Who's to Blame for the Poor Video Quality on Apple's iPad 3G?
Apple's iPad 3G went on sale over the weekend, quickly selling out in many Apple stores across the nation. According to initial data, Apple sold about 300,000 iPad 3G models in the past couple of days, including over a month of presales. In case you're wondering, Apple also sold about 300,000 of the less expensive Wi-Fi models on their first day of release in early April.
So everything's copacetic in Cupertino, right? Not so fast. Word on the Web is that a number of iPad apps are throttling or even blocking video altogether on the new 3G iPads. Users are complaining that YouTube, for example, is spitting out only low-res video, while ABC's TV viewer doesn't work at all.
Initial finger pointing was aimed squarely at AT&T, who angry users accused of imposing data limits, but the carrier might not be at fault. When asked by TechCrunch what's going on, AT&T simply responded, "That's something you need to ask Apple." Gee, thanks.
While there's still no definitive answer to what's going on, there's some discussion that individual app providers may ultimately be the ones to blame. Some reports suggest that rights issues are preventing ABC from streaming over 3G, while services like YouTube seem to emulating the same bitrate scaling as seen on the iPhone so that drops in quality are more noticeable on a larger screen.
Stay tuned as we continue to dig to find out what's really going on.
So everything's copacetic in Cupertino, right? Not so fast. Word on the Web is that a number of iPad apps are throttling or even blocking video altogether on the new 3G iPads. Users are complaining that YouTube, for example, is spitting out only low-res video, while ABC's TV viewer doesn't work at all.
Initial finger pointing was aimed squarely at AT&T, who angry users accused of imposing data limits, but the carrier might not be at fault. When asked by TechCrunch what's going on, AT&T simply responded, "That's something you need to ask Apple." Gee, thanks.
While there's still no definitive answer to what's going on, there's some discussion that individual app providers may ultimately be the ones to blame. Some reports suggest that rights issues are preventing ABC from streaming over 3G, while services like YouTube seem to emulating the same bitrate scaling as seen on the iPhone so that drops in quality are more noticeable on a larger screen.
Stay tuned as we continue to dig to find out what's really going on.
