean it isn't actually 'displaying' 1080p images which would mean it isn't doing what is being claimed which explains a lot.

lilaliendog

H.264 1080P video is too vague does this 'friend' mention if it's a 10 second clip or 2 minute trailer? What about a full movie? My old pentium 866 can handle a 1080p clip or short trailer but try and play something longer than a few minutes and it has a fit about a quarter of the way in.

lilaliendog

@ichi1: what bar are u drinkin at?

lldsandsll

Wow, with iTunes going high def, I'm glad comcast isn't putting bandwidth caps on my cable modem service...oh..wait...damn.

BadBoyNDSU

I must be getting less trusting but the hell do I need a PS3 with all the almighty power and the hell fire when all I need is 620 mhz. Lol my powerbook is 1ghz and does not really like HD lol. This sounds like those down the bar stories, like I heard someone saying that they had a ps3 emulator on their 360.

ichi1

Bye bye, battery.

Eruanno

@teexcue: I have a PC hooked up to my TV, so I could buy these movies in iTunes and watch them in iTunes on my HDTV.

BadBoyNDSU

I admit, I am part of the confused crowd here. Is it really able to display 1080 lines of resolution (meaning, you could connect it to your TV to show a full HD movie), or is it only capable of downgrading 1080p for it's built in screen?

Monty

@Kaiser-Machead on the Edge: I thought about that after I posted. Might not be too bad via a 'docked' connection then.

N@tedog

I'm not following...so the processor on the iPhone is capable of 1080p video, but what's the point if the display is still 320p? Is it for the purpose of using it as an output to a hi-def tv? That's the only use I could see.

teexcue

@N@tedog: I think it's more about the output to something larger, not the native res.

Kaiser-Machead on the Edge

If I can play HD movies off of the touch, I'd basically just close the case on my consideration of the ATV. Why pay for that thing, when I can just play the movies off of the portable device?

Kaiser-Machead on the Edge

HD on a 3 inch screen is the most absurd thing I've ever heard. What a waste of memory and processing power. You'll have to stop and recharge the battery twice to get through a whole movie.

N@tedog

Is there an HDMI cable for the iPhone?

ripfire

@jrbd90: I can't believe you are the only one that has brought up storage space. That is the first thing I thought about.

Two movies would fill my entire 8GB 3G. There goes my music library...apps...etc. Just so I have a portable miniHD player, yeah I don't think so.

smcguinness

@fivepoint: Nice point. I agree.

newgalactic

This will only have limited usefulness on the iPhone. Storage, battery, Sync times for content, screen size (when watched on phone only). This may be of use when I want to bring over a movie to my friends, and I've had the insight of syncing my content before-hand, and my friend has a A/V system that can support. But sync times, battery, and storage would all need major across the board improvements for this to become actually viable.

However, what about HD in iTunes 8. That does sound cool. Will it make Apple TV obsolete? I'd be interested in streaming HD content to my TV from my tower.

newgalactic

@Eruanno: ...bye bye battery and storage.

newgalactic

@ripfire: I know there is a video out; not sure about HDMI. This is about the closest thing I think.
Apple Component AV Cable

Joseph

Is it really necessary to watch videos of that quality on such a small screen? Weren't they intended for *Bigger* screens? Doesn't this take up memory? Oh the questions~

cowpop

My computer, with a Pentium 4 and a Geforce 6600GT (I know it's old) can't even play 1080p video.

FuturePastNow

Guys, stop being stupid.

The 624MHz ARM CPU in the iPhone (which many sources indicate is actually clocked at ~400MHz) isn't anywhere near fast enough to decode H.264 at 1080p in real-time. It's AT LEAST 5 times too slow, not to mention the fact that keeping the CPU pegged in an iPhone would drain the battery extremely quickly.

So, how does the iPhone play H.264? Simple - hardware decoding. The iPhone has a hardware MP3/AAC/MPEG-4 ASP/H.264 decoder.

Now, it's not impossible that the iPhone's decoder can handle 1080p video, but you still have to question the wisdom of playing such a video on the iPhone. A full-length 1080p H.264 movie is 15GB or more (Spider-Man 3 on Blu-ray, for example, is over 30GB), which is the entire capacity of the 16GB iPhone. And, of course, all of those extra pixels mean exactly squat on a 3.5" 480x360 screen.

bsoft

@lilaliendog:

Very true. In that case, my 3 year old HTC Hermes can do that just fine too!

Someone wake me up when the iPhone can actually do something which way older technology can't already.

Christopher

Oh dear, So a friend of a friend said this eh ?
Why not put your money where your mouth is and try it yourself ?
Kinda pointless anyway and really just another article on how genius the jesusphone is.
First up Apple didn't design the chip, it's an ARM and second of all it plays video through specially designed video chips, is this really news ?

Fourthletter

no way will the iPhone play full resolution HD content files.

sonicwinder

@N@tedog:
I completely agree, plus the iPhone is short on space as it is, trying to store large HD video files would only make that even more evident.

I watch hours of TV shows on my iPod Video 5G a week and I always convert my video files to plain 320X240 medium quality mp4 files. They look great and run about 80MB for a TV episode, which is only a fraction of what I'd imagine HD files would use.

hatboysam

bsoft is right - The difference that most people are not aware of is that your PC does not have any hardware decoders in it. You're using a general purpose processor to decode your H.264 - which is a huge waste of processing power. Newer cell phones though, would use something like the TI DaVinci processor - tiny chip that runs much cooler than anything you'd see in a PC (it's aimed at the phone/camera market), but I've seen 1080p 120Hz decoding that is flawless. Best workstation in my lab can't decode that w/o hiccups, but a specialized HW decoder has no problem.

Same concept works in reverse - you'll start seeing GPUs with hardware encoders soon (if they're not out yet). The point of that is to allow you to downconvert HD to native screen res for a portable device, and not have it take 8 hours. That saves the space/sync time complaints people are having. I think this will be a huge market in the near future as more people start carrying around little HW decoders with small screens, but also want to view their content at home on the big screen. Anyone want to toss me some VC to get a prototype up and running?

sjansa

I'm guessing they are trying to make the iPhone (or iTouch, or iPod) like the Archos PMP/internet device whose new models also support 3G and has acted as a portable PVR for years. You can dock the Archos to connect to a TV and it's a lot cheaper than iWhatever but has all of the same functionality and then some. Not to mention it has a much bigger screen no matter which model you buy. The Archos also isn't limited y Apple's walled garden or video formats. Apple's just reinventing the wheel with their brand like they always do banking on the idea that more limited = simpler and easier to use.

[www.archos.com]

psych0fred

The only reason I have no videos on my iPod is because it takes forever to convert on my computer, and I can't afford to go out and just buy a desktop with the power to transcode at a decent time. It would be nice if I could just drop the movies I have onto the iPod without converting, even if it takes up a lot of space. Later on, evntually we'll have enough space like that. Just 10 years ago we were just barely getting 10GB on our desktops, now we're reaching a TBs or two at almost that same price I think.

SDreamer

Hmm thats strange... I tried to put a 720p version of Transformers on to my Ipod Touch, but then i got a message on itunes saying Transformers cannot be played on this ipod. i hope they fix that with the new itunes!

abdgloria

As I've mentioned in other related posts, I think we'll see Apple flesh out their home network and incorporate remote networking features. The Nano will have wifi and will be able to receive audio streams from iTunes and act as a network controller. The Touch/iPhone will be able to stream both audio and video. The video will get cached on the internal flash storage and streamed through the HDMI dock I thought I saw a post on a while back. (Wasn't there a $299 HDMI iPod dock announced a little while ago, and everyone was like, why is that worth $299 for upscaling 480p video?)

Then the question, why would you want an Apple TV if you could stream 720p or even 1080p video through an iPod Touch? Because the Apple TV is always plugged in, while the Touch will have a ton of other functions, including showing streaming audio and video, acting as a network controller, etc.

I don't think the streaming function will make a cheap Apple TV, because the HDMI dock will cost so much. It will be a convenience for some people but not for others. My guess.

cobaltage

Just because a feature is available, does not mean you have to use it. If you like your SD content, stick with it.
a better source file does look better, no matter what screen you have... For the most part it is pointless, but it can make some details in images look better... not much, but a little.

akothan

The iPhone really needs Divx/XviD/MKV support. That is when something like this truly makes a difference.

Qu33f_Machine

So if this thing can run 1080p video, why the hell does it have to shrink down all my photos to crap resolution when it syncs them?

mediaphile

1080p h.264 at what, like 2mbit with none of the encoding features that make h.264 worthwhile? I mean, I can probably compress a 1080p size picture into a really small .gif...doesn't mean it's worthwhile.

agahnim

Wanna test if anything you have plays 1080p? THIS is the trailer to test it with. If the video chops, make sure you have Perian uninstalled. I have one of those 2.8ghz 8 core macpro's and this trailer will chop with Perian installed.

[www.apple.com]

ChuckBlack

@lldsandsll: Dorsia

ichi1

You know BSOFT and SJANSA comments shed a lot of light on how this is supposed to work and its meaning for your devices. Its a damn shame the OP Mark Wilson didnt include that information so most of us would not be confused or in doubt, but thats giz sometimes for ya.........

Alex2643

An iPod Touch and iPhone has the following ability to do graphical decoding (from Apple's site):

H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

So no 1080P, and even if it could do 1080P it would only be able to process 1.5Mbps, so would be highly compressed and pixellated. (For comparison, that's about 1/30th the max throughput of a Blu-Ray Disc, so your video and audio quality will proportionately suffer even if output to a 1080p display.)

samkass