TechToy Adventures - iPod Video

I am not a Gadget Girl, but am married to Gadget Man. Most of the time these "TechToys" that make appearances in our house are cool (Pizzazz Pizza Oven), useful (GPS enabled PDA), and end up being well-used (TIVO), but chances are, I didn't buy them. We got a new member to our "TechToys" collection yesterday - a black, iPod Video.

Now, we have an iPod in the family already - a sporty, white one loaded with songs ranging from Hannah Montana to Hamster Dance perfect for our soon to be tweens. Why did we need another one? Well, Gadget Man thinks the video feature is so cool. After all, he now has a longer commute and a job that is going to require more travel. He can put his favorite songs, videos and audiobooks on it and listen to it in the car or in the air. I can't imagine watching anything on a screen that small.

So, he opens the box and glances over the Quick Start Guide and starts setting up his preferences. Somehow, he inadvertently selects Chinese as the language. Chinese. Not German, not French, Chinese. Great. Now I had to go to Apple's site and get the instructions for undoing that mess. We finally get that done, load a bunch of songs we already own, and now he wants to put movies that he already has on a hard drive onto the iPod. No luck. We need conversion software. No energy for that at 10:30 PM, so off to iTunes to purchase a music video - I just want to see how clear this picture really is.

We download a U2 video and I am sold. The video quality was amazing. Now I could imagine watching a movie on this little device. And with a transatlantic flight in our near future, I really want to figure out how to get these movies onto the iPod. He says he has a friend who has put movies on his - pick up the phone I say, let's get on it!!

Anyone have any good iPod Video tips for me? I want to get our money's worth out of this one!!