More importantly, it doesn't have the resolution that the PSP has. I just got a PSP recently, and have really been enjoying working with it.

working=playing?

Well...I have no games for it. I'm probably the only person in this forum who has never owned a single video game except for what came with my TI 99 20 years ago. :-) But putting movies to it....dang! It's sweet.

Yeah but I see Apple having a Video type ITunes store with epsiodes available the day after airing that Sony hasnt done yet. Personally, I think the price of PSP/IPod etc.. is way overpriced. If I ever needed media on the go that bad, I'd just stay home and watch it on a bigger screen.

HELL YEAH BIGGER SCREEN!!! This is some of my random anger, so please forgive me. But why the hell would anyone want to watch video on an ipod? Oh boy, I can't wait for Lord of the Rings in full 2" glory and with mp3 audio! If you want portability, buy a portable DVD player. Call me crazy, but I'd rather watch things on a decent TV or maybe even go the novel route of going to a theater.
Sorry. Random vent of anger over.

I say anything that plays video is a good thing! I have some demo reel stuff on my little compaq ipaq - looks horrible because it is so compressed but when you whip it out and play stuff for people they are amazed.

I agree, apart from us nerds with demo reels I don't see how anyone would watch a movie on such a tiny screen. Then again who'd have thought they'd listen to mp3.
How times have changed, when I was a lustfull teenager we all wanted the biggest and best sound money could buy, now all that generation boasts about is who has the most sound, no one cares if it all sounds like a billygoat c***ping in a tin.
Bob.

I JUST WISH IT HAD DTD RECORDING (direct to disk).

HALF PRICE FIRESTORE BABY!!!! :)

Oh well, one can dream.

Dave

> But why the hell would anyone want to watch video on an ipod? ... Call me crazy, but I'd rather watch things on a decent TV or maybe even go the novel route of going to a theater.

Why would you listen to MUSIC on an iPod when your home stereo is so much better?

It’s all about portability. Because they are stuck on a one hour train ride to work that bores them to death and it’s a good way to catch up on movies? Because they are stuck in the back of a car on a long ride or in a plane. Any number of reasons where you are on the go and want to watch a movie.

PSP vs iPod

The movies on a PSP are stunning in 16:9. The display is 4.3 inches as apposed to the iPod 2.5 inches (almost twice as big). I sit there watching Starwars II on the PSP and the screen size really doesn’t bother me. Personal video is a logical extension of personal audio.

While I agree the PSP has more going for it as an entertainment system because it also plays games and provides wireless internet access, the iPod has a hard drive. A BIG hard drive. A 1GB memory stick for the PSP costs $80. That means 60Gb of storage costs $4,800 USD!!!

DO the math: A 60GB iPod is $399 a 60GB PSP is $5,050!

Since it looks like Sony is NOT going to make UMD writers that the public can buy, the iPod is positioned to kick the PSP’s butt as the preferred portable video player. It doesn’t matter that PSP has better graphics (remember BetaMax vs VHS, the best technology doesn’t always win!) If Sony is going to keep UMD a proprietary format, they are shooting themselves in the foot (IMHO)

Unless stick memory gets real cheap, real fast, hard drive devices are still a better buy for the money. Too bad the iPod doesn’t have firewire. For $399 it would make a great 60GB firewire drive for a DV camera. ;-)

~jr

JohnnyRoy, I absolutely agree with you on the storage point. Thats why I think wins out vs PSP. And we all know that IVideos/IMovie Store is just around the corner. No way would Apple put their apples (npi) in this basket without having something already in the works just like they did with ITunes.

The ability to purchase a show the day after it airs is good for people who have kids or have to get up early for work the next day and did not get to catch their favorite tv show.

Maybe this will force Sony's hand in opening up UMD authoring but Sony has historically been very stubborn when it comes to proprietary formats (atrac).

Because they are stuck on a one hour train ride to work that bores them to death and it’s a good way to catch up on movies? Because they are stuck in the back of a car on a long ride or in a plane.

This is a sad commentary, really. We've reach the point as a society where we can't sit alone (or with others) and spend a contemplative hour or two. It appears, from what I see from day to day, that too few really think any more. It seems as though we have to be entertained every minute of every day.

"Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself thinking once or twice a week." George Bernard Shaw

My daughter just went to college and when I visited, I was struck by the fact that NO ONE has stereo systems. They all play MP3s from their computers or on their portable MP3 players.

My conclusion: this generation cares very little about sound quality compared to earlier generations (even the best MP3 encoding ruins the music). Thus, I think tastes have changed, and for a pretty large audience large screen video (which is the "Hi-Fi" equivalent in the video world) is not all that important to this generation.

I don't understand this shift at all: I like portable too, but I'm not willing to watch video on a 2" screen unless I absolutely have to, and I don't want to listen to MP3 files, except while jogging. By contrast, the under-30 crowd seems to not mind playing MP3, even on a room setup, and they like watching video on small LCD screens.

I guess they don't call it the "me" generation for nothing. I'm sure the sociologists could have field day with this. Come to think of it I'm sure there's a few good movie scripts in this. Imagine trying to hijack a plane, they'd be totally foiled as everyone's too engrossed in their personal entertainment systems to notice the guy with a gun up the front of the plane.
And then their the risk to public safety, you think idiots walking the streets while talking on mobiles are bad enough, wait till they're watching a movie while jogging.
Bob.

Johnmeyer:

Don't EVER go onto a college campus as an adult, unless you want to feel really old. I remember back as a 34-year-old sales rep working for Apple, where my job was calling on college campi ("campuses" for non-Latin-literate readers) back when the Macintosh first came out. I was stunned by how I felt like a dinosaur around the students, even though it wasn't that many years since I had been a grad student.

I'd take mild exception about your mp3 comment. To most people, mp3 at 128kb/sec is pretty much identical to raw PCM. I think even young people with no hearing loss at high frequencies would be hard-pressed to note a difference with mp3 at, say, 192kb/sec on a fair A-B test.

"My daughter just went to college and when I visited, I was struck by the fact that NO ONE has stereo systems. They all play MP3s from their computers or on their portable MP3 players."

I think they probably spent their stereo money on the computers and portable mp3 players. The reason the ipod is such a huge hit is because it's not a PITA to use, there have been mp3 players and even hand held video players around for a while before the ipod but they always had some usability problems.

I think Apple has really got this whole "playback device/purchase by download" thing nailed. I can't believe Microsoft or Sony let this one get away from them.

college campi ("campuses" for non-Latin-literate readers)

We don't HAVE to accept everything Latin for the English language.

Do you prefer "to boldly go where no one has gone before?"

Shame on you!

"That would be a split infinitive, and you can't have that in Latin (because "to go" is one word), so you shouldn't have it in English either!"

So please say "to go boldly where no one has gone before."

Yeeeccchhh.

Many more examples, and lots of old classroom rules that are not accepted by the top language gurus in the U.S., and they are good (and can justify their choices very well).

Languages evolve, sometimes for the better. The English language has a lot of influence from French (more than 10,000 words and expressions for sure), German, Spanish, Latin, Greek, etc., and even Sanskrit (the latter has even been proposed to be used as a computer language today, it's got a pretty cool grammar).

I agree that the college kids are getting younger and younger every year though!

Now back to watching Ben Hur letterboxed on my new 4:3 Video iPod.

I see, therefore I pod! ("Video" means "I see", this for the non-Latin-literate readers you mentioned... :O)

[...and the comma goes outside the previous "quote" because it is a definition, not a quote!]

:O{~}

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This is an emoticon I've never seen before. It is an emoticon, right?
But I'm sorry, I don't get watching episodes of bad TV the next day on your way to work. Sounds like a good way to get carsick. And if it's movies, I again think a portable DVD player is the better bet. If you travel so much that you spend significant time on planes, then you probably already have a laptop and that would kick a video ipod's ass. I consider myself a gadget freak, but this seems like an answer to a problem we don't have.
I just hit my 30's and maybe it's a sign of age, but the cool thing to me about ipods is putting book tapes (book CD's) on them. Now that's a good way to spend time on a plane of commute. A friend the other day suggested that if more people listened to book tapes we'd have a lot less road rage.
Anyway, to me seeing a movie is still a special experience. That's why I bust my ass making the best films I'm capable of and also why I bought a big screen TV and a 5.1 surround system. A hell of a lot of work goes into making movies and 2" screens and mp3 will never do them justice. To me, it's kind of like a reader's digest condensed version. You may get the basic story, but you will never get the feel or full experience.
So I personally hope this will be a passing fad like the PDA video thing and hopefully soon tech people will put their energies into something a little more worthwhile. Or again, this could just be my random anger.

remember there is also a TV output on the iPod, it's not all about the 2.5 screen...I think Video iPod is a great enhancement to an already great product....

Still, these iPods will probably go for about $10 on eBay when the widescreen version comes out in January...

Unless Apple decides that "widescreen is wrong", equivalent to using a multi-button mouse. Wouldn't surprise me...