Video Functionality:
The video playback is the biggest reason to get the Apple iPod Video. Obviously it is what the iPod Video is designed for, and one of the key reasons I would consider the iPod Video. If Apple can do for video downloads what it did for downloadable music, the digital world is going to change dramatically. Having used the Archos AV320 for several years, I have gathered many videos and I really enjoy having a video playing while I'm working.
Apple has thought of several options for how to view video. You can designate your videos as either Movies, Music Videos, or Video Podcasts (below left image). Each one is similar, but have a few minor differences. Apple has done a great job on the options for each of the playback modes!
 
Having a video playlist was by far the absolute minimum requirement I had for any portable media player. Not only can you make your own playlist using iTunes, but it also has smart lists for Recently Added, Recently Played, and Top 25 Most Played (above right image).
You can playback any movie that is in the acceptable formats (below left image). The movie mode has a few differences compared to music videos. First, you can't shuffle movies. Second, if you stop a movie, it will remember the last scene you were playing and will resume from that point. Each of these differences was for obvious reasons, although you can change these defaults. Within iTunes, when you move the files into the library, you just have to change the info and change some flags.
 
Probably the biggest difference here is the ability to have it shuffle the music videos. This was by far the biggest reason for me to get the iPod Video. I have tried several other portable media players, and while they would have some options, they did not include a video shuffle option. Here you can select the video by Artist then Video Title, or you can bypass the Artist view, and go straight to All Videos. The list of videos is exactly like the list for music by song title, only this time it only lists the videos (above right image). If you have shuffle enabled, once it's done with one video it will randomly select the next video to play.
Video Podcasts are really cool. They are little videos on specific topics that you can subscribe to through iTunes. Whenever they are updated, they are auto-synched to your iPod Video. There are many available, in many different topics, ranging from news, sports, technology, and entertainment.
Nothing much on the video settings screen. All you are able to do is configure the TV output format (NTSC or PAL) and whether you want the iPod Video to send the video ready for a widescreen television.
Probably the biggest drawback to the iPod Video is the fact that the video formats are very limited. Apple could increase the formats if they wish to, and I really hope they do. Allowing Divx, Xvid or MPG to be viewable would make the video playback options perfect. Currently it is limited to H.264, M4V, MP4 and MOV file formats. While these are very good formats, more functionality is always a good thing. If you have many videos in various formats and want to convert them for the iPod Video, you need to get additional software. Apple of course will recommend Quicktime Pro. Doing a quick Google search, you can turn up many other utilities that will do the conversion for you, quicker, and will allow for batch conversion. I used Videora iPod Converter on all of my Divx videos and they all play back flawlessly.
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