HiFi Blog: digital audio goodness

The rating sounds right; “A-” for first-time iPod buyers, “B+” for current owners and power users. The “Audio Quality” section is where it’s at: hard drive stastic—fixed, bass deficiency—slightly improved, piano distortion—fixed. iLounge’s and Ars Technica [via] are the only iPod Video reviews you’ll want to read. Also: our presentation on the iPod with video.

Also²: the Universal Dock and Apple Remote get a review (ratings: “B+” and “B” respectively). The former is still surpassed by Kensington’s Stereo Dock ($67), but it’s a nice improvement over the previous iterations nonetheless; the latter just gets the job done (the limited range is to be expected since it’s InfraRed).

*Dissection*

iPod video dissected, costs about 150 bucks to make: the ugly job done by analysts Jeffries and company—the $299 30GB version is estimated to cost about $143.50—by the way, iSuppli says $151. (For those keeping numbers, the $200 2GB Nano costs about $98 to make.) Old-timers PortalPlayer (CPU), Wolfson (audio chip), etc. are still here—there’s a separate video chip though, and it’s manufactured by Broadcom (“BUY! BUY!”). Side-fact:

the 60GB model actually contains twice as much SDRAM – 64 Megabytes rather than 32 Megabytes. SDRAM typically serves as a buffer for audio and video clips, and additional memory can reduce the number of times an iPod’s hard drive is accessed, thereby further improving battery life.

More about iPod’s innards on Ars Technica.

*Neat ideas*

How-to videos for the iPod Video would indeed rock.

*Guides: rip video to iPod*

Let’s sum up all the guides available for ripping video to your iPod. And whichever path you follow, remember that you should wait—this is a time-consuming process. On to the guides:

• PC/Mac: DVD to iPod (Ars Technica’s guide with a section for each OS—the “less-expensive (free) option for Windows” is certainly worth reading)
• PC: DVD to iPod (Videora iPod converter will prove handy in this; it’s freeware and converts your PC video files—.avi, .mpeg, etc.—to a format that the iPod video understands; screenshot—*UPDATE*: please note that according to this comment [confirmed], Videora’s H.264 encoding isn’t handled by the iPod Video so you’re better off using the “SP/320×240/768Kbps Stereo/128Kbps” setting)
• PC: Video files to iPod
  [Additional tips on settings for the two guides above: 1, 2]
• PC: Video files (torrents) to iPod (we ♥ automation)
• Mac: DVD to iPod
• Mac: Video files to iPod
• Mac: Video files to iPod (uses QuickTime Pro—not recommended)

Also: things we’ve learned from using the iPod video—stick with the MPEG-4 format (skip H.264), go with Handbrake (Quicktime encoding is slo-o-ow), metadata on video files is poor (and as a result, you can’t manage your collection the same way as music).