Audio Functionality (continued):
Podcasts are little broadcasts, like you would receive on the radio. They are available through iTunes and can range in topics from Sports, News, Politics, Entertainment, and just about anything else you can think of somebody wanting to talk about. There really is no limit on what can be in a Podcast. iTunes has a weekly broadcast that gives you the latest new music added to iTunes. This is a chance for you to become your own producer. You can create your own Podcast if you'd like.
Once again, the ID3 tags come into play when the iPod Video sorts your music by genre. There are 26 different genres ranging from Alternative, Arts and Entertainment, Podcasts, Rock, Rap, Hip-Hop, Techno and Urban. This will allow you to listen to just the music within a specific genre. Personally this isn't very useful, but others will feel differently.
The composer view is another function that uses the ID3 tags to list your music by the individuals listed in the composer field of the ID3 tag. Biggest issue I have with this one is that it is not always sorted well. Say for example, you wanted to see your music by John Williams. It could be listed as: John Williams / Eddie Van Halen or Eddie Van Halen / John Williams, or Eddie Van Halen / Gwen Stefani / John Williams. It doesn't break it out, so when you go to John Williams, it shows them all. Not a big issue for me, because I don't listen to music that way. Others might find it important, however.
The final audio menu is for Audiobooks. This is where an audiobook you purchase will be shown. These are shown by the title of the book. Since many of the audiobooks you will get will be longer than most people will listen to in one sitting, it has the ability to remember your place in the book. This is a great feature! But it is only available with true audiobooks. I have heard that there is a way to have "other" audiobooks simply by changing the extension to m4b, once the file has been converted through iTunes to aac. This worked like a charm for an mp3 audiobook I have.
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