The New Road

iPod Video

I haven't blogged in a few days since my machine has been glued to Lori's desk over the weekend burning content for the iPod Video (legally, thank you.)

The plusses of the iPod Video. It's killer light, very thin, and plays video.

The negatives are many though as well. It only syncs through USB. That makes absolutely no sense since the file size of video is larger than audio, so we need more bandwidth not less. Lori was able to sync my old iPod to her iTunes in a quarter of the time that I was able to put about the same amount of the iPod Video. Grrr...

And the packaging sucks. There is no charger. There is no holster. There is no audio/video breakout cable.

The video playback is cool, but it's clear that it's completely unattached to the audio playback. It feels like a glued on feature. The volume slider is different. The position slider is different. And most annoying of all, the video player doesn't remember your position in the movie between playing sessions. And with a two hour movie, without chapters, it can be a real pain to get back to where you were. Ugh.

I also have a nagging fear that the face plate will be as scratchable as the iPod Video's cousin the iPod Nano.

Anyway, so far with the iPod Video, I'm not too impressed.

Update: Another problem with the iPod Video is that video playback eats the battery something fierce. My experience is that after about 15 minutes of video the battery is drained by 1/4. Which means that you get about an hour of playback on the battery. The spec says two. I doubt that. The spec also says that the battery cost is doubled if you are driving external outputs (e.g. a television screen with the video output). Which means it's even worse. That puts my, "hand held doohicky that I can give to Megan in the car" scenario pretty much out the window.

The upside is that the work I did ripping the kids video will still pay off because I can put them on a memory stick and use the PSP, which has a much larger screen and a better battery life.