First Impressions: iPod Touch

What a Christmas, lots of excellent books and to cap it all an iPod Touch! I'm sure you've all seen and heard the hype surrounding the iPhone and, whilst I'll admit I was interested, it wasn't a device I'd get as I use a BlackBerry and, with the contract, it would prove to be pretty expensive for the use I'd get out of it. Consequently I was much more interested in its little brother the iPod Touch. Of course if you compare it to the iPhone it does look a little pared down but as I was considering it along side the iPod Nano and some other devices I was coming at it from a different perspective. And I must say I am pretty impressed (bearing in mind this is the honeymoon period I'll probably post something in a few weeks once I've lived with it for a while).

The device is beautiful to look at and the multi-touch interface is very easy and pretty intuitive to use. The initial synch took a little while but I managed to get our entire music collection onto the iPod and browsing through it using coverflow is pretty cool. I'm probably going to thin that out a little as I've got the 8Gb model and I'd like to leave some room for video (plus some of the music collection is more to my wife's liking than mine - and the converse is also true!).

The video is also excellent. I was worried that the screen would be a little small (I'm used to using my PSP for watching video on the train) but having watched it for over an hour solidly I can happily say it's fine and the picture is crisp.

What I was particularly impressed with though was the eyeTV integration. I activated the WiFi connectivity option on the eyeTV software and it converted all the new recordings (you can set it to convert everything but given the number I thought that might be pushing things) to the appropriate format. After allowing access to the relevant port via the firewall you can simply access the recordings via Safari on the iPod Touch through the appropriate URL. The video is clear and crisp and streaming was absolutely no problem with no hiccups or interruptions. This allowed me to watch the Christmas Day episode of Doctor Who whilst my wife was glued to CorriEnders.

So my first impressions are very good but the big test will be to see whether they last in the cold light of day!