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Anime News

Anime And The iPOD Effect
Date: 10/13/2005
Leading up to the Wednesday announcement (Quicktime 7 Video) in the USA, Japan's otaku blogs have been buzzing about the latest iPOD. In a San Jose presentation, Apple Computer's Steve Jobs pulled the wraps off the new portable device which features MPEG4/H.246 video playback and a 2.5 inch QVGA liquid crystal display. Video quality under H.264 comes in at a 320x240 maximum resolution, 768kbps and 30fps of the frame. Likewise MPEG-4 video quality at a max res of 480x480 is 2.5Mbps and 30fps. 30GB ($299) and 60GB ($399) memory capacity versions will be sold. In additon to playing music files, storing digital pictures, Video Podcasts and your own video files, video content will be able to be purchased and downloaded from Apple's iTunes Music Store.
Apple has lined up including over 2,000 music videos, six short films from Pixar Animation Studios, and five television shows from ABC and Disney Channel in the way of content to be available for purchase soon. The audio version of iPOD became the personal music player killer app. These devices can be routinely seen in abundance at anime cons across America with fans bobbing their heads to their favorite J-Pop and anime soundtrack themes. The question now is: What type of content support (if any) will Apple's new personal video format receive from American and Japanese anime companies? On the flipside, for several year now, MPEG4 has been codec of choice for fansubbers, raw l33t leakers and movie pirates in general. In August, iTunes Japan launched and just as suddenly as Japanese users could download their favorite native pop-tunes and anime tracks, so could users around the world. So the Japanese version of the iTunes store will definetly merit watching for video content.

Many anime vendors in this country (USA) will certainly be watching the sales progression of the new iPOD and pouring over marketing data in a search to find out how economically viable offering content on the portable device may be. In the past, anime video has been sold on Nintendo GBA carts and Sony PSP UMD media. As of September, Sony announced 17 million total UMD's had been sold. 8.2 million (around 50%) of these were video UMD's (non-game). The company is currently banking on video UMD's to make up more than 60 percent of all UMD sales as of 2008 with 130 million total UMDs to be sold.
Source: Anime News Service