The newest entrant in the hard disk-based MP3 players segment is the iPod Photo. It is essentially the regular iPod, with added photo-viewing functionality—hence the name. The black-and-white screen makes way for a spanking new 220 x 176 screen capable of displaying 65K colours. You can also view your photos on a TV or a projector via the bundled AV cables.
The bundled iTunes 4.7 automatically converts popular image formats to its own proprietary format, and optimises them for viewing on a standard or widescreen TV. To Apple’s credit, the images appeared crystal-clear on a 25-inch TV screen. The device displays 25 full-colour thumbnails of stored images. It can also synchronise automatically with albums created with
iPhoto, Adobe Album 2.0 and Elements 3.0. However, once you have the images in your iPod Photo, you cannot play around with them in any way— rotating, panning, or even deleting directly from the device is not possible. Considering the new colour display, we expected a significant drop in battery life, and were stunned to see that the battery life had actually been prolonged to a cool 15.5 hours on a single charge! Though it is still a great music player, at the end of the day it all boils down to price. And at Rs 35,000+, Apple really is asking for the moon, considering that you can get full-fledged portable media players which do all that the iPod photo does. However, there’s one reason you might want to buy this piece of luxury: Playboy has come out with seriously hot content for the iPod photo, and has named the service iBod! Now we really wish the screen was a lot bigger!
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