[Locke1689]

BTW, I thought I should mention that my netbook has no trouble with AVI files. It runs VLC, an open source app that plays anything as long as it isn't DRM'd (and some stuff that is DRM'd).

I really hate this. It seems to me like people really don't understand audio/video encoding and compression. After putting in patches to ffmpeg I found an appreciation for the capabilities and limitations of the software. For example, the reason why his netbook probably isn't able to play 720p H.264 is probably because it doesn't have an integrated hardware decoder chip. The iPad does. After seeing the kind of nasty things that people do with video formats I don't really blame Apple for limiting the video decoder. FFmpeg, for example, is perfectly willing to package AVC/H.264 video and AAC audio into an avi container in complete violation of the specification.

It's not like Apple leaves the user no choice, either. Quicktime 7 is capable of transcoding almost everything I've found to AVC/H.264 in an MPEG4 container.

I'm not claiming I'm an expert on signal processing, but it always seems like the people who know the least are screaming the loudest.

[AndrewDucker]

People don't care. If they have an AVI file then they want to watch it. If their netbook plays it, but their iPad doesn't then they're going to blame the iPad for not managing to do something that open source software can manage.

[robotron]

And what is the problem with that?