OTHER TECH

VIDEO TO GO by Rob Medich

On a "Weekend Update" segment on Saturday Night Live last November, Steve Jobs (impersonated by Fred Armisen) made an appearance to debut the new iPod. No, not the video iPod or the iPod nano. "Those are both obsolete," declared Jobs. Instead, pulling a 1-inch-tall iPod facsimile from his pocket, he introduced, "The iPod micro. It holds over 50,000 songs," he bragged, "has iPhoto, plays movies - high-definition."

"How are you supposed to watch movies on something so small?" asked anchor Tina Fey.

"No worries - by Thanksgiving, the iPod micro will be ... obsolete," answered Jobs, tossing the micro aside. Its replacement: the iPod pequeno. Standing a manicured-fingernail high, this one, Jobs boasted, "holds one million songs. Has an iCalendar that goes 7,000 years into the future. iPhoto. You can watch movies on it."

Until Christmas, that is, when the iPod pequeno would become ... obsolete. "Too big," griped Jobs. "Ridiculous. Old." Its upgrade? The iPod invisa. Literally invisible, "it holds 8 million songs. Every photograph ever taken. Pong. And it floats [in mid-air]."

In this brave new TiVo-programmed, DVD-compatible, podcast-downloadable world, that SNL skit easily sums up video to go: portable, multifaceted, able to feed at many troughs, and mutating faster than a rhinovirus.

THE TREND The success of DVD created a world where Gigli - while bad on any size screen - could be devoured on portable DVD players and laptops on buses and airplanes worldwide. Now we're making room for players that can record TV shows off air/cable/satellite or extract them from your DVR. Meanwhile, with the whole "downloading" concept still spiking the pulses of grown men and women alike, moving shows from PCs to portable players has made video to go even more convenient.

WHY IT MATTERS Now that HD screens are hitting the 70-inch-and-above mark, why are we watching video on portable screens the size of Wheat Thins? Because it fills our need for entertainment on our own terms: when, where, and how we want it. You say your TiVo's channel-changer misfired (yeah, we've all been there), making you miss the season premiere of Lost? Download it from the Web - legally - the next day! Or maybe the only time you can watch it is during your rail commute. Just transfer it to your portable. Or maybe you're hanging out with your buddies and you discover you're the only one who hasn't seen the new Franz Ferdinand video. Don't let on! Just sneak off and within minutes download it to your cellphone.

THE GEAR The biggest portable-media dilemma is figuring out which way you want to get it. Along with videogames, Sony's PSP (reviewed in June) offers DVD-quality movies on the tiny Universal Media Disc. Or you can go the flash-memory-card route, used for instance, by the ZVUE portable media player (see "S&V's Ultimate Gifts").

Portable video players from companies like Archos, iriver, and Creative let you either record TV shows directly from their source or extract them from your DVR. The TiVoToGo service lets you transfer recordings to a PC or Windows-based portable players like Samsung's YH-999 GS. And early this year, TiVo plans to make those transfers downloadable to iPods.

Then there's the new iPod (see "First Look: Video iPod"). You can download a variety of TV and video offerings at Apple's iTunes Music Store in minutes at $2 a pop. Meanwhile, the Dish satellite network's new PocketDish player sucks TV shows out of its DVR five to ten times faster than playback time.

Finally, the cellphone continues to redefine multitasking. Sprint's Power Vision service lets you download music or get streaming audio and video, while Amp'd Mobile lets you download video clips over Verizon's wireless network.

THE FUTURE Portable video screens will get bigger - but not so big that they interfere with the incredible shrinkage of the player they're a part of. And those screens will look better, too, with OLED displays producing brighter, crisper pictures (see "Emerging Tech"). Faster data rates will deliver more audio and video information per second, making players look and sound even better.

The IMAX-ification of home theater will continue. But step outside, and it's a small-device world after all. And the only danger in committing to any mini-video player at any given moment will be the likelihood that in just a pequeno minute, that baby will become obsolete.