Amnon on Lossless

March 22, 2008

Here is an interesting comment I got via email from Amnon (one of my former colleagues from Trade Me) about my lossless post from earlier in the year:

I really liked your post on storage and compression, but consider this: Two years ago people were paying $500 for a 60GB iPod. Today they’re paying $500 for an 8GB iPod. Storage capacity is up against other factors in evolving technology. Miniaturisation, reduction of moving parts, wireless network storage: At some point ears can’t tell the difference with a compressed music file, and your eyes (and monitor) won’t benefit from a 12MP photo that will only ever be printed in 6″ x 4″, if at all. But when the first finger-sized quantum portable PC comes out, maybe you’ll be stoked all your photos aren’t saved in RAW format. Just a thought: Plus, how could people download all those movies and albums if they weren’t compressed? ; )"

What do you think? I’m interested in your comments.

Is compression a worthwhile trade off in order to gain mobility?

What about when you’re back home with your fast network, big screen displays, quality amp & speakers etc? Don’t you really want the best quality source files you can store?

Do we even have to choose? Is there an easy way that people could store hi-res full quality files in a central location on a home network and somehow easily sync compressed files to our mobile devices?