Just got the new 80 gig Video Ipod at Costco - $325 - price was right for me.

Never had a video Ipod before - I know that it plays vids DL from Itunes but how does it play any other vids that I rip on my own? Do I just dump it in there in its regular format or is some sort of conversion required? Whats the easiest?

Any problems with these or anything I should know before using? Screen get scratched? Anyone use protective gear they can suggest?

Doesn't fit on my universal dock and the crappy attachment they include doesn't work - what do you guys use?

Also - if you dock it for a long time each day and it is charged while it plays -does that sap the battery long term? Do they still have the battery problems the early ones had or is that fixed?

Hi kiddnets.

I unfortunately now have 3 iPods that I have to maintain - none of which are mine! : (

iTunes has different options that you should tweak. One of these is what type of format, such as mp3, or Apple's lossless (and bigger) AAC? (I think that's what it is). Since quality wins out in my house, that's what I default to. Another setting is if you want to auto-sync when you plug in your iPod. I personally just set mine to manual. I then just select what songs or movies are needed, and drag them right to the iPod in question.

I can't believe I'm giving kudos to iTunes, but they make it easy to create mp3s. After they're created you can then bulk name them, organize them into whatever group of associations you want for random play, customize what equalizer setting you want when they play, etc.

Videos will need to get converted to mp4 format. If you're on a budget, and the vids are only for viewing on an iPod, you can go with the PSP Vid 9 or Videora iPod converters which are free of course. I have to use DVD Fab to rip them first, so am looking at "one stop" solutions.

There's a lot of good protection out there. I forget what my wife uses, but it's a clear plastic casing with locks on the sides. I'll find out the brand name if you need, but Ne#$gg has a good selection.

Not sure about the battery question - we haven't had ours more than three months - you might want to scour the iPod forums. I don't use any docking stations. I've got a car charger and a wall plug-in that works universally with any car charger - works pretty good so far, and makes it so that all I need to get are the car charger versions for portable items.

Have fun! I think on the average, so far it's been about a 7 GB to 20 mp4 movie ratio, so for 80 GB, that's what, about 228 movies?

Do yourself a favor and lurk for a while in www.ilounge.com and in the Apple forum for iPods Apple - Support - Discussions - iPod (http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=146). There is a lot of wisdom in the user community.

YMMV

starting next month if you buy i-tunes at least you will have the option of
purchasing a higher quality download.