[ChrisB]

Ok, after doing some basic research, it seems that:

- It's a widescreen display (duh)
- Video max size is still in a 4:3 ratio - 640x480

So, what I can't seem to find an answer on yet is: Is the video that is displayed on this iPod anamorphic SD video (16:9 video squished to 4:3 dimensions, then stretched out on display - this is widescreen standard definition video), or is it 640x232 etc, and "zoomed" if you will, or is the video sold or encoded at 480x320 and stretched a bit from there?

On one hand, the display has better horizontal and vertical resolution than before, but it's still less than standard definition television.

Also, does anyone have any insight on the video out settings for this iPod? Is it 4:3 only with letterboxing? Or, does it support anamorphic 16:9 video out for widescreen displays?

[icruise]

It's not anamorphic in the sense of having widescreen images squished into SD dimensions, but it can display video that is widescreen (e.g. 1.76 or 2.35 to 1). It certainly doesn't need to be letterboxed. Like previous iPods, I assume that the maximum size stated is not a hard maximum -- in other words, you can have video with wider horizontal dimensions as long as the vertical resolution is smaller.

I'm not positive about the newer iPods, but with the original video iPod, you could calculate the actual maximum by multiplying the vertical resolution by the horizontal and seeing if that was less than the number for the stated maximum resolution. So 720 x 304, for example, would have a total number of pixels of 218,880. Because this is less than the total number of pixels for 640 x 480 (307,200), it should play. It's just a rule of thumb and there are other factors involved, but it seems to work.

I'm not sure about the video output issue, especially since Apple seems to have reworked how video output is handled with this latest generation.

[stuffedmonkey]

I don't have one - so I could be wrong on this...


The screen on the iPod video is 480x320 - which works out to 3x2... The max video resolution of 640x480 is the max supported for playback... if you play something that large it will downscale to play on the ipod (with black bars on the side since you would be playing a 4:3 standard video) - they support that higher res since you can hook video ipods up to the tv (or use an apple TV device. 320x240 video would look like **** on a tv

As far as I know the iPod tough dosent use any of the funky video compression stuff the pre 3.3 firmware psps did.

[ChrisB]

icruise is right, there is a hard total pixel number lock off for what the iPod will play in MPEG4 or H.264.

At this point I'm more curious if the new generation will work successfully on a widescreen set and pump out real anamorphic SD widescreen video, or if we're still stuck with with 4:3 output and letterboxed video on a television.