The boys over at Engadget are predicting the imminent announcement of the iPod Nano Video. Probably available in 4gb and 8gb incarnations, this would match Nano and big daddy iPod functionality.
Cool?
Hmm probably not. I have to say that the Nano screen is so small, even cover art is hard to see, so I just don’t see the point of adding video, it’s just not practical to watch for any length of time. To be fair I think that the big daddy iPod screen is too small to watch movies, let alone the Nano. The big daddy is ok for music videos and showing comedy adverts and the like to mates in the pub, but that’s all.
I am of course slightly biased by the fact that the PSP kicks the iPod’s ass in this respect. Having had one for a few months now, I can say that the PSP screen is beautifully sharp and watching a movie on it on the train is quite comfortable, with the added plus that you can have a couple of spare batteries in your pocket for long journeys. Some might say that the MS Pro Duo is the limiting factor, but you can get a 2gb card for £60 from ebay, which will easily hold 2 movies.
Obviously we still have to wait for dream gadget that does both music and video at a decent size. Personally I am holding out for a PSP PDF reader, which would make the device a must-have; ebooks on the move. There is a homemade program that supposedly reads PDFs for the PSP but I can’t get it to work on mine. There may be a long wait for the Sony firmware update to include it, as Sony are releasing the Sony Reader, a handheld ebook reader. Around the size of a small paperback, the print quality looks excellent, and I presume that it will be accompanied by a decent ebook store absolutley brimming with DRM through an expanded Sony Connect store. So will this be the next iPod? Maybe, but size is a problem, and personally I am moving more towards audiobooks on my iPod than print on a computer screen. I don’t think that there will be a big enough market for ebook readers. What would be cool, however, is a PDF to ebook converter, good enough to bring all of the subtleties of the spoken word from a PDF, but we may be some way from seeing such a device on the shelf.
