When I headed to San Fran last week, I wanted badly to put a iPod Video in my bag. I wanted to be able to watch some video on the flights, and have something to do in the hotel. Well, no one in St. Louis had them before I left — neither of our Apple Stores, Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, etc. I couldn’t find one anywhere. However, the folks at the Apple Store said that the San Fran store was a “flagship store”, and they would certainly have it.

Well, they were right, and on Monday, I picked up this new beastie. It’s a gorgeous, sexy black model….. the only rub was that I had no way to get stuff from my old iPod Photo to the new iPod Video whilst on the road. It sat unused for the week, while I made my plans for moving my data over to it.

When I got home on Thursday, I think the third or fourth thing I did was hook it up to the Quad, and let it begin to assimilate its new world. Come Friday morning, it was ready to begin its journey with me.

I didn’t elect for any engraving this time, thinking of all the times I flipped my iPod Photo over and looked at my mantra… maybe half a dozen times over the last 13 months. I did pick up a Contour hardshell case for it though, thinking that this time I might be a little vain with my new toy, and try to keep it from taking too many unneccesary scratches.

So I hear you asking, “How’s the experience?” It’s sweet. Absolutely sweet. Having a bigger drive in the thing is nice, but the bigger addition is having video capabilities. Now, I haven’t gone out to ITMS and purchased a bunch of TV or movies for viewing, but I have put some small videos — mostly Apple commercials — on it, and have been quite impressed by the video quality on the 2.5″ screen. I’ve even dumped the video/audio streams out to the big screen in the den, and they look pretty good there too.

BTW, no Apple Pr0n this time — no photos of opening the boxes, etc. That’s interesting, but it’s been done, and only thousands of anonymous enthusiasts like me will have this new beastie. Someone else will surely cover Unboxing Day.

All in all, this was a good purchase, and one more step on the Cult of Mac. 🙂