Video Within Your Grasp Everyone likes a big screen, but what about a little screen? Judging by innovations of the past year, home theater has taken a bit of a back seat to handheld video. Credit the fifth generation Apple iPod, which hit shelves 13 months ago. Never mind that products released earlier, including Sony’s PlayStation Portable and devices running Microsoft’s Portable Media Center software, could already put audio-visual content on a tiny screen. Once Apple released a music player with similar capabilities, the public clamored to see what such a device could do. There are several ways to acquire video content for iPods and other handheld devices. Options include: • Apple’s iTunes service sells downloadable video files for iPods. Selection ranges from current favorites like Lost, The Office, and The Daily Show, to off-the-air fare such as Knight Rider and The Flintstones. Single episodes run $1.99 apiece. Full seasons of some series are available at discounted rates. • Vongo from Starz Entertainment is a subscription service—much like HBO on television—that charges $10 per month for unlimited downloads of full-length movies, concert recordings, and other content. Toshiba’s recently released Gigabeat S was the first portable media player to accept Vongo’s downloads. • TiVo, well-known maker of home digital video recorders, offers TiVoToGo ($25), a feature that captures recordings onto a Windows-based PC and sends video files to handheld devices. Elgato Systems provides similar functionality for Apple Macintosh users with its EyeTV 2 hardware ($140 to $190) and software ($80). Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system, paired with a television tuner, also records TV programming and transfers video files to various playback devices. Sony, meanwhile, sells Playstation Portable Media Manager ($20), an easy video conversion system strictly for PSP owners. • Software that copies content from DVDs onto handheld devices includes InterVideo DVD Copy 5 ($50) and Roxio Easy DVD Copy 2 Premier ($50). • In addition to the do-it-yourself options, some businesses provide video transfer services—for example, home camcorder footage—to handheld devices. Astound Video Duplication and Transfer in St. Paul offers such a service. Pricing starts at $15 for set up, plus $1 per minute of content. Astound owner Stephen Maas believes entertainment is just one purpose a handheld video player can serve. He envisions lawyers loading depositions on iPods and salespeople carrying product-pitching videos in their pockets. “I think we’re going to see an explosion of portable video usage,” Maas says. |
