Well the iPod Video hasn’t even shipped yet and already people are converting their VODcasts to be iPod friendly or creating new ‘casts altogether. This could bring VODcasts into the limelight as much as the iTunes support did for podcasts.
I haven’t ordered a iPod video yet as there’s no Firewire support and I own nothing with USB2.0 or is capable of expansion to USB2.0. Thanks Apple for screwing your own customers. I’ve gone ahead and subscribed to some VODcasts to try it out, though. So far so good and we’ll see how well I keep up on watching them.
I went ahead and ordered the series premiere of lost as well to try that out. My first impression is that it is decent quality. Unfortunately it runs like shit on my laptop. In fact it is almost unwatchable as it lags. This is the case for most videos in the new H.264 format. It seems my computer just isn’t meant for the decoder or the new quicktime just doesn’t handle it well. I may have to try other players when I get the chance.
The feeds I’ve subscribed to so far are MacTV, DigitalLifeTV and the lovely ladies at Suicide Girls (NSFW). There is also the wonderful resource of ScreenCastsOnline which has screencast tutorials of Mac based stuff. These are included in the MacTV feed so I don’t subscribe to it on it’s own. Update: Don points out in the comments that not all screencasts are included in the MacTV feed. Will have to change my subscriptions.
I’ve written previously about lecture podcasts and reserves and can see this applying equally well to video files of lectures. Our library currently houses lectures of some courses. If these could be digitized and offered it would be a great service. Again I question how many instructors would like such a thing and the ones that do probably won’t go through the library. It unfortunately seems like many only think of libraries when it comes to the old-skool things and not with the emerging technology. Hopefully that will change as having things segmented by department or even teacher can make it hard for people to find things unless they are directly involved. I doubt MIT’s OpenCourseWare would have been a success if professors decided to post their content to their own homepages instead. The library is one possible central location for such information.
If you haven’t dabbled in VODcasts then give it a whirl. You don’t need a portable video player to enjoy it.
Update: Newsday has an article on lecture podcasts and includes the student opinion that vodcasts would be nicer. A good read.