Oct 19th 2007 06:50 pm Things to Look for in Your iPod Classic
In the world of hard-drive based media players, the new iPod Classic is about as good as it gets. While there have been few changes from the older version of the Classic, the main change comes in the storage space that is now at your disposal; 80 GB, and 160GB for the same old price of $249, and $349 respectively!
There have been few changes in the hardware, but not anything drastic. For those who are still confused about regarding the maximum capacity of the iPod touch, which stands at only 16 GB as compared to the capacity of the Classic, the answer lies in the hard drive. The Touch has a flash memory, and as of now, its technical limitations do not allow it to compete with the hard drives in terms of memory. So that’s definitely an advantage in Classic’s favor. As for the touch and feel of the Classic, the plastic body has been replaced by anodized aluminum, with a slight more ergonomic design than its predecessors. Other things like the click wheel, dock connector and top-mounted headphone jack remains the same as the previous generation. However, the new Classic is a tad thinner than the older ones.
The interface sees a major change, as Apple has introduced Cover Flow on all its iPods (except the shuffle that has no screen), which makes browsing a lot like doing it on the iPhone. Cover Flow allows you to flip through your music by the album art stored on the player. The Now Playing screen is modernized and the album art has a slight 3-D effect to it. One more improvement is the LED-backlit screen, which definitely improves the video quality as compared to its previous version. As the Classic now features progressive scan output facility, you can use all the extra space to treat your iPod as a portable video library. The 160GB model can store upto 200 hours of video at 640×480 resolutions with H.264, or MPEG-4 compression. You will only need an AV cable that costs $49 to watch all this on a TV.