IPOD Video Reviewed.

This is my review of the IPOD Video from Apple, Inc. I got online and ordered my ipod video directly from Apple's web site via a link on myspace website. I assume they get a few bucks for that. Always helps to support sites you find useful by clicking on adds on their site if your already going to buy something anyway.

When ordering, Apple gives you the option for the 30GB or the 60GB version. You get an option between white or black. You also get to engrave a custom message on the back of the ipod free of charge.

I opted to pay for the express shipping option for 10 dollars and then hit submit. 5 days later I didn't get my IPOD yet but did check my tracking info with FEDEX. They ship the IPOD video from china directly, and mine was held up in customs. There is our ever so complicated system at work. Holding every thing up again.

Upon receiving the box, i opened it up and hooked it up to my PC. In order to use it, you need the iTunes software installed on your computer. The itunes software easily found and added all my 1200 mp3 files and was even nice enough to add my 550 wma files. This process took several hours to fully convert all the music and put it on my iPod. After that, i naturally wanted to start adding my DVD collection to my ipod video (wouldn't you??) The iTunes software had no way to import movies of any format into the system except .mov or .mp4. Clearly this is not very nice as who really uses .mov except mac. and .mp4 is too new to have wide spread acceptance. Instead you have to go online and purchase a separate program to encode movies to .mp4 format. I tried everything to avoid paying this, trying every avenue of open source that i could find. I did manage to get a few Linux apps working but i found them to be buggy and hard to use and hard to install and slow. I did find a good program to use which thus far i have had only one avi file not convert and crash the program. although i suspect it is probably the way the file is encoded.

The conversion software is called PQ DVD to IPOD video converter. PQ DVD to IPOD Converter

I tried several other programs and this was the fastest and most reliable one that i tested.

When playing the movies, the ipod screen looks great its a little tiny TV, this thing would be so great on a long plane ride. I'm trying to figure out how to automatically get all my tivo saves downloaded on my ipod every night, that would be hot!

As far as complaints go i have a couple. When watching a long movie, don't stop the movie or accidentally hit the forward button twice. You would think that it would work like tivo and give you three different levels of fast forward so you can get to the middle of that 2 hour dvd with out having to fast forward for 10 minutes. Nope, you hit that forward button fast or more then once, it shuts the whole movie down and loses your place. There is no way to keep it in fast forward mode with out holding down the button and its rather slow to fast forward through a long movie. It takes 15 minutes to fast forward to the 1 hour mark in the dvd i was watching. I accidentally lost my place when i had to take a phone call and restarted my movie. It was taking so long to get back to my place my had got a cramp and i accidentally hit the button twice again and reset my position after already holding it down for like 10 minutes. This feature is very annoying and is not well thought out at all. If anyone at apple reads this, Please fix your fast forward function to be more like tivo. they got it down.

The other complaint i would have is that the screen is made of plastic and not glass. Just having the ipod in my front pocket for a few hours and it already had noticeable scratches in the screen which i could not buff out. I was dismayed to see my new mini TV with little scratches on it after only having it for one day. Make sure you use your little fuzzy carrying case when in your pocket. I'm sure they don't want these things to last forever how would they keep selling them.

Overall i would give them a 7 out of 10 for good effort. Had they had the iTunes able to convert more video formats, and fixed the fast forward feature, they would have gotten a 9.5 out of 10. I'll check to see if they come out with some updated firmware.

The ipod is worth it even if it is as expensive as a car payment. I would recommend it to you