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This is not the first time someone has predicted this. The last comments I read from Steve Jobs on this he didn't sound real sure a market for a Video iPod would take off.
On the other hand, if the news was an updated iMac mini product line I don't think they would call a press confrence. That and the Apple speculation has more accurate over the last year or so.
So Video iPod it is.
I don't see what the fuss is about video on a small handheld, but I know there's people out there who seem to think it's a good feature. I was at Best Buy this weekend checking out the iPod Nanos and the sales guy was occupied with another customer who was looking over all the players. I overheard the customer talking about the iPod and he really enjoyed the look, style, and size of it, but was really bummed about it's lack of video support. He seemed to think that the video component was really important to have and that alone was keeping him from buying an iPod. Surprising to me, but I guess there really are people out there who seem to want video on these things. Personally, I just think they haven't through it through in terms of the small screens and such. (Or perhaps they do more travelling than I do... :-))
RE[2]: I'm holding out for an iGamePod
May want to check out this thing:
http://www.gbax.com/aboutgp2x.html
Hey, it runs Linux and is completely open, so that should make a lot of people happy 
Well, Quicktime 7 (for windows also) state that it's the right tool to create your podCast.
Note that this is Quicktime Pro... the infamous 29.99$ thing. Well, that would justify the price tag at least. Having to pay that just to play full screen is just shameful.
For video compression (and much more) you can just use iMovie (on a mac).
Last time I tried (iMovie v3) was NOT apt for the job. If nothing has changed iMovie works solely with DV footage, so in order to put, say, a DVD into the, guessing, MP4 iPod you'd have to reencode the DVD to DV and then to MP4 again.
iMovie is only worth for DV source or DV output (or both at once). Unless things have changed, that is…
Downloading full movies might be a bit overkill. Big in sizes, hard to negotiate rights. And you don't want to watch a 1 h 30 Hollywood movie during your 30 minute bus trip I guess.
iTunes+iPod is a pretty decent system for listening to podcasts. If iTunes supported videoblogs then it might make it a more popular things. I currently use DTV on mac to watch vBlogs. Some like Rocketboom are already quite successful and I watch it more often than I watch TV. It could be something pretty big.
Archos Players are nice (supposedly?) but where is the content? Having a simple solution to organize, purchase, share content is what people are looking for.
I don't want to spend hours downloading clips here and there and then trying to convert them to the right format. It's an interesting experience but you don't want to do that daily. I want my computer to download nice clips (vBlogs, comedy sketches) and sync them on my vIpod.



