You’ve probably already heard the news. It’s all over the Internet, so I won’t bother with the details. The gist of it is that Apple released its new video iPods today. Here’s my assessment after having read the news and looked at the specs: I want one. I used to think that I wouldn’t want an iPod with video, but I’ve changed my mind.

The video quality is not outstanding. Playback on the iPod’s 2.5-inch screen is at 320×240 pixels. That’s less than a quarter of the resolution of standard DVD, and on a tiny screen. But with an A/V cable you can display the playback on a TV screen, and the quality should be about as good as a VHS video tape. Certainly good enough for watching Lost or a music video.

Back when speculation about the video iPod reached a fever pitch, I thought about it and decided I wasn’t really interested. The fees for movies will be outrageous, the quality won’t be that good, and I don’t watch that many movies anyway. But this afternoon I was wondering whether it was possible for me to put my own videos onto the iPod. I’ve been making music videos for the past two or three years and I would love having my videos with me all the time, both so I can enjoy them occasionally, and so I can show them to other people.

Of course, the iPods can store and display a load of still photos. So if you add it all up: my entire music collection, all my music videos, and slideshows of select family photos, then the sum is this: I want one. 60GB should be enough, and I think I’ll go with black this time.

A new version of iTunes was released, version 6.0. Version 5 was released only about a month ago, and by all accounts it was junk. Many people had crashes or other bad mojo when they tried to install version 5. It installed fine for me, but wouldn’t burn a CD. I had to downgrade to version 4 in order to burn a disc for Bryn. I’m happy to report that the new version 6 has resurrected my CD-burning ability.

With the new iTunes, you can download and play video from the Apple Music Store, no iPod needed. I wanted to see what it looked like to play a video in iTunes, so I downloaded the Pixar short film “For the Birds”. I was a little surprised to see the video play back inside the area of the screen where album art is usually displayed. This makes sense, I suppose, but is not what I expected. By clicking on the playback, you can cause a QuickTime player to pop up, and from there you have the usual QuickTime playback options such as scaling playback to double-size or full-screen.

iTunes stores the video download in the same directory where music downloads are stored. “For the Birds” was stored in the folder “Pixar/Unknown Album”. You can open the movie directly into QuickTime, bypassing iTunes, but if you do that, Quicktime won’t let you play the movie in fullscreen mode.

Strangely enough, although you can buy videos from the Apple Music Store, you can’t search for them. Video titles are not listed in the search results. Put in “Pixar”, for example, and the search will list a couple of podcasts, but not the Pixar animated shorts.

Some random questions about the new iPod:

Battery life is now 20 hours for audio playback. Is this longer than the previous generation? I think the previous 60GB had a battery life of 15 hours.

Why doesn’t something as expensive as the iPod come with a dock or an A/V cable?

The tech specs list a 480×480 resolution for MPEG-4 video. What’s this resolution for? How does the iPod display a 480×480 movie when played on its 320×240 screen?

If I want to import my music videos into an iPod, I can buy QuickTime Pro to do it, but can I render compatible movies just using Adobe Premier? At $29, QuickTime Pro isn’t terribly expensive, but with Premier I’ll have more control.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 12th, 2005 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.