We’ve been wondering about how Apple was going to justify the Apple TV’s ability to stream HD-quality videos from iTunes even though the iTunes store sells no HD content. We figured at some point that Apple would start stocking the store with HD content, and today it has, though not from the source anyone expected.
The Washington Post has started uploading 720p versions of its video podcasts to the store. The WaPost produces and shoots its own content, and we’re relatively sure that it encodes and podcastifies it itself, too. This means Apple itself isn’t pushing HD content yet, but that perhaps iTunes has the capacity and the Post is simply the first podcaster to take advantage. What’s odd is that the podcast won’t play on an iPod without first converting to a lower resolution. So is it a podcast, or an Apple-TVcast or something? Our mind is blown, man, blown.
We still fully expect HD content from Apple sometime very soon, in fact we’d be surprised if we didn’t hear something about it at NAB next week. In the meantime, we hope you like fairly dry political commentary.