As an enthused iPod owner (I have two old ones, a 5GB unit for audio books and a 10GB unit for music) and professional photographer (see Colorado Portraits for my photography site) I’ve been quite interested in reading about the changes and improvements to the iPod with the latest release from Apple. If nothing else, the disk size has sure increased with either a 40GB or 60GB option.
But here’s what I find most interesting about this new device: it includes an AV capability that lets you plug the unit directly into a television to show photographs. The display on the iPod Photo doesn’t mirror the TV screen (it’s a controller when hooked up to a TV), but clearly the unit has the ability to send out a signal to a TV including the requisite refresh cycles needed to have the image be sufficiently stable on screen to be attractive.
Which means that, even though the iPod Photo can ostensibly only display a slide every two seconds as its fastest throughput, it has the capability of displaying more data, at least from the AV port perspective.
And is 60GB enough space for a movie or two? Oh yeah, I have a 60GB external drive that I carry with my PowerBook and I can have 20-30 DVD-quality movies on it at any given time and a full beta install of the upcoming Tiger OS. So even 40GB is plenty of space for movies.
One objection I’ve read is that Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, has said that he didn’t think there was a market for mini video players, but if you read his actual words, he said that he didn’t think people would want to watch video on a 2″ screen. Quite a difference in this light.
In my opinion, the technology is all in place to turn the iPod into a remarkably cool portable video player that would let you load up movies and other video sources (think iDVD or iMovie output plugin) and then play them anywhere on any TV or video playback system. And that, that would be very cool…
i just got the 60 gig iPod photo. I agree with you to the fullest about wanting movie not so much for travel but to hook to other sources. but what also irks me is the lack of mirroring ability with album art and titles. I drive a car that has a DVD player with a 7′ screen that has an aux in. With my 3g ipod i coul dlisten to the music through my stereo, but the screen was blank.. the reson i was so stoked for the ipod photo was so that i could mirror the album art and tites and what not to my screen. complete and utter disappointment from apple on this one.