Sophist keeps asking (by which I mean I think she asked once) if I was playing with the video stuff on my iPod. I've never been the first person to own any gadget before, and I'm all excited about my newfound - and transitory - early adopter status. So I'm going to share! You lucky dogs!
So, this is nuts, but the screen actually looks really good. It's like TV, but really, really small. I mean, I know that since the screen is only two inches across, I must be losing some details. But the video looks great. For my very first iTunes purchase, I went for Boundin', the Pixar short they showed in front of The Incredibles. I love this short - it's the one with the little lamb, and he's all happy, and he dances, then he gets shorn, and he's all embarrassed, and the jackalope comes bounding over the hill and teaches him life lessons. It's so cheerful, and the lamb does an awesome tap dance step when he's telling the jackalope about his sorrows. It also gets points for a subtle castration joke.
Perhaps my favorite fact about Boundin' is that Bud Luckey, the guy who directed, wrote, animated, voiced, and wrote the music for it, used to work on Sesame Street. He did the ladybug picnic bit - yknow, it goes, "one two three, four five six, seven eight nine, ten eleven twelve ladybugs came to the ladybugs' picnic." (Lyrics here, thank you Google.)
Anyway, the point of all that was that I actually own The Incredibles on DVD, and Boundin' seems almost as good on the tiny screen.
I think this might be the time to learn how to rip DVDs onto my computer. Because that is totally fair use, if anyone believes in fair use anymore. I wouldn't even know how to share them over the internet, and I don't own a DVD burner - I'd just be making them portable, without having to carry around one of those silly portable DVD players. I saw a guy watching one at the bus stop tonight and was like, haha, loser, I have an iPod video.
2 comments:
Suhweeet! Thanks for the detailed review. I am psychologically well on my way to getting an iPod video. I would love it if we could download, say, the Daily Show clips to our iPods. I read somewhere that BBC was thinking of making all of their shows available in the iPod video format for free for one week after they are aired, much like they do for their radio shows. They say that because the Brits already pay for TV, they shouldn't have to pay for it twice. I say, bring Masterpiece Theater and NOVA and Nature all of the other PBS shows to iPod Video!!
I guess one thing is that the iPod video needs a heck of a lot longer battery life before we can really watch long movies on them.
Say, have you figured out anything about ripping movies and putting them on the iPod video?
One day, maybe in 5 or 6 years, we'll have like 1 terabyte iPod videos, and we'll be able to store HD content on them and bring them to friends houses and hook them up to their widescreen HD TVs and watch the content full screen. And when we're on the airplane we can just watch them on our little ipod screens, or maybe hook them up to the personal video players. How cool will that be!? I can't wait!!!
Oh, my gosh, yes, if they had Daily Show clips, they would sell bazillions. And I'd be so happy, because I don't have cable. I agree that they don't have the battery power for movies now - so either I have to figure out how to make my own external battery case in an Altoids can (http://www.chrisdiclerico.com/2004/10/24/ipod-altoids-battery-pack-v2/) or I have to buy another one when they improve their battery technology.
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