Engadget Podcast 005 - 10.20.2004

Yo Joe! Here's the latest installment of the Engadget Podcast! We talk about the mysterious black iPods, the Apple U2 ad, Sony, an interview with Paul Griffin, hacking DVD players and more. Full show notes below.

Click here to listen to the show (MP3) or add the Engadget Podcast Feed to your Podcasting application and have the show delivered automatically.

Host: Phillip Torrone.
Guest: Paul Griffin, Griffin Technology
Format: 38 minutes, 13MB, MP3.

We've added time codes in the following list and links to the stories or references.

Time & Topics
02:15- U2 and black iPods...Bono said no to Microsoft but yes to Apple?
08:50-Sony WTF? RetroPod gets shutdown, Sony please support Ogg Vorbis.
14:25-Making Photo Mosaics.
16:45-Paul Griffin talks all things iPod
28:00-Control TVs with an iPod and other devices...
31:30-Hack your DVD player.
33:00-One way to record movies to your portable video player.

Shoutouts: del.icio.us, Kevin Rose, Cult of Mac, Scripting.com and Jon Stewart.

LISTEN

[Russell @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

Okay so the podcast thing is great from the standpoint of the user, but what about the server side? What I'm wondering is if we couldn't add bittorrent (or some other "bandwidth sharing" downloading system) to podcast so the podcast application on the listener's side helps distribute the podcast for a certain amount of time.. that way, when it first comes out, the server that houses the podcast doesn't get a huge bandwidth spike ..

Just my thoughts

[pt @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

russell, luckily for us, it's not an issue (for now) to host the file. eventually we might see bittorrent used, but we're a long way off from all this being automatic and easy for most folks. some sites and some podcasts might have server issues, for now, we're fine.

in the end, most people will just click the mp3 to listen to it no matter what we do.

i also compress the file a lot, down to 10 to 13 mb, as opposed to 40 or 50mb which many podcasts are, we can do that since we're voice only.

and lastly, the rss feed went out last night so all the podcaster apps have already got the file, that time offset should help things work out as well.

cheers,
pt

[Russell @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

Thanks for the reply. I was more speaking theoretically. I figured engadget didn't have the same problem that I would if I tried to host my own (I'm hosting my site on Comcast (yeah I know, not the best idea, but my mission-critical, non-playing systems are colocated))..

[mike corley @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

One of the major reasons for using reagion encoding has to so with the time lapses between US and internation releases. Often times a movie will come out on DVD in the US before it even sees theates in other countries. If this is the case, there would be nothing stopping someone from another country from importing the DVD and watching it at home and skipping the theatre experience, thus cutting into profits (yes, like everything, it leads back to money.) Also there is the fact that thye sometimes like to charge more for DVDs elsewhere. I know that in Australia, most of the time it is actually cheaper to import a DVD from the US than to buy one from a local store. Multi-region players are much more popular there, in fact they are much more popular pretty much everywhere, probably because US has all the DVDs first so they need to buy ours =)

[Brandon @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

I'm addicted to the shows, great job on them!!!!

Im curious as to what Mr Griffin told u that we didnt here on the PodCast??? The Madonna throwback was great, thanks. I agree that Sony is a great company, they make the best looking affordable consumer electronics hands down but the whole ATRAC3+ (thats the latest) is garbage. Sure I was a Minidisc fanatic back n the day and with the new HiMD 1GB discs its great to be able to have a whole bunch of 1gig drives in ur hands, but the damn things still record in ATRAC!! grrr I gotta stop now, my heads going crazy.

[Brandon @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

I'm addicted to the shows, great job on them!!!!

Im curious as to what Mr Griffin told u that we didnt here on the PodCast??? The Madonna throwback was great, thanks. I agree that Sony is a great company, they make the best looking affordable consumer electronics hands down but the whole ATRAC3+ (thats the latest) is garbage. Sure I was a Minidisc fanatic back n the day and with the new HiMD 1GB discs its great to be able to have a whole bunch of 1gig drives in ur hands, but the damn things still record in ATRAC!! grrr I gotta stop now, my heads going crazy.

[Brandon @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

I'm addicted to the shows, great job on them!!!!

Im curious as to what Mr Griffin told u that we didnt here on the PodCast??? The Madonna throwback was great, thanks. I agree that Sony is a great company, they make the best looking affordable consumer electronics hands down but the whole ATRAC3+ (thats the latest) is garbage. Sure I was a Minidisc fanatic back n the day and with the new HiMD 1GB discs its great to be able to have a whole bunch of 1gig drives in ur hands, but the damn things still record in ATRAC!! grrr I gotta stop now, my heads going crazy.

[Patrick @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

I love the shows, guys... These podcasts are great. Keep it up!!

[Michael Pereckas @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

I love the, um, eclectic theme music selections. I'm not on the whole a fan of musical interludes on podcasts, at least not mainstream music, but bizarre and unusual stuff is great.

[Deadpan @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

Well, I like it so far.

Something I'm noticing (even on TechTV) is the increased utterance of the word 'um'.

Love the themes.

[michael b @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

When you were talkin gabout the U2 iPod, remember that U2 lost a copy of their new album a while back and that prompted them to look to iTunes to release it before pirated copies would start showing up.

[Callum Alden @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

For non-iTunes-ers, *cough* what do you mean Media Player- i've posted the ad to my webspace, so you can download and enjoy many-a-time... Why does iTunes insist on non-cache-ing video files, thing of the poor broadband with limits users Apple! The video is at www.callumalden.tk under blog / music... This was my first podcast, and on the whole (minus the ers, um, um ers) it was great stuff.

Callum Alden.

[Q @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

new to the site and this podcast... I know you mean well doods but for crying out loud the ummms umm the umm uhh umms uhh ummss uhhh uhh umms gotta go it turns me right of it is so annoying maybe you should script it and know what you re saying so you dont have to think every other second ummm you know umm uhh what umm i am saying umm uhh hahah

[pt @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

yah, here's there deal...sometimes when you're doing these you're juggling a lot of stuff and well, ums happen, but, the latest one, podcast 06, is a lot better, with less ums, maybe there were 2 or so. we aim to please.

cheers,
pt

[Bill King @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

How do I podcast? I thought engadget had something to get me started. If so, I cannot find it? What do I need? And how do I get it?

[Tristar @ Dec 19th 2005 2:26AM]

I love the podcasts. In fact, I don't think I ever met a podcast I didn't like but the audio on the engadget podcasts just doesn't seem up to par. When it's good it sounds like a bad connection on a cell phone, when it's bad (and really crackly) I have to yank the earbuds out of my ears. The guy who does the podcasts via his Treo has better audio and guys like Leo Laporte and Adam Curry sound fantastic. Can anything be done to make engadget sound better?