Apple's video iPod doesn't look like the next big thing

Richard Siklos The New York Times - International Herald Tribune: "The introduction of the video iPod last week was greeted as an epochal event.

Just as it took the vision and brio of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computer, to drag the music industry into the 21st century with the iPod and the iTunes online music store, it was only a matter of time before he would do the same with what quaintly used to be known as the moving image.

And so, the video iPod. And with it, Jobs's particularly clever coup: sealing a deal with his quasi-estranged partner, Walt Disney, to distribute downloaded versions of hit Disney-produced shows like "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" on the new gizmo, at $1.99 each. It is not exactly 500 channels of entertainment, but it is a good anchor tenant, supplemented by pay-per-download music videos and other clever features, like films from Jobs's other outpost, the animation studio Pixar.

Only a fool would bet against Jobs, whose iPod now thoroughly dominates the digital music market against rivals like Sony. But here goes: at first blush, the video iPod is not about to revolutionize Hollywood in the way the iPod revolutionized music.

Why? Two reasons. One is that studios are not rushing to make their most popular movies and shows available for the video iPod - note that only Disney shared the stage with Jobs last week, and the primary motive may have been its desire to repair relations with Pixar. Perhaps even more important, mobile gadgets with access to everything that is already on television are on the way.

Just last week, EchoStar, the satellite broadcaster, released one such device, a portable personal video recorder called PocketDISH; it got much less notice than the video iPod got. Think of PocketDISH essentially as a pocket-size TiVo - a small computer that lets you record television shows onto a hard drive with the click of a button - with a screen for watching what you have recorded. And like TiVo and its clones, it can record any program you can watch on a full-size TV at home and then allow you to fast-forward through the ads when you view it.

The obvious shortcoming of the video iPod, at least in its first iteration, is that by being Internet-based, it has a scant library of material. Apart from Disney's hits and whatever else iTunes offers in the coming months, other media giants like NBC Universal have not yet fully digitized their vast libraries of shows and movies and made them available via the Internet.

They are worried about piracy, for one thing, but they also are not quite convinced that there is a good business case for online distribution. Also, while there is an amazing amount of effort going into mobile entertainment, there is still considerable debate about what kind of video people might actually want to watch on the go.

"You have to create new content for these new platforms," said Gregg Spiridellis, who along with his brother Evan runs JibJab Media, which creates short-form spoofs like the widely e-mailed John Kerry/George W. Bush cartoon in 2004. "People behave differently when they're walking around with their iPod or a cellphone from when they're sitting on their couch with a clicker."

Probably the biggest factor working against the instant success of a video iPod is that the video world has yet to experience the copyright-infringement meltdown that the music industry did a year or two ago, when millions of people were swapping songs free rather than buying CDs in stores.

There are no bogeymen like the original, illegal Napster or Kazaa to bring everyone to Jobs's table, at least not yet. Rather, as more people get high-speed connections to their homes, Jobs is positioning his new device as a pre-emptive strike against pirates and file-sharers.

There is no disputing the wisdom in that, nor Apple's supremacy over just about any rival these days in introducing a device using its marketing and design prowess and brand appeal.

Still, the video iPod only has it half right: if it took material from the television as readily as it did from the Internet, it could be a blockbuster. But then who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of "Lost" from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free?

Unlike its musical forebear, the video iPod may not be ready for prime time."