With Video IPod, the Music Still Comes First

These downloads appear terrific on an iPod's screen, but on a computer monitor, the limits of their 320-by-240-pixel resolution become embarrassingly obvious.

The TV shows are the most interesting part of the equation. The programs ("Lost," "Desperate Housewives," "Night Stalker," "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody" and "That's So Raven") appear the day after they air, commercial-free. This is the first time major network shows have been made available as paid downloads -- which should be a subject of lasting shame for the network executives who took so long to discover that you can, like, sell things online.

It would be financially foolish to watch every episode of a show on iTunes, but this offers an easy way to catch up on ones you missed -- that is, given sufficient time and bandwidth: One episode of "Lost" took about 25 minutes to download over a DSL connection.

Even then, you should consider the premium you pay for convenience. Where iTunes music downloads sound almost as good as a CD, iTunes videos look dramatically worse than a DVD. And they don't offer the escape from Apple's copying restrictions available to music buyers, who can burn their downloads to audio CD, then copy them to their computers in a format of their choice.

These limits may be fine for the free video podcasts offered through iTunes, but they're much less palatable in something marketed and sold as your lasting property.

Getting other video files on an iPod, whether downloaded off other sites or made in such programs as Apple's iMovie, is unacceptably complicated. Instead of simply dragging a clip into iTunes to have it converted and copied automatically, you must adjust esoteric file-export settings in iMovie, buy a copy of Apple's $30 QuickTime Pro, or mix and match random freeware programs to make your video clip iPod-ready.

This level of complexity is standard procedure in much of computing, but it's not what Apple sells. That, and the selection of video downloads sold at iTunes, needs to improve in a hurry, or the "video" iPod will remain just a great way to listen to music on the go -- not that Apple would necessarily be upset with such an outcome.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro atrob@twp.com. To watch a video podcast about this new iPod, visithttp://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts.