As part of the research for Windows Vista Inside Out, I’m immersed in Vista’s Windows Media Player 11 (about which more later). It’s not unpleasant research at all, and it offers plenty of excuses to listen to music, watch videos, and fiddle with shiny gadgets.
When Windows Vista comes out later this year, an awful lot of people are going to want to plug in their iPods and stay in sync. I seem to be completely immune from Apple lust, but that doesn’t mean I can ignore the hardware. I’ve been blown away by how smoothly the Creative Zen Vision:M and the latest beta of Windows Vista work together; I’d like to see how that experience compares to the latest versions of the iPod and (shudder) iTunes.
Any iPod experts out there who can tell me which iPod I should get? The 30GB video iPod, at $275 or so, seems like the most logical contender, especially for a head-to-head comparison with the Zen Vision:M. Do you have a better choice? I’m all ears.
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There are really only two choices at this point, iPod 5G which is the one with video or the iPod nano. For direct comparisons to the Creative Zen Vision:M, you want the iPod with video support, so then it simply comes down to how much hard drive space you want.
I picked up an iPod 60GB this week. I’ve always wanted to see a head:head comparison of the iPod + iTunes and the Creative Zen Micro 6GB + Windows Media Player (of which I’m a current owner). Is it your plan to publish your experience with each and compare / contrast…?
Anywho, I went with the 60GB simply because…
A) I don’t foresee ever buying another one and
B) like Jake says it boiled down to HDD space or
C) more accurately, the per unit cost…
30GB iPod = $10.81 / GB
60GB iPod = $7.22 / GB
…and I’m a sucker for per unit cost. (Prices above include 8.5% sales tax here in Washington State.)
And you can almost *never* have too much HDD space.
Absolutely, Charlie. I definitely plan to do a head-to-head comparison of the two experiences.
Are you doing mostly video, audio, or a mix? I’m hoping you’re talking video because if you can do a direct sync of DVR-MS files to MP4 format, then you’ll have a great fan base.
I do this today for my PSP (takes the same steps as to do it with an iPod). I have found an easy, yet time consuming way to do this. Every time I do it, I look at Media Player and think “dang it… why is there no sync & transform output option?”
What I do now is queue up a bunch of files and let it go overnight. Then I wake up, copy stuff to my PSP, shower, grabe the memory stick and get on a plane.
But I digress… my friend got the iPod video and he loves it. I put a copy of the same movie I had encoded for my PSP on his iPod video and the quality was similar, but watching the tiny screen for a movie is a little disappointing. The PSP’s screen is really nice for that. Still small, but good. I imagine the Origami’s screen would be a nice one. Plus there’s the rumored “all screen” iPod coming someday soon.
Now, if the Creative Zen Vision played DVR-MS files directly, I think you’d have an immediate recommendation! Maybe it plays WMV files (I haven’t checked into it too much lately).
Anyhow, on another subject, I bought a new hard drive and whomped Vista Ultimate 5308 (it really should have been 5309 to pay hommage to Tommy Tutone and Jenny’s number) so that I could try Media Center out. Wow… um… I guess my PC really isn’t good enough for it. It rates a “3″ and has Vista drivers etc. but playback of all files, live TV, and switching between the desktop and Media Center was really unreliable.
So, I am sticking with MCE 2k5 now. Are your experiences different? Are my drivers the culprit? I have the Realtek HD Audio card with Conexant Blackbird tuner, and an ATI Radeon X600. Maybe my RAM is too puny (512MB) but just doing normal operations really was OK. Media Center was where I got into problems (well, OK IE7 isn’t the most stable on the planet). It is a Pentium 4, 3.2GHz machine with SATA drives.
One thing I noticed about Media Center: Resolution switching… why? I tried to dumb down the resolution on my desktop to something lower, but wide screen. That worked, but didn’t improve operations. Media Center, however, insisted that I stay at 1280×768. Every other resolution I tried in Media Center resulted in 640×480 with lots of screen garbage in the margins. This often resulted in a black screen that I could get out of by C-A-D and logging off.
Pausing recorded TV would result in the looping of the last few frames (so imagine Stephen Colbert caught in an endless loop gesturing wildly about the truthiness of something… very funny).
The media search function isn’t really improved (step 1: find all files, step 2: import lots of crap you don’t want, step 3: forget about aborting the search). Shouldn’t Vista be able to index everything with WinFS?
One thing I was hoping for was the ability to specify “multiple recording destinations” so that I could have multiple volumes for TV recording and then I could either manually archive shows, or if one archive filled up, it would shift to the next available destination. But, when I go to Recorded TV, I’d still like to see them all.
Anyhow, were your experiences any better? Or should I just buy another computer?
TTFN
Ed, I’ve only used the Creative briefly, but my preference would be for the 30Gb video iPod. I reviewed one for PC World, and have been using it ever since. I only use the video feature occasionally, but it’s nice to have, and the battery life is great.
But I do wish that they would open it up and let you use programs other than iTunes with it; I miss the way that Media Player would automatically transcode videos for portable devices. There is no shortage of programs to convert video for the iPod, but it’s a pain to have to do it in a separate program.
I think you should get a 30gb iPod video, black.
Video + music + photo synching is a breeze!
Or you could go for the 4gb Nano, but of course there’s no video playback there…
And there’s always the iPod shuffle… but that doesn’t even have a screen…
hum….. i guess it’s all just a matter of personal preference….. the call is yours….
Yeah, I’m having problems deciding which iPod to buy…
I want either the 30gb Black Vid or the 4gb Black Nano..
I have heard of a hack that allows you to put video on the Nano but i’m just not sure if I want to have video or not… See, I have a laptop but the battery only last like 2 hours at most and so does the Vid iPod when playin a video.. so there is no point in gettin Vid unless you’re goin to keep it plugged up… ANYBODY have a really good reason why I should go with one of the 2 iPods???
good reasons for a ipod
i believe that you should go with a ipod 30gb becous what hapends if you get an ipod nano but get bhored with only being able to listen to music,you can do allot more on the ipod 30gb
i’m sorry to be very bias into this…but i’d rather pick the iPod.
Simply put, it’s in the rage, there’s a bevy of available accessories and helpful stuff of gadgets out there to support iPods, making it more useful & flexible.
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