Recently, I've been watching a ton of episodes of Penn and Teller's "Bullshit", a great television show on Showtime. But I've been watching them on my iAudio MP3/video player during my subway and bus commutes. My iAudio is an MP3 player that can also play video and is not an iPod -- no offense to you iPod sheep, but iPod blows. The X5, made by Cowon, came on the market with the ability to play video a full seven months before the video iPod came out. Of course, when Apple does something everyone seems to think its original and amazing when in fact it was merely derivative. Anyway, the video iPod admittedly has a larger and clearer screen for videos that is superior compared with my iAudio. But you really have to ask yourself, what difference does it make when you're watching a video on a 2 inch screen or a 2.5 inch screen? It's not as if The Matrix looks amazing on the iPod but looks horrible on my MP3 player. They are both really small. You're not talking about the difference between a 14” crappy television and a 70 inch plasma HDTV. You're talking about two tiny handheld devices, and when you're watching anything on a screen that small, no matter how amazing the screen might be, the resolution and quality is simply too eroded to make much of a difference. On the scale of MP3 players also playing videos, the only component that really matters is the audio -- most of the video someone would watch on their iPod would probably not have all that much action and detail going on. Videos like "Bullshit," or shows like "the West Wing" have far less action on screen and require more attention to what the people are saying, as this is where the real experience is found.

Point is, even though everyone thought video iPods were so amazing… I don’t see ANYONE using them for video. And I ride the subway all the time. Only a handful of people watch video on the go, and they’re using devices like portable DVD players, or devices that are dedicated video players like the iriver PMP or Creative Zen. Lame. So lame.