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Ipod
My ipod changed my life.lol Im in the navy, so everything has to be compact. No more carrying around CD's DVD's TV's etc. Now it is all in one place. I can watch movies in my rack now without a bulky laptop. The picture is so crystal clear. i fought the hype for a while by buying a creative, a gigabeat, a lyra. They cannot compare by far. Having an ipod is like belonging to a club. Trust what ever you want a mp3 player to do the ipod does. A little advice though, learn how to use itunes fully. People at work are always asking me to hook their ipod up like mines. Itunes is simple. It will organize all your stuff for you if you take the time to learn how. Fyi don't buy that 100 dolar cable to hook your ipod up to your tv. Just go to walmart or somewhere and get a 20 dolar cable that plugs into your headphone jack and converts to audio and video rca's. Normally these cables are for digital cameras/cams. Better than expected! I spent endless hours, days, months researching which MP4 Player to purchase. This product certainly exceeded my expectations in all aspects including sound, picture quality, and the ease of downloading music. However, I am disappointed that this product does not come with an AC adapter that it is optional along with software to download movies. Soon your iPod costs way more than the original purchase. A Wonderful iPod The 5th Generation iPod 60 GB from Apple is the perfect video and music player for anyone with enough movies or music to fill it up. So, first things first, I recommend searching for a smaller-sized model if you don't have a very large collection. I have owned a 5th gen 60 GB iPod video for almost a year now and felt that it was a good time to write a review about it. I've read reviews from people who have complained about their iPod breaking and freezing, and I have my own input regarding this. One of the abilities of the iPod is to play videos. The iPod will only play .mp4, .m4v, and .mov format videos, so be careful! iTunes DOES take care of converting videos for use with an iPod, but I'm not reviewing iTunes. Assuming you've converted your home movies for the iPod and have downloaded the latest season of your favorite TV show, it's now time to put it onto your iPod. Once you've got it sitting nicely on the 60 GB hard drive, you can access it in the menus and begin to watch. On a fully charged iPod, video playback is noted at up to 3 hours, and I've found no problem with this, though over time that length might decrease just like most electronic products over time. The video quality is superb on iTunes purchased movies and shows and the audio quality for those shows is just as good. With your own movies, it can be a different story. Basically you just need to make sure that the audio quality is good enough and the video resolution is good enough for the iPod. If you've succeeded in those two areas then the video should view GREAT! I have found that, over time, my iPod was filling up with shows and movies and I had little room to store other new videos. I would recommend regularly updating your iPod. This means that once you've watched a movie, if you have no future plans to watch it again, delete it off of your iPod. This way you can always save space for videos you may want to put on your iPod in the future. But remember: ALWAYS make sure to keep a "hard copy" of the video on your computer. Otherwise you may find yourself an unhappy camper. Music has always been the main focus for the iPods ever since day one. My music has always worked GREAT on my iPod and I've never been failed. Many people have complained about the lack of an option to use alternative audio formats with the iPod. Unless you're looking to put all .wma files on your iPod, you won't be disappointed. The iPod works well with most usual audio formats. Just as long as you keep your non-iTunes Store music as mp3 audio you shouldn't have any problems. Audio quality is great for great quality audio. It all depends on the kpbs. 160 kbps is nearly indistinguishable from CD quality for most people. 192 kbps is a much larger file but is just the safer route. iTunes Store music sounds great at the quality they have set for all the music. Podcasts work great with the iPod and work very similarly to music on the iPod, as they are all audio files. The only difference is that the iPod treats podcasts as they are and they have a separate folder within the iPod. Photos work fantastic with the iPod too, and the picture quality is great for the most part. The size of the image you upload to the iPod has a lot to do with the quality. But for the most part, your standard digital camera pictures will look great. I have not played any of the iTunes Store games that are available for the iPod but have heard good things about them all. I don't think this is a relevant feature for the 5th generation iPod at this point seeing as how there are so few games available for purchase. No outside source games are compatible with the iPod to my knowledge. My only complaint with the iPod is the occasional freezing/slowing down of some media when playing it. This is largely due to the fact that this is a hard-drive based player, and most problems can be solved with a reset (pressing the menu and center click buttons at the same time and holding). My iPod has also been scratched a bit on the screen, even with a case. With proper care and treatment, this should not be a huge problem after prolonged use, and the scratches on my own iPod are due, for the most part, to my carelessness with where I put the iPod. If you put the iPod in a backpack that has dirt or sand in it, it WILL get inside the case you bought for the iPod, and WILL scratch the iPod if you do not remove it quickly. This is just common sense. Overall the iPod is an extremely fun player to use and can be very easy to use, given that you actually read the instructions. Make sure that your bases are covered and you will be fine. I would also like to add one last bit of information that will help some people, I'm hoping. The Apple iPod has a TV-Out feature that is extremely useful for when you would like to hook it up to a TV and watch it at home with the family. Apple has a sleek little RCA cable that you can buy for a pretty penny to be able to hook the iPod up to your TV, but be assured that YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BUY IT. With these steps, you can have your iPod playing on your TV in NO TIME: 1) Go to a local electronics store and buy a standard RCA cable with the red, yellow, and white plugs on one end and a 1/8 inch plug (headphone jack) on the other. Again, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BUY THE APPLE BRAND RCA CABLE FOR THIS. Don't waste your money. You can pick up a great RCA cable for a few dollars that will work fine for this feature. 2) Turn on your iPod and select your desired settings concerning TV-Out. I enjoy the Widescreen format and the "Always Ask" option ON. This ask option is just so that whenever I choose a video to play, the iPod will ask me if I want to turn TV-Out ON or OFF. 3) Once you've selected your desired settings, grab the RCA cable and plug the 1/8 inch end into your iPod's headphone hole. 4) Locate the analog input holes on your TV (red, white, and yellow) and grab the RCA cable. Here's the tricky part that Apple "accidentally" forgets you to tell you. Instead of matching colors and plugging the RCA cable into your TV, you've got to switch colors around. Plug the RED END into the YELLOW INPUT, the YELLOW END into the WHITE INPUT, and the WHITE END into the RED INPUT. Apple switched the way the composite video signal and analog audio signal comes out of the iPod on us! Once you've switched the colors around and you're plugged in, switch the TV to the channel or mode that matches with where you've plugged into, select a video to watch, select TV-Out ON if you haven't already, and sit back and relax! LOVE IT! I had a third generation iPod that didn't even have the click wheel, so this is quite the upgrade. I love the clarity of the video screen. Outstanding I received my iPod in a very timely manner. The product is great! | |
