What is Digg?97 Comments
- fanboydcs, on 10/12/2007, -10/+130Yay lets wear out that harddrive even faster!
- Devoboy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+121No no, it won't wear out the screen, it's a screen SAVER, silly!
- zip22, on 10/12/2007, -3/+92its not really wasting your batttery life if it only works when plugged in.
- Terc, on 10/12/2007, -7/+78...because the only thing better than watching videos on a tiny screen is staring at visualizations on a tiny screen.
- seajay1221, on 10/12/2007, -2/+50cool, now we just need to find the hidden visualizer feature.
- hyperpasta, on 10/12/2007, -0/+45That's why it's not an official feature. It's hidden away and enabled for the Demo iPods at the Apple Store, so that they can play a little routine of silhouette dancers and product information when left alone for a while.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -10/+49We didn't.
- gstuartj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+31Has the nano ever had the ability to play video files? No.
Does the article specifically say that the trick only works on 5G video iPods? Yes.
Will it work on nanos? Obviously not. - babelfishi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+30The catch about the screensaver? It resets your iPod settings!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+28I just tried it with a 5 second clip and it spins up the hard drive every time it loops over.
- nickerbocker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+26I didn't have to click the link. All the steps are in the description.
- DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -6/+26If you create a short loop then it's going to be cached to memory so no worries about the hard drive life. Also, I think any worries about the screen life being reduced to any serious degree are unfounded.
- gstuartj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19How many times do people have to say that it only works while the iPod is on the charger before you get it? IT'S NOT WASTING BATTERY LIFE.
- r2builder, on 10/12/2007, -4/+21Wow, I can't believe no one has found this out sooner.
That's great! Any more hidden features? - MSTK, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19It only works while you're charging and not playing anything.
- jamesthejust, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17Neat trick. Someone needs to record some real screensavers & convert them to an iPod-friendly format.
- HanSolo69, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18"And say goodbye to your battery."
if your iPod battery dies while it's plugged in to charge then you might want to have it replaced. or, an easier option would be to read even just the description of the story before commenting. - sych0, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16where did i put those flying toasters....
- turpenine, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15LCD's don't need screensavers as they do not get burn in, but they don't get fatigued like plasma screens do either, thus they are used in portables and laptops... Things that need a long screen life.
- DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14OK. Nevermind then. Bye bye hard drive.
- chris9902, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15Mobile 3D fish... oh the joy!
- jgreene777, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12B is Bytes, b is bits... that's why i get pissed off at idiots who say they are getting 4MB/s when they are actually getting 4Mb/s
- SpacemanSpiff01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9@iMatt711 As many other's have posted, LCD screens do not burn in! Other wise the Start Button would be burnt in on many, many Laptops & Desktops!
- heimtommy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Cool, but does it work only DURING charging the iPod, or afterwards as well. Like when I'm not playing anything...
(like on a computer when you dont touch the keyboard nor move the mouse) - EBFoxbat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Anyone have some fun sample videos to use as a screen saver?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11It's good for demo at Best Buy while people are passing by
- samadam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Okay, you are both wrong.
The 30 GB has 32MB of ram. That is megabytes.
The 60 GB had 64MB of ram.
No one knows yet what the hardware of the new 80GB looks like, but I am guessing that it also has 64MB of ram. - warbird, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7LCD screens doesn't burn in!
LCD computer monitors, including the display panels used in laptop computers, are not susceptible to burn-in because the image is not directly produced by phosphors (although they can suffer from a less extreme and usually non-permanent form of image persistence). For these reasons, screensavers today are primarily decorative or for entertainment, and usually feature moving images or patterns and sometimes sound effects. (Wikipedia about screensavers)
Edit: Thrashmetal101.... :-( Shouldn't have wasted time finding a quote :p - farr, on 10/12/2007, -19/+26I like my iPod just as much as anyone else with one, but this sounds more like "wasting battery and hard drive life" than a screensaver. I'm sure there are cooler hacks than this floating around for iPods...
- jrocha, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Wow, people tend to comment without really thinking now days. Do most of you people even own an ipod?
smergs is correct --- the ipod backlight stays on while charging. Considering it's an LCD screen that normally isn't on very long, compared to a laptop which is on anytime the machine is on, I'd say it's safe to say that the LCD doesn't get 'over used'
This is a screen SAVER. It won't kill your screen. If you're smart, you will play a short video clip, not an entire movie. If you do that, the whole video will get buffered and your hard drive will never spin up. - FreeiPodGuy.com, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8OK then... Mental note to self: don't buy the demo model from the store.
- jtray, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Very Slick, who cares what it does, it isn't like you can't delete the demo mode file later on. Great Digg!!!
- UltraNurd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Your iPod is named Sirius Black?
- Matrixsjd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Chesh, it only supports uncompressed video files on the nano with ipodlinux, which makes it pretty pointless, because they would take up far too much space. compared to compressed H.264 or MPEG4
- webguy2k, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Just Because you can?
- M4cb0y, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Probably so employees don't have to plug in all the ipods and reset 'em when people set a "Screen Lock"
- josh42042, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Very cool, but alas, when enabling this Demo Mode the ipod's settings are restored to default, so things like backlight settings, main menu, clicker, etc will revert to default after the screensaver video plays. too bad, this was really cool.
- virtualball, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Wow, it does! My menu is back to default and I have the clicker! Oh wait, my backlight just went off too! :P
- DJgreenLava, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The backlight turns off after a little while on my 5G, but in Demo Mode the backlight stays on.
- Phoenixfury, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4That's definitely an interesting easter egg. I can't wait to try it when I get home. :) However on the concern of this wearing out the battery.. I doubt it because the battery when hooked up would be charging.. If anything this might cause a trickle charge. However when I just got my 80 gig the thing still fully charged up despite my computer shoving roughly 18 gigs of audio on it or the course of about an hour. I can't help but think that the whole thing about the iPod still using it's battery when plugged in may just be a myth. As far as wearing down the hard drive. This would depend on how big the video you are using is. If it's under 64 megs (I think that's how much buffer memory the iPod Video uses) the movie should just cycle from memory with out hitting the hard drive over and over again. If anything, I think a bigger concern would be with the back light staying on. However since I haven't tried this yet, I'm not sure how it's going to work.
- Phoenixfury, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I still find the whole megabyte and megabit thing a little confusing. So is that 512 Megabytes or megabits? There's a huge difference. If it's megabits, then that would account for 64 megabytes which would still be plenty for looping a short video. I'm not so sure that it is 512 megabytes, I'd bet that's likely megabits.
- r0ck3tm4nn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@Cheeseheaddave
I have an HTPC hooked up to my sound system and my TV and the itunes visualization is a pretty big hit at parties. Everybody drinks when the apple logo pops up... - Phoenixfury, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I checked the Howstuffworks article on the iPod. Looks like the iPod uses 256MB of SDRAM although I'm not sure if that's megabits or megabytes. If it's megabits then it only have 32 Megabytes of buffer memory. If that is actually 256 megabytes, then that's plenty of space to loop a short iPod quality video. Well anyway here's an image from Howstuffworks that shows it has 256MB.
http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/ipod-8.jpg - clownx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2No. It also works on Windows, Linux, and the iPod Shuffle. It also works on the NASA OS, and it even works on Magic!
- Larke2000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2there's some b&w videos here that would cause some double takes if you used them. :)
i think "fellatio" or "ejaculation" would be funny to use.
http://www.pimple.tv/ - DaShiZNiT, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2did anyone else notice, "Im the juggernaut bitch!" ;)
- mpancha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I agree.
I love little easter eggs like this. They don't have to have a point, or a benefit. They just have to be fun, and this definately is. - orijinal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2the video will only play if the iPod is unmounted.
if there's a "Demo Mode" folder on the iPod, but no video named "Demo" then the settings will still reset, but no video will play. - joseph, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Doesn't work.
- gstuartj, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5No. iPods don't use folder to organize music, they use a database generated by iTunes.
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