I'm currently building a new PC (where did I put that Vista OEM disk).

It was meant to have a 500GB hard disk, until I thought WTF - I'm going to reach 1TB.

An Ipod that size will probably mean my PC will have a x petrabyte hard disk.

Storage will get bigger. Amazing!

This is already not a storage problem but a navigation problem. How the hell do you navigate a PMP holding 10,000 songs and 2000 movies?

Once you get the sorts of connectivity capable of shipping these huge amounts of data you might as well go with less storage and fetch on demand from a back-end server.

...how much content that is?

Lets make a estimate and say the average song in that 270,000 library is 2 mins long (most are longer, but just to be on the safe side)....

That equates to just a little over 370 days worth of songs playing 24hrs a day......just to listen to each song just once...

I know Creative's software development teams weren't ready for a 60 gig Zen Vision player. My PC regularly dies trying to manage/sync "just" 25 gig of MP3s with the player.

Seems like the software needs to catch up fast with the advances in storage hardware (or at least Creative's does).

"How the hell do you navigate a PMP holding 10,000 songs and 2000 movies?"

Let DJ Random do it for you?

An iPod that can store over 1/2 million tunes? Given the cost of a download, there is absolutely no way that this could be filled legitimately. Even if you stored videos on it, the cost is prohibitive.

By building a unit with this capapcity - hell, even iPods with the current capacity, means the manufacturers are fulfilling a perceived demand.They will know the economics of it and are playing along. They cannot claim that it;s realistic to spend £1000's on downloads for a £100 gizmo, especially given how easily they are lost, stolen or break.

Therefore the manufacturers know, even if they don't admit it, that these units will carry illegal, pirated media. Since the copyright owners do not persue the manufacture, sale or marketing of these devices they too must carry some blame for the number of copyright violations out there.

... and that concludes the arguments for the defence, M'Lud.

BTW. I don't see a parallel with car makers selling cars that will exceed the speed limit. Speed is linked to power and there can be legal reasons for needing/wanting a powerful vehicle (such as towing a caravan, high acceleration within the limit etc.). Additional capacity on an iPod does not affect playback quality/volume or other attributes of the device.

If they can come up with an algorithm that is truly Random.

Indeed, though the very idea of MTP (or whatever the DRM-enabling shite is called) seems to be to slow down the transfer of your data to your device. Having said that, after waiting about 8 hours, gnomad2 managed to transfer my music collection to my device.

This isn't a storage problem -- it's a shit-DRM-enabled-device problem.

I have 16,000,000 songs on my ipod. I use it with headphones, in the car, and plugged into my home stereo. It's not about listening to all of the tracks, it's about having them available at the touch of a button as the feeling takes me instead of having to decide ahead of time which CDs to put in the car. Do you think anyone at the BBC ever said there is no point having any more records, we have more than we can play already? With a 1TB iPod I could have my collection with me all the time but at SACD resolution instead of aac, and all my photos too. Bring it on.

Is ever increasing capacity not urging people to use pirated or copyrighted material ?

Lets assume that a track could cost 50p to buy online, and you want to have 270,000 of these tracks on your 1Tb ipod... therefore you are carrying around the monetary equivalent of over £125,000 in your pocket everyday ???

even a 100Gb ipod would hold 27,000 tracks costing £12,500 ??

Lets be honest, how many ipods are packed to the brim with media that was actually paid for

The old Creative Xen Xtra 60GB worked fine. They came out four years or so ago and it synced perfectly even when full. The Creative software was far more flexible than iTunes is with syncing - multiple PCs, choice of sync direction etc.

It takes the PC version of iTunes 1 hour before it even starts syncing my current 80GB iPod - its a shame as the iPod itself is a far better player to use.

Maybe the increase in capacities will lead to more use and sale of lossless tracks and an increase in sound quality?

Some of us have really stupidly large collections; my iTunes library is around 80Gb, and all taken from my own CDs. That's before ripping the hundreds of DVDs I have on the shelf, and only using 128kbps AAC to save space. So yes, I could easily fill a big drive with my own stuff, if I wanted to. I can't be _that_ unusual, can I?

I'd hate to consider the access time on that.

Or the delay between track changing.

With greater capacity of portable devices people are more inclined to store stuff other than music or videos on these devices. I have a 30GB player which is about half full. I regulary use it to transfer data about but usually don't leave any on it for any period of time.

If there were 1TB devices, how many people would use it as a quick backup device.

That can't be good.

...surely no one is gullible enough to actually buy music by individual track, everything (honest) on my ipod I also have on cd (no really I'm sure I've got that cd somewhere)

My iTunes Library is nudging 100 GB with everything ripped at 192 kbps AAC, like the AC earlier, it's all ripped from CDs that I own [hint: second hand CDs are often quite cheap].

I'd surely love to be able to keep that lot in a non-lossy format on my iPod, which hovers with less than 100 MB free a lot of the time.

1 TB should just about do it.

One movie is around 1GB in iPod format, and that means today I'd need two of the largest capacity iPods on the market to handle just the DVDs I've legally bought. I presume that by the time Terabyte iPods are the norm, we're all putting our HD movies on them and they're around 3GB each (yes, I know, the iPod screens are lower res, but you can plug them into TVs you know ...) so you could get around 300 movies and all your music on an iPod and not a lot more.

All this without resorting to piracy.

And when you include the pirated stuff?

Firstly like others I rip from MY CDs, partially due to belonging to a generation that thought that an artist should be able to produce more than 1 decent track per album. (or perhaps lifetime in the case of so the misappropiated term RnB)

I also have no desire to purchase anything from iTunes as I want my packaging (and the ability to rerip it again should my PC/Media player go tits up)

Ok how I laugh when I see people walking around with headphones which make them look like Princess Leia and boasting about the sound quality.

It's a fecking MP3 it's crap, and probably ripped with really poor settings,

crap + expensive headphones == even more noticeably crap

I want my lossless audio back again, I'm tired of noticing that things are missing from my favourite tracks

lossless requires a lot more storage and I want it now as I'm often away from home for weeks at a time, so it's not convenient to rearrange the contents of my player.

Bring on the storage

"Maybe the increase in capacities will lead to more use and sale of lossless tracks and an increase in sound quality?"

And probably double the price because it's "such high quality"

It amazes me even now the people that complain at the "low" storage of a 2-8Gb, I mean, are there really that many people out there happy to walk around with their entire music collection? Not to mention the amount of people that actually have over 5,200 in their collection!

So these 1TB files floating around the net all the time, I'd love to see them; and the software that load/renders them.

One the plus side, perhaps the increase in storage media will result in lower compression and higher quality media, instead of this idiotic "quantity over quality" culture we now live in.

640k should be enough for anyone.

enough decent music available to fill 1 Terabyte.

Seriously, who really needs a Terabyte when the vast majority of the shallow, formulaic music available today is throw away?

Hooray for sweeping generalisations!

Hooray for lack of understanding on music file types, and how different types soak up different amounts of space!

While I don't see the point in lossless audio for consumer use, I DO see the point in high-kbps mp3s. The difference in quality over a mid-range stereo between a 192kbps mp3 and a 320kbps mp3 is amazing. My CDs are all ripped to 320kbps, and sound pretty spot-on through the PA setup at a theatre.

I will agree with you on one thing though - most of the music coming out these days IS crap. RnB, Pop, etc etc - there's no skill required, only the ability to look like a gang member, or a princess.

Pre-recorded english language music is there in the world today? and how much storage space would it consume when ripped at 192Kbps AAC?

Right, back to my navel gazing.......

Sweeping generalisations are valid when describing "pop" music. Especially the stuff one hears on Radio One.

I play, compose, record and master my own music using CueBase. I master to various formats depending on the target audience. Therefore your statement "Hooray for lack of understanding on music file types" must be directed to someone else. I rip to mp3 for the car at 320kbps.

I do see the point for lossless in home use when using the likes of Arcam, Audiolab and Bowers & Wilkins components. Of course if one listens to a media player trough a dock, a PC or a public address system you are right, lossless would not be appreciated. Or even noticed by the average listener like yourself, so it seems.

I would recommend a visit to a dedicated HiFi shop, ask to listen to your favourite lossless recordings on some proper kit. Now play the same music as 320 kbps mp3 through the same kit. Then repeat the phrase "I don't see the point in lossless audio for consumer use", and try to say it with conviction.

I can only presume you do not know what lossless music through a quality audio systems sounds like. Perhaps your ears do not have the sensitivity to note the difference. Forgive me if I am wrong but just like you, I jumped to conclusions after reading what you wrote. Only difference being I am aware of the conclusions to which I jumped and made a concious decision to do so, and apologise if these conclusions are wrong. In contrast to the involuntary knee jerk reaction you made.

btw, did you miss the joke icon?

"Is ever increasing capacity not urging people to use pirated or copyrighted material ?"

Do outdated distribution and business models which are being made obsolete by this activity still matter ? Greater spare capacity encourages artists struggling to get known to bypass the old-fashioned restrictive-copyright distribution companies and use viral marketing instead, so that fans who distribute their marketing for them will grow in number and buy physical merchandise and concert tickets. Giving away sprats you wouldn't have a chance of selling anyway to catch mackarel makes sense. The extra capacity will be filled by those who see an opportunity previously denied them by the fact that the old distributors wouldn't talk to them anyway unless they sell exclusive rights to their creative output for the next 10 years for peanuts.

> And probably double the price because it's "such high quality"

Obviously you are an iDrone and don't understand whats going on ! (oh please let me buy single tracks online, because shops are so last century)

You rip from the original media (SACD for example). Dumping the masters to a nice lossless format would be even better for some of us.

Even better would be to include all the channels from the original recorded tracks ;)