Right now, video to go is impractical from about every angle.

I am not as bad as some people who have dozens of IPODS to fit everything. I am still processing downloaded MP3s, but I figure I'll have about 50gb of them, leaving 10gb left on my IPOD, less as I add new music. Since I don't know what I'd be in the mood for, I figure I'd need a small diversity of shows. That would suck up my remaining space pretty quickly. I have 600gb on my HD-TIVO. You would be suprised how fast that goes.

Lets pretend space isn't an issue - what do I want to watch? Movies? Nope, I'd rather watch them on the 50" plasma in my home theater instead headphones and a tiny screen. TV shows? Maybe. I collect them up on my HD-Tivo, but if I watch them there, then I need to delete them off my Ipod and get new ones onto my Ipod. This means a regular cycle of synchronization. This takes a lot of time, every day, even if I was just transferring files like ripped music - but ripped music goes on my IPOD once, not every day.

Lets pretend I didn't mind messing with my IPOD every day. Lets consider the entire process of getting material onto my IPOD. Thanks to our freinds at MPAA, there is no easy way to grab a digitized show as a file and copy it over. I have to convert it. Right now, that means recording it to my digital camcorder (once in real time), taking it to my upstairs to my computer, extracting it to digital (second in real time), compressing it to a portable format (DIVX if you choose such a mediocre format), then copying it to my IPOD. So I spend 2-3 times the program length converting it. It is easier to just watch it in the first place.

Then I have to find time to watch it on the go. I can't think of much time during the day where I am away from home and have time to watch TV, time where I am just sitting. I just don't need portable TV.

Of course, there are the technical issues of battery life - a mini TV screen and hard drive and powerful processor to convert the ones and zeros into a moving image (VERY processor intensive) suck a LOT of juice. Not to mention the lousy pixel fade rate on most LCDs makes for pretty lousy TV, so you need a high end, high power LCD to show TV on.

So from a technical standpoint, you can't even fit the components, the heat load, or the battery capacity neccesary into a package the size of an ipod. From a price standpoint, even if you could make it the components they would be very ccutting edge and would cost many orders of magnitude more than a mere $600. From a user standpoint, it isn't practical to prepare or use.

I am sorry the current state of human technology is not adequate to build what you need. Perhaps if you learned a bare minimum about the issues involved in what you are demanding, got an engineering degree, built solutions, and convinced the MPAA of the error in their ways, you would have a chance of getting what you want. Until then, maybe the armchair engineering on this is a bit out of your league, just be happy where we are today.

I bought an IPOD to be, well, an IPOD. I am not complaining that it makes a lousy can opener and steadfastly refuses to walk my dog. If you want portable video, buy a bulky heavy portable video device.

-JD

 

My homie got one and we used it with the Neo Ion I got about a month ago from www.mp3yourcar.com and it works good...