Anyone think that Apple might open things up a little for the iPhone, in terms of the video codecs they allow? Right now it's limited on the iPod, ridiculously so in my opinion, and prevents anything but the crappy quicktime 264 format. It's one of those areas where Apple are starting to show their true colours, i.e. acting like a company with a stranglehold on a market.

Blackberry, Treo, all the other windows phones allow divx, .avi, mpeg whatever, why not the iPhone? Of course, these other companies don't have online content delivery monopolies to protect, like Apple does with iTunes. If they make the iPhone into a device only capable of playing video purchased from iTunes, then I for one will be bitterly dissapointed. I just pray that someone hacks it open and figures a way to get other formats on board.

Probably not, Apple just does not play nicely with others (this is not something new regarding video codecs). Only when market forces, well, force them does Apple do something that appears open and friendly. For example, mp3 on the iPod, not supporting it would have been suicide, but notice how many other non-Apple focused formats are supported for audio? Yep, zero (.wav doesn't exactly count). Why isn't there at least the option for a plug-in architecture with the iPod so the end user can decide if they want their music as .ogg or .flac? Same for video.

Apple's success and failure both stem from the same root cause: a stultifying stranglehold on as many aspects of their products as possible thereby guaranteeing a certain user experience, but simultaneously shutting out an infinity of possible user experiences.

Sure, 3rd party codec plugins might drain the battery faster, or not play back as smoothly as H.264 (which is an EXCELLENT codec by the way, just not as widely used compared to DivX in the piracy based environment of the internet), but that just isn't the Apple way. Like or hate it, it's Apple.

What is Divx ?

Quote: (Originally Posted by Astro_Digital)
What is Divx ?

Digital Internet Video eXpress. (not sure why it's not DIVE)

Considering the phones operating system is based on OS X, if Apple allows it then there is the potential for third party developers to offer alternative applications, such as VLC Media Player on the iPhone...that would be pretty cool.

Quote: (Originally Posted by slashjunior)
Considering the phones operating system is based on OS X, if Apple allows it then there is the potential for third party developers to offer alternative applications, such as VLC Media Player on the iPhone...that would be pretty cool.

Except that Apple has already clearly stated that they will be the only ones releasing software for it, 3rd party development except with the official blessing of Apple is out.

Quote: (Originally Posted by Code Monkey)
Except that Apple has already clearly stated that they will be the only ones releasing software for it, 3rd party development except with the official blessing of Apple is out.

Apple may change their tune with time. I think they are just trying to keep it pretty closed at this time to make it easier to get rid of any problems when it is first released. Once it is more established and more people understand the iPhones capabilities, then I think Apple will open it up to third-party developers and would really help the success of the iPod. Like on the Mac, Apple make a lot of great programs, but what makes the Mac shine is the great third party programs which just completes the whole experience and makes the computer feel your own.

I'm very skeptical that Apple will ever open the iPhone to third-party developers, any more than they've opened up the Games features on the iPod (as of now, only Apple can release games for it).

As Code Monkey says, this is Apple's greatest strength and weakness. They produce a very stable device by ensuring that nothing that they don't approve gets put onto it. Having owned a wide variety of smartphones over the years, I can honestly say that the majority of complaints about Treos, Pocket PC/Windows Mobile Devices, and even Symbian devices stem from the third-party software applications that people put on them. The Treo has a horrible reputation in this regard, yet it's almost completely undeserved, since a Treo out-of-the-box is actually a pretty stable device until you start loading it up with other applications and/or trying to make it do things that it wasn't designed for.

Likewise, even most of the problems that you see reported with the iPod are based on getting music and video from non-mainstream encoders, or having weird tagging issues. I have never had a lockup on any of my iPods, but the majority of my content is either ripped through iTunes, or purchased from the iTunes Store. The only stuff I've ever encoded outside of iTunes is videos (of course), and I'm fairly careful about using a decent encoder and encoding to H.264 in bit-rates that are a bit on the conservative side.

This obviously isn't an excuse for Apple to not deal with these sort of issues, and I'm not in any way making excuses for the fact that other content doesn't work. The only point I'm trying to make is that a closed system is going to be more stable by it's very nature.

Getting back to the OP's question about DivX, I really doubt it will ever be supported for one basic reason... The video features of the iPod/iPhone exist primarily to consume content purchased from the iTunes Store. In fact, we never had a video-capable iPod until Apple was able to provide content for it.

Since Apple doesn't make this content available in DivX, they have no reason to support that format. Third-party encoders like Videora et al, while nice, aren't really officially supported by Apple in any fashion, so third-party codecs are equally unnecessary.

Whether you like it or hate it, this is simply the way Apple plays the game. It has it's advantages, and has probably been partially responsible for the iPod's success (the vast majority of Apple's customer base -- the sort of people who don't hang around on forums like these -- don't really care about these sorts of issues, and are happy to buy an iPod for what it does do).

Not only that but I would be surprised if the video decoding on the iPhone is done through software. Most likely it's done through the same (or close to the same) chip that is currently in the iPod, meaning that the decoding is done in hardware. This makes the phone more efficient, and allows the CPU to spend it's time doing more important things like organizing chat messages into threads. Highly unlikely that apple will incorporate more than one decoding chip, especially one that isn't needed to display their own content as Jesse said.

Why can't Apple do like Windows? Certify applications (pay Apple a small fee am sure), and if not certified then installer warns: Not Certified by Apple, install At Your Own Risk. When calling tech support, the first thing Apple have u do is to MMS them a TECH-LIST of applications loaded into the phone, u have anything that's not certified, Apple says, sorry, can't help you. That's fair.

I know, there will be ways around it but am sure 85% of tech supp calls are not that smart (that's why they have to call!).

Well, it's certainly possible that it may eventually evolve into this sort of approach, but even then I'm not sure that this approach does anything to help the reputation aspect.

It's not just about supporting the phone, but rather about ensuring that it retains the same sort of "just works" reputation that the iPod (for the most part) does. Even if Apple flashed up fifteen different big red warnings in a user's face when installing a "non-certified" application, there would still be those who would install them and then complain loudly that they caused problems and the iPhone was therefore an unstable piece of junk. The Treo, Windows Mobile, and Symbian forums are filled with these sorts of complaints.

Additionally, Apple would actually have to create a certification program, and then do QA on those applications. Not only would this increase Apple's costs (which they would most certainly include in the device cost), but we've all seen how well that's worked for Microsoft Windows applications....

Note that I'm not saying that any of this is necessarily a great idea (keeping the iPhone closed to third party apps), but I can see some benefit to Apple in taking this approach, and can therefore understand why they're doing it.

Having suffered from the instability of Windows for so many years, and from the performance hits my machine takes whenever I install something new, and from the malware, I certainly think that allowing only Apple approved software in the iPhone has to be a good thing. Although I am sure that this will mean a lot of the things we want to see on the device will be overlooked, such as Office support or, in my case, support for DivX.

But what I don't get is why they allow mp3 support, but draw the line at video codecs and other audio formats. Sure, mp3 is the dominant format for pirates but why put it on the iPod? It would be enough to allow users to rip cds to the Apple DRM format buy songs off iTunes in the Apple DRM format, wouldn't it? I can't follow the logic of Apple's approach. I always figured that the reason why they included mp3 was precisely because it was the dominant format for pirates. Remember, the vast majority of digital music on the internet is illegal, certainly not bought from iTunes. So, if DivX or .avi are the dominant video formats for pirates, why not include them too? If the reasoning was good for mp3, why isn't good for DivX? ITunes sells barely any movies or tv shows, certainly a miniscule amount to the number of illegal movies available. So if the iPod would have been useless without mp3, how will the iPhone be without video codecs?

Quote: (Originally Posted by loramarthalas)
But what I don't get is why they allow mp3 support, but draw the line at video codecs and other audio formats. Sure, mp3 is the dominant format for pirates but why put it on the iPod? It would be enough to allow users to rip cds to the Apple DRM format buy songs off iTunes in the Apple DRM format, wouldn't it? I can't follow the logic of Apple's approach. I always figured that the reason why they included mp3 was precisely because it was the dominant format for pirates.

The logic is easy: although you would be correct in that most of the grey to black market music out there circa 2001 (and 2007 for that matter) was .mp3, you missed the *very* important counterpoint: most of the legit music out there circa 2001 (and 2007 for that matter) was .mp3.

On the other hand, there is almost no such thing as legit video, and certainly no standard in 2007.

Whereas the music studios may have tossed the idea out about locking people to ripping to a DRM format, they probably didn't push the issue very hard. After all, it was them who had been distributing their music in pristine, DRM-less format for going on two decades.

They did not repeat the mistake with video. You cannot legally rip a DVD to a portable format, period and any of the officially downloaded material is DRM protected. While there are a fair amount of grey market shorts and clips out there, there is certainly no standard (c.f. the codec packs out there you get to reinstall every time you upgrade your computer). DivX comes the closest to being a standard, but it's a standard for illegit video, ergo, it was easy for the content studios and Apple to agree to just H.264, it's a win-win for both: high quality, small size, and easy as heck to drape with DRM.

Besides, for Apple, this is more than the iPod, by carefully controlling what people put on the iPod, they can eventually control the format developments. They have a financial interest in seeing people use H.264, they have a financial interest in seeing people use Apple's AAC implementation rather than .mp3 or Nero's FAAC. As long as they remain the dominant legitimate outlet for such media they grow their influence in areas they've only played at before.

Yeah, good points. I never thought about the DVDs being gunked up with DRM when you buy them, but I guess they are hey? Whereas a CD isn't. So, that means that most DVDs can't be legally ripped to an iPhone anyway then I assume.

I really hope that as piracy gets more and more mainstream, Apple are left with no choice but to include the other codecs or face becoming irrelevant. Long live the pirates!!

I'd kill for .avi support (as I would for .avi support on iTunes). COME ON APPLE!