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September 24, 2006

I bought an iPod video...

... and it's sweet as hell.

I had lunch with Kyle on Friday. During our general conversation regarding work, life, computers and such, he casually mentioned that he purchased a new 80GB iPod. He asked if I was interested in purchasing his old 60GB model, which he had only purchased a few months earlier. I asked him how much he wanted for it, and he said $150.

Now, if you haven't kept up with the prices of iPods these days, let me break it down for you:

• 30GB iPod - $250.00
• 60GB iPod - $299.00
• 80GB iPod - $350.00

Now, I'm no fool. I knew how much the 60GB video iPod was going for, and getting it for $150 was a steal. Even though it was used, Kyle is very picky about his personal items and goes to great lengths to keep them in extremely good condition. This iPod he wanted to sell was kept in a protective rubber housing since he first bought it in order to keep it from becoming scratched. This thing is practically brand new.

Marshall was with us at lunch. When Kyle told me how much he wanted for the iPod, his eyes got really really big. I jumped on it before he could say anything, because I knew after I saw that look that he was just as interested as I was. He later told me that if I had declined the offer, he would have taken Kyle up on the offer.

I don't blame him one bit.

I aquired the iPod from Kyle later that night after meeting up for dinner. The next day I formatted the unit, as it was configured to be used with a Mac instead of a PC. Unfortunately, this wiped off all of the items that Kyle had on the unit (there were some cool Final Fantasy songs on there), but I didn't mind as I knew I had enough content on my machine to fill it up.

I began transferring songs and videos to the iPod yesterday, and spent today collecting more movies to transfer onto the unit. As I knew that I would want to watch these movies on a TV sometime in the future, I determined that I would need a RCA audio/video cable. I pulled out the cable that was in the camcorder bag and hooked it up to the iPod and plugged the cable into our video receiver. I saw what looked like distorted video when I tried to play back a movie. I double checked the connections to make sure that I had everything connected right, which they were. After a few more unsuccessful attempts, I decided to go on the Internet and see if I could figure out what I was doing wrong.

Come to find out, Apple has crossed over the standard outputs when using a standard audio/video RCA cable. I think this has to do with them wanting people to purchase their A/V pack for $100.00. So, after reading up on it a bit, I found that you must connect the RCA jacks in the following order:

• Red Out --> Yellow In
• Yellow Out --> White In
• White Out --> Red In

Once I had this information, I hooked up the video cable back up to the receiver, following the instructions that I found on the Internet. After hitting play on the iPod, sure enough I finally saw what I was wanting to see: video output on the TV. I sat and watched the movie for a bit to see what the quality was like. I was actually quite impressed on how good it looked. Yeah, it's not DVD quality, but for being able to take up to 60 or so movies with you wherever you go, not to mention music, it's not a bad deal at all.

The only thing that I need to buy now is the remote control and a USB power supply so that I can keep the unit powered while it plays on the TV.

~out...

Posted by ed at September 24, 2006 09:35 PM

Comments

Posted by: Hash at September 25, 2006 02:50 PM

Posted by: eengelking at September 26, 2006 10:39 AM

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