Picture: Some of the Free HD TV content you can download from the US iTunes Music Store.

Lets delve deeper into this whole Apple HD TV content thing.

File Size: If you purchase any HD TV content from the US iTunes store you will also receive the iPod friendly version of the content. In the example below that would consist of a 1.64gb file and a separate 640mb file. A total of 2.2gb per episode. If your chosen show had 24 episodes a season that’s a 54.72gb download in total.

This presents two problems 1) You need to download that. Think bandwidth caps and putting up with slow Internet while it does it. 2) You need to store the content for in theory as long as you want to keep it.

Technical Details:

Video Codec: H.264
Resolution: 1280×720
Total Bitrate: 4439kbps

Video Quality: The 720 HD content looks a whole lot better than the 480 equivalent for sure but is it stunning? No, Don’t get me wrong it’s good, especially on a laptop or PC monitor in a window, but on a large 1080p TV the imperfections of compressed video are evident.

I can be very critical when it comes to video quality. I am sure half the time I am watching blu ray movies I am just looking for flaws in the transfer. So to recap it’s good but not perfect.

Tip: If you have a 1080p display and are distracted by image tear on the top section of the screen, try dropping down your resolution to something closer to the resolution of the video clip.

Audio: Some of the HD content comes with two audio streams  plain old stereo and the other a surround sound version.

Cost: $2.99 is the initial cost per episode but factor in the cost of storing the content and bumping up against any download caps on your Internet connection.

Tip: Download at night its the only way particularly with when you get into the 20 to 50 gig sessions.

Summary

It’s great having essentially an on demand HD content distribution system. The only competition is from from your Satellite or Cable company.

An Argument could be made that future generations will just cherry pick their content instead of buying 400 channels of content they have very little interest in.

So this business model is here to stay. In 5-10 years time it will be funny to re-read this post watching me complaining about file size, download speed and caps.

Yesterdays product announcement went pretty much as expected on the iPod Nano front.

These are sort of cool but I’m much more of an iPod Touch kind of guy. Video on a small screen just becomes annoying after a while.

The updated iPod Touch isn’t enough of an improvement to make me contemplate an upgrade. The additions of a volume control and speaker are nice but it doesn’t really make much odds to me.

The iPod touch is still a marvel to me. Here is what I do with mine:-

Listen to Music
Watch Video
Stream TV from BBC iPlayer
Stream Audio from AOL Radio
Read Twitter and my Gmail Email
Play Games and Apps
Read the New York Times

As well as all the standard things like Maps, Web sites and Pictures. The iPod Touch is more a computer than a Video playing mp3 player. It’s expensive but ultimately worth it.

The good news from yesterday is the Addition of HD TV content in their main store. Prior to this the only HD content available from Apple was locked to the Apple TV infrastructure, and that was movies and not TV.

Now you have the choice to download some TV Shows in 480p ($1.99) or 720p ($2.99).

Much like a drug dealer offering the first hit for free Apple are now offering free downloads of 10  episodes in HD from the likes of Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, The Office, Monk and more to showcase the HD content in the iTunes music store.

When you buy an HD episode you get both the HD and SD versions (one for your TV one for your iPod).

It’s nice to have the choice of quality and price points. But as I have said before paying extra for HD just feels like a tax.

Sadly if you are a UK resident don’t get too excited as none of this HD goodness seems to have filtered through to us.

Last Fridays roll out of the iPhone 3g was one of the biggest blunders in tech history.

Apple now wants you to buy the new iPhone 3g at retail so they can activate your product but more importantly they lock you into your phone contract (where all the real revenue is).

So this on-site Activation is really a man made road block.

This simple activation process collapsed on Friday under the sheer weight of activation activity. This left people with either brand new iPhones that would not work (activation failed).

Worse still their existing 1^st generation iPhone’s were temporarily “bricked” because it could not re-activate due to the activation servers being offline while they tried to upgrade to the free iPhone 2.0 Update.

Apple need to realise the iPhone isn’t a toy, it’s a phone and when thousands of customers can’t use their phones they are frankly unhappy.

Likewise if you just bought a new iPhone that’s going to cost you £600+ and you can’t use it. It must be very frustrating.

So what went wrong?

First let’s look at some numbers.

iPhone 1.0 customers = 20m+ and of those interested in a Day1 upgrade to the free iPhone 2.0 Upgrade is placed at about 6m.

The iPod Touch was eligible for a paid upgrade to the 2.0 Software upgrade.

I can’t see any numbers for touch users so let’s conservatively call it 500,000 users.

Finally the new iPhone 3g users, it 1m (the original iPhone did 128,000 first day sales) but the iPhone 3g was launched internationally.

So a minimum of 7.5m people intent on getting activated on the 2.0 software.

Note you need the 2.0 Update to download Apps to your Apple device (iPhone 1.0 or iPod Touch).

That’s a big number but Apple is in the content distribution business they can handle it.

On paper yes they can, they delivery an unimaginable amount of data via iTunes every day. But they made one mistake they forgot about the wisdom of a 6m+ crowd looking for a free upgrade.

The real problem started on Thursday. They seeded the App Store in iTunes.Don’t underestimate a bored iPhone user looking for some distraction. From that moment the iPhone 1.0/iPod Touch users start on mass upgrading to iTunes 7.7 and pressing the “check for update” looking for the illusive and in most cases free 2.0 update.

Now its human nature for people to keep pressing buttons in this case check for update if they think something’s going to happen imminently but doesn’t.

So the check for update crowd starts swarming from 5pm on Thursday as news travels around the Internet the App store is live.

If the App Store is live I must be missing something where is my 2.0 update, check for update.

And so on.

By the time the iPhone 3g launches 12/16 hours later millions of people are frantically pressing the check for update. This puts the Activation infrastructure under strain as installing the 2.0 Update requires Re-Activation.

Apple eventually seed the 2.0 update and people start downloading, but the sheer force of the numbers overload the activation servers. So people could download the 2.0 update but not activate leaving them in limbo without a working iPhone.

So those poor people standing in line for an iPhone 3g may be able to get one but had no way of activating or using it.

So one of the largest ever tech roll out’s fails miserably with some really upset customers.

Free Advice for Apple

Don’t roll out internationally if you can’t handle it.

Stagger the roll out. The 2.0 upgrade could have come out either a week before or after the iPhone 3g launch. The person who decided to globally launch 2.0 in one movement made a BIG mistake.

Update: This seems to work for some but not others. See the comments.

If you are having difficulty installing this update try temporarily disabling any Anti-Virus or Spyware software.

In my particular case I use Nod32 and after the Software downloaded the 222mb file it would fail with the error pictured above.

After I disabled Nod32 my Anti-Virus product (you can do this from the taskbar) my installation completed successfully.

Remember to re-enable your Anti-Virus or Spyware software once you have completed the upgrade.

If the Apple Software Update box is annoying by offering the Safari Web browser go into Tools > Ignore selected Updates.

I am really pleased that the proliferation of legal downloadable content is on the increase in the UK.

Our American cousins have it way better than we do with new movies and TV shows.

However in Europe the way content is licensed we are essentially locked out. So our digital revolution hasn’t really started (yet).

Its like the dawn of the TV all over again with only 3 channels to chose from.

Some decent content is slowly appearing but look how they hamstring us further.

Apple’s iTunes Music Store

£41.58 for the entire 22 episodes (£1.89 per Episode)

Play.com Internet Retailer for the DVD Version

£17.99 for the entire 22 episodes on DVD (£0.82 per Episode)

What you also need to bare in mind is the quality of the iTunes version will be far below that of the DVD version.

Typically their content is H.264 with a resolution of 640×360 with a bitrate of 1540kbps.

That’s fine for a video clip on a computer window or iPod but looks terrible on a TV.

Additionally you lose out on special features with the iTunes digital version things like: Dolby Digital, making of’s and commentary tracks.

So in summary the digital version in the UK is 56% more expensive than the DVD based equivalent. To make things worse its of inferior quality. How dumb do they think we are?

The problem is with the episode price point of £1.89 in the US store the price is $1.99 so about a £1

This show is in the US sells for $37.99 or £19.20

In the UK for this to viable from a consumer point of view the cost per episode needs to be £0.99 or less. Then having the convenience of a digital download might make sense. As it is today this pricing is just a rip off.

When you download an application you should be given the full disclosure about what is being installed on your equipment and given some options/choices.

If you download the latest version of iTunes for Windows what you are really installing is:-

iTunes
Quicktime
Apple Mobile Device Support
Apple Software Update
Bonjour

If you decide to uninstall you are faced with 5 separate uninstall’s from the control panel add/remove programs.

Nice touch for a user who changes their mind. A unified uninstaller would be welcome.

To cap this off the Apple Software Updater then suggests the additional download of the Apple Web Browser Safari 3.1.

The motive behind the web browser install is ad revenue. Apple have an inroad to 100m windows PC’s. How very opportunistic of them!

Where do Apple draw the line on this issue?

You may think why does this matter?  I look after hundreds of PC’s and I care what gets installed right under my nose.

Take Bonjour for example. This is Apples networking protocol that makes connecting devices easier (PC’s and Mac’s)  It operates on UDP Port 5353. Now as a network admin what if someone were to design an exploit that does something bad with Bonjour for Windows.

Do I now have to wait on Apple to fix it or run around frantically getting it uninstalled. I hope I don’t have to find out.

Dealing with Microsoft security is bad enough. Do I really need to worry about drive by installs from Apple, a company that really should know better.

For those who like a conspiracy theory why is Bonjour in this software bundle in the first place?  Why now?  I suspect we will find out in 10 months time at the Macworld 2009 keynote. But it doesn’t take a genius to see it has to do with networking PC’s and Macs.

The BBCi Player. Using the devices built in WiFi you can browse to a web page designed to work on the iPhones small screen (pictured above).

Then you can browse through the last seven days worth of viewing and choose the show you are interested in.

On Windows the BBC iPlayer can download or stream, on the iPhone you can only stream.

Now if you have ever experienced streaming video on a handheld the quality is usually quite poor.

But this streaming model has been designed for WiFi only so they can deliver much better quality video as the target connection would typically at broadband speeds.

I had a chance to play with this the other day on someone else’s iPhone.

First the user experience, you click, you play its that simple.

The quality of the Video has the WOW factor.

For those interested the streams are 516Kbps streams (400Kbps H.264 video, 116Kbps AAC audio).

My advice is till avoid the iPhone 1.0 its still a 1.0 product, better will come. But its great to see Apple allowing innovation like this on the platform. Especially as some of the content is in direct competition with paid for content on iTunes.

Link: BBC Article About iPhone and the BBCiPlayer

Euan our six year old was being really nice to me.

I couldn’t figure out why until he sheepishly brought me my iPod that he sometimes like to play with.

He managed to accidentally set the screen lock combination and lock both him and me out of the iPod.

Have no fear: I have worked in I.T. for 20 years, perhaps rebooting it will solve the problem. Alas Not.

Thankfully all you have to do is re dock it with your computer. I had to look it up.

Pesky Kids.

Link: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302255

They did a major refresh on the iPod line yesterday.

The new range has something for everyone.

The web is full of commentary on this so I only have two points to make.

My first is an observation on the cultural impact of technology.

I am 37 this year I got my first CD player in 1987 or something like. I remember being a 17 year old going into town to visit record shops to buy music.

Apple yesterday launched the iPod Touch a Music and Video player that has built in Wifi so you can sit at home or in a Starbucks buying and downloading music directly to the device in the palm of your hand.

Part of me thinks this is wonderful, as I love when technology meets my expectations. Then my mind wanders, I am a parent now, my kids will have access to this type of technology.

Inevitably Apple have just put a cash register in the hands of any iPod Touch user. I can imagine a time 5 years from now my kids pestering me to let them buy, buy, buy.

My next observation:-

Dear Apple

You should be commended for dropping the price of the 8gb iPhone from $599 to $399. What a bold move.

Now kindly refund $200 to everyone who paid the $599 in the last 2 months and 6 days since you launched the iPhone at the $599 price point.

That is no way to treat early adopters and clearly apple supporters.

Tip: If you have purchased an iPhone within the last 14 days you can get a refund within the initial 14 day period. Then repurchase at the $399 price point.

____

Update 07/09/2007: They are offering early adopters a $100 voucher.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6982717.stm