Apple 30 GB iPod with Video Playback Black (5th Generation)

As of this writing, no reviews are from someone who actually HAS one of the new iPods (10/19). That is about to change....

My 40GB iPod's hard disk had been deteriorating for a while, until it stopped working altogether. That happened to be the day before the iPod video announcement (last Tuesday).

On to what you really want to know, and what you can't get from Apple's website, or reviews regurgitating technical specifications:

1) Can you actually enjoy watching video on a screen that small? What about the video quality?

In short, if you're holding the iPod as close to your face as you would hold an older iPod to really read what song is playing, the video quality is actually quite nice. The screen is noticeably bigger (the height is about the size of the old iPod width). If you're wondering how the quality comes out on an iPod screen (which is normally fairly pixelated), when you load a video it toggles into a mode much akin to when a... Read more

The iPod first appeared four years ago, and the features continue to grow, with each update.

The iPod with video playback was introduced on October 13, 2005. However, one should not necessarily consider this player a video player, but a great iPod music player, with video capabilities as a fantastic bonus. Nevertheless, the iPod with video playback is the most capable and feature-rich iPod ever produced by Apple.

Video Playback - The iPod plays back H264 and MPEG4 encoded video. The iPod's new display is larger than ever at 2.5 inches, giving it a resolution of 320x240. What video content can you play on your iPod? This area is limited, at least currently. You can buy music videos on iTunes at $1.99 per song, which will play beautifully on the iPod. Furthermore, Apple has made available select television shows, for download on iTunes. They cost $1.99 per episode, for titles including ABC's hits Lost and Desperate Housewives. You can also watch the... Read more

We bought an ipod video 30gb and the creative touch (40 gb) (recently). Also purchased the muvo and the toshiba gigabeat. The gigabeat died within a few days. The muvo is great for a flash player. But the ipod has some real problems.

The creative is better than the ipod for us because of file sharing and file backups. The ipod will attach to ONE COMPUTER ONLY and it KNOWS if you try to get it to work with another. This caused us a lot of grief when we switched computers. Then the new computer we attached it to died and getting the music back off of the ipod was a real pain. If you are able to even get the files back off the ipod (it doesn't like to go that direction, apparently) it still will lose a lot of the tag info in the music library. (Wanna type all that in by hand?) Plus, since Apple's music file format is proprietary, we can't share files from the ipod to other players. (Does not play well with others! :-)

The creative players do not have any of these... Read more