Kiddy Grade

#v#ipodanime_kiddy_grade.jpg#v#The new iPod arrived the other day (at last) - some good stuff and bad stuff.
The bad stuff is...

• No more support for Firewire - pay Apple 20 dollars for another spare one for work.
• You cant use the old docks - the iPod comes with an adapter for their "Universal Dock" but the adapter doesn't fit in the old iPod docks - pay Apple more money for 2 docks (for home n work) - 100 USD for two.

Apple...Petty...

OK, and now the good stuff (just a few)

• The screen is crisp n clear - really nice. Packs in only 320 X 240 but thats enough.
• The video playback is wonderful - I can now catch up with my Anime on the way to work on the trains
• Thinner and light weight - you can probably fit it in your back pocket (but smash the screen when you sit down)

Anyway, before I purchased the G5 iPod, I wondered about the video quality - at the announcment, Steve Jobs attached the ipod to a mac and showed the playback on the projector which is not really the same as seeing playback on the iPod in the flesh - so for those of you who are thinking of getting one you can now check out what the playback looks like..

You can see wavy lines on the screen but they only show because I am filming the iPod - they dont show on the actual video.
This DIVX file was encoded using Forty-TwoDVD-VXPlus. Its the first video-file-to-ipod app that I have tried but am looking for something else - the file sizes that it generates are too big for a 320 X 240 24 min anime (about 150MB) and whilst you can set up a queue, you have to do settings for each file you add - you cant just drop 20 files and add default settings for the whole lot which is damn right stupid.

Anyway, this is a good opportunity to announce a new up and coming section on the site - "Anime in the Ipod". When I discover new anime, rather than encode and upload the opening credits for you to see (and probably get in trouble), I will be encoding and showing you new clips playing on the iPod - just like this post (still not sure if its legal but I have not heard of anybody getting arrested, bound and gagged for shooting a clip of their iPod...

As for the Anime - its Kiddy Grade which I have mentioned before. Just like all good anime - Kiddy Grade features two cute ladies who go around beating seven shades of bantha pudoo out of bad people - they sometimes like to do it in their Mecha's too (oo er). Kiddy Grade came out ages ago but I have just come across it during my market research of the Otaku market ;-)