AnandTech Podcast: Episode 21 now up

[Crono]

Just a heads up for anyone who listens to the podcast.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7114/the-anandtech-podcast-episode-21


Outline:
Google Glass - 0:00
Google IO - 0:20
HTC/Samsung GPe - 0:23
Samsung Galaxy NX - 0:43
SGS4 Active - 0:51
Snapdragon 800 - 0:59
Exynos 5 Octa - 1:12
WWDC - 1:20
Haswell ULT Platform Power vs. iPad 4 - 1:26
ARM and Intel in the Smartphone/Tablet Space - 1:30
Xbox One/PS4 - 1:43

 

[Zink]

Why is the podcast download 200 MB? I'm going to download it even if it kills my data plan because I'm so excited but YouTube manages to do 240p video at a lower bitrate than this encoded speech. I would appreciate 128 Kbps or less because a podcast is half silence anyways so it shouldn't impact quality at all with the right encoder.

 

[Crono]

Why is the podcast download 200 MB? I'm going to download it even if it kills my data plan because I'm so excited but YouTube manages to do 240p video at a lower bitrate than this encoded speech. I would appreciate 128 Kbps or less because a podcast is half silence anyways so it shouldn't impact quality at all with the right encoder.

I've wondered this myself. Maybe I'll sign up on Twitter just so I can ask Anand and Brian why. Speech compresses fairly well, even just using MP3 you can get it down to 48 kbps or 32 kbps with it sounding no worse than clear radio. Even if you wanted very good quality speech you could get away with 64 kbps. That's less than 30MB. And AAC/MP4 does even better at the same bitrates.

Especially for podcasts for mobile - you would think they would realize some people are downloading on smartphones and may not have WiFi available all the time. 200 MB will certainly eat into bandwidth caps.

That said, it's well worth the download. I have yet to find in-depth consumer tech discussion as good as the AnandTech podcasts. And Brian is hilarious sometimes.