Since the release of Tiger and particularly Quicktime 7 sporting the new H.264 codec I’m beginning to wonder if we’re glimpsing a bigger picture here. If you haven’t checked out the unbelievable quality of H.264 go over to the HD Gallery and witness the days of pixilation disappear.
With this brings some interesting thoughts; does Apple have a roadmap for video on demand? Well, they’ve already started doing it with iTunes 4.8. We now have the choice to buy music videos and video extras that would normally be found on CD’s. This however doesn’t seem to be using the H.264 codec at the moment but I’m sure it will follow. Will the iPod soon have video functionality to echo iTunes?
People love listening to music as a background activity when they’re exercising, when they’re commuting and when they’re just hanging out. Music is a wonderful thing because A, it’s music, and B, because it can be listened to as a background activity. And a lot of these other things that people are talking about building in, such as video and things like that, are foreground activities. – Steve Jobs
It appears the iPod is slowly creeping into our foreground. Right behind it could be a video-on-demand Mac Mini. I only hope they choose to offer not-so mainstream content like Independent Films and Documentaries that you wouldn’t normally find on television. Could this also pave the way for a new bread of video podcasts? Vidcasts?