The Teaser
Yes the title is correct the 1TB iPod, as in 1 terabyte, or 930Gb useable for the lawyers…..
iTunes and the 1Tb iPod
1TB iPod Screen
FAQ’s
This will be a complementary product to the iFlash, it will be designed for people who want more than 256Gb.
So for 256Gb or less in storage, the iFlash and SD or CF card will always be the better option – especially in terms of battery life.
Getting 1000 Gb in to an iPod is not going to be cheap and while I have a working prototype and development is still continuing, it may be that I will not move to production if the demand is not great enough and the resulting price would be too high!!!
Again while I have a working prototype, I am still at the very early development stage. I have many issues to solve including but not limited to:- power consumption, drive access stability, seamless compatibility with all iPods (5g,6g,7g) I am working on, and final product cost.
Some Stats
Transfer speed on my test 5g iPod Video is approximately 8 to 9MB/s, so syncing the full 930Gb will take around 30 Hours. On the 6g/7g iPod Classics transfer speeds are nearer 16 – 18Mb/s so about 15 Hours to fill.
Power consumption is not going to be great, and I cannot really tell you anything as my development/prototype boards are not using the iPod’s internal battery (Yes, it really is that bad!!).
The iTunes music database starts to struggle around the 50000 tracks, so to fill 1Tb you will need many lossless music files – rather than millions of low quality files.
I have not tried Rockbox yet, while I expect it to work ok on the 5g Video’s the 6g/7g Classics may not. Rockbox’s file/directory based music storage will probably allow much greater than 50000 tracks.
1TB will probably be the limit for the iPods as I suspect it is at the limitations of the firmware. I will post another teaser if I manage to squeeze more in to some of the newer iPods but I suspect 1TB will be it!!!!!
Timeframe
Not sure, it could be 4 weeks or 4 months or even 4 years – I am working on it and it will be announced when and if its ready for primetime……