Downloading BattleStar – Part 2
Last night, I completed the downloading of “Battlestar Gallactica”, at least what I’m going to do for now. I bought all 13 episodes of Season 1, most of which had run times between forty-two and forty four minutes. It took roughly 10 minutes to download each episode. I let my iMac perform that feat on its own as I slept.
At the end of the process, Finder reported that my hard disk was using 55.15GB of its available space. The thirteen episodes had therefore taken 2.35 GB of additional space on my iMac to store. That means each episode is taking 0.1807 GB of space or 180.7 MB each. With 93.84 GB of hard disk left, if I stored nothing else but TV shows on it, I could get 519 more episodes of Battlestar Gallactica on my iMac before I ran out of room.
More importantly, after downloading the episodes from my iMac to my iPod, Finder showed that the iPod was using 11.19 GB of its available 30Gb of storage. The thirteen episodes were taking an additional 2.56 GB of hard disk space on my iPod. That equates to 0.197 GB per episode. I could therefore get 95 more episodes of BattleStar on my iPod before running out of room. That’s enough for 7 more seasons. That’ll be plenty, I bet.
I took the iPod into work with me and showed some of my coworkers the beginning of the miniseries. Without exception, everyone of them thought it was really cool; and they were all surprised at the video and audio quality. But they were no more surprised than I was after I got home and hooked the iPod up to a 20 inch flat screen TV via a standard audio/video cable (from my Sony camcorder) and played part of an episode on the TV. The picture quality was outstanding! I saw none of the pixilation I’ve seen in other reports. In fact, at least on that TV, I could tell no difference between the show being output by my iPod and that of a DVD! Of course, a lot of Battlestar’s scenes are literally dark, and it’s possible that a brighter picture would have shown more. But I was critically searching for any picture defects and saw none.
My only complaint so far is the battery life. While the iPod will easily play a one hour video, if it makes it to two, it will be just barely. Battery life is just barely acceptable for this kind of a device, which makes Apple’s omission of a power adapter even more noticeable.
Another thing I can’t do is hook my iPod up to any of my other Macs and play the video from there. Since I’m not moving the content, that seems like overkill from a Digital Rights Management standpoint.
Purchasing a DVD set of these same episodes is something I might do in the future, but that also looks like overkill right now. Having several full seasons of BattleStar in a device that fits in my shirt pocket is nothing short of miraculous. I’m becoming even more impressed with the video iPod than I thought I would be.
At the end of the process, Finder reported that my hard disk was using 55.15GB of its available space. The thirteen episodes had therefore taken 2.35 GB of additional space on my iMac to store. That means each episode is taking 0.1807 GB of space or 180.7 MB each. With 93.84 GB of hard disk left, if I stored nothing else but TV shows on it, I could get 519 more episodes of Battlestar Gallactica on my iMac before I ran out of room.
More importantly, after downloading the episodes from my iMac to my iPod, Finder showed that the iPod was using 11.19 GB of its available 30Gb of storage. The thirteen episodes were taking an additional 2.56 GB of hard disk space on my iPod. That equates to 0.197 GB per episode. I could therefore get 95 more episodes of BattleStar on my iPod before running out of room. That’s enough for 7 more seasons. That’ll be plenty, I bet.
I took the iPod into work with me and showed some of my coworkers the beginning of the miniseries. Without exception, everyone of them thought it was really cool; and they were all surprised at the video and audio quality. But they were no more surprised than I was after I got home and hooked the iPod up to a 20 inch flat screen TV via a standard audio/video cable (from my Sony camcorder) and played part of an episode on the TV. The picture quality was outstanding! I saw none of the pixilation I’ve seen in other reports. In fact, at least on that TV, I could tell no difference between the show being output by my iPod and that of a DVD! Of course, a lot of Battlestar’s scenes are literally dark, and it’s possible that a brighter picture would have shown more. But I was critically searching for any picture defects and saw none.
My only complaint so far is the battery life. While the iPod will easily play a one hour video, if it makes it to two, it will be just barely. Battery life is just barely acceptable for this kind of a device, which makes Apple’s omission of a power adapter even more noticeable.
Another thing I can’t do is hook my iPod up to any of my other Macs and play the video from there. Since I’m not moving the content, that seems like overkill from a Digital Rights Management standpoint.
Purchasing a DVD set of these same episodes is something I might do in the future, but that also looks like overkill right now. Having several full seasons of BattleStar in a device that fits in my shirt pocket is nothing short of miraculous. I’m becoming even more impressed with the video iPod than I thought I would be.
posted by Andy Foster at
6:02 PM
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