[oharag]

Does anyone know whether the iPod will play mp4 files? Since Quicktime 6.0 is shipping (which supports the standard), and I believe iMusic was going to also support this standard does this mean that the iPod will automatically support mp4 as well. Our would a firmware upgrade be necessary? Thanks for the input.

[esc]

It does not at this time. It isn't clear if a firmware upgrade would do the trick - the spec sheet on the iPod suggests that future codecs can be added with firmware upgrades, but an EETimes article last Winter suggested otherwise.

We'll have to wait and see... (I tried having iTunes send an mp4 file to my iPod and a message was generated that the iPod couldn't import an unknown file type)..

I'm hoping we get this soon.

[oharag]

You would have to think that Apple would at least support mp4 through a firmware upgrade! It would be suicide not to allow this. Well, this is coming from a company that provided no means to easily replace the battery inside even the current iPod systems!!????

[Evangellydonut]

So here's the problem...the iPod uses an MP3 decoder that can handle WAV and AIFF I believe. While it is an integerated programmable chip that allows an UI and firmware updates, handling MP4 decoding in software will not be so easy to implement. For 1, it'll probably draw a lot of power, and 2, it might not be fast enough to decode very high bit-rate mp4 files, depending on the processor...dunno, we'll just have to see...