My iPod reviewed

Likes:

Apple’s iTunes software makes it very simple to import your music and video files. I always was unsure of iTunes functionality to encode and play music files. After getting my hands dirty I find that is a simple way to manage my music files. The iTunes podcasting feature allows you download your favorite podcasts easily. The big plus to this is once on the iPod if you don’t finish listening to a podcast you can easily come back to the spot you left off. As a stand-alone MP3 file this is not possible, but more on that later. Finally, adding and deleting files is simple, my thought was when I bought the iPodwas how big the manual would be on how to transfer files, but iTunes took care of it for me.

In addition, the iPod offers a ton of space to hold content. With the 30-gigabyte model I am able to transfer all of my music files encoded in AAC 192 kbps, with more room to spare. I now have the ability to take advantage of my RCA Aux output on my car stereo deck. I can for the most part say good buy to the 100’s of cd’s in my car and no longer have the worry of them being stolen, scratched or melted.

Finally, there are ways to place output from your computer to your television. However, the best feature is the ease of viewing video from iPod on my television. The quality is as good as from normal television broadcasts and DVD. Now you could buy Apple’s AV cable, however the can be done by simply using DV video camera cable available at any retailer. The video quality is as good as it is encoded. I have to congratulate Erica Sadun with the great hack for this.


Dislikes:


My current iPod with video is not my first. The first model I owned was the 60 gigabyte black iPod. First off, 60 gigabytes is a ton of space, and I would recommend it to anybody wishing to use it for video. However, in my case most of my video is deleted off after watching each episode, therefore this model was a little much for me. Second the black model as everybody is aware of does show the scratches easily and for me I didn’t like that. Finally, the hold button, after only 4 days, broke. This seems to me to be the only hardware flaw with the iPod. I would much rather have buttons rather then a switch.

When I imported my songs to iTunes, if any tag was off from my files it created a different folder on my iPod for those songs and artists. This created files sorting problems on the iPod for example if I had Aerosmith spelled AeroSmith it created a different artist category for that song. This is more my fault then anything and correcting it is taking some time.

As far as iTunes podcast feature goes it is great, however if you use other sources to download your favorite podcasts then there is a hitch. If you upload a file that you have downloaded from the alternate source, iTunes treats it as a music file. What this means is if you stop your favorite podcast in the middle you will not be able to go back to that point. If you are like me you don’t have time to listen to a full hour of say TWiT then you can’t go back if you downloaded it from any other place then iTunes.

Video play is a battery hog. I get about 1.5 to 2 hrs out of my battery with video playback. This is ok for half hour to hour shows but for longer movies getting a plug-in accessory is a must. In addition encoding video to MPEG 4 has been a challenge. I have yet to find programs that sync the video and audio. In addition, the time-consuming, yet doable process of ripping DVD’s to MPEG 4 has been hit and miss. Further, when watching a movie I don’t have the ability to skip to different chapters, however like with podcasts I can pause and come back the movie later and continue where I left off. With that in mind and considering I do little traveling I will stick to watching movies on my DVD player or the theater.


A Final Word:


Overall I love my iPod, it does have limitations, but it does what I want it to do. It plays all of my music and allows me to watch my favorite video podcasts on my television. For $299.00 it isn’t a bad buy, but ask yourself what it is you want from a portable player before you buy.