"Partly, it's the novelty," he says. "Also, people like being able to watch favorite musicians while listening to their music. And part of it is, 'I missed an episode of my favorite show, like Lost, and want to watch it.'" And, he points out, not all the video downloads are meant for the iPod — some people just watch them on computers.

The new iPod isn't the first portable thingabob to which you can transfer video and then play it. Archos and iriver, for instance, have players that can record TV shows. So why, as always, is everybody fawning all over the Apple product? "Because it’s drop-dead simple," Baker explains. "The iPod/iTunes combination is easy to understand and seamless — it just works. If you start telling people, 'Oh, you gotta hook up these cables, then go in and set the compression,' forget it. You just lost the audience."

Apple has another thing going for it. The company didn't bother to rechristen this newest 'Pod as a video player. It's simply the latest model of the leading music machine — which just happens to now play video. In fact, at the product's unveiling, Jobs introduced his iTunes/TV-show alliance with, "One more thing ..."

Video Feast or Famine?
But "Our next challenge is to broaden our content offerings," Jobs said later, after hanging up the "Over one million sold" sign. Still, despite the success, no other video providers have yet jumped on the broadband wagon. I tried to get a reaction from a couple of other TV networks but met with tight lips. A Fox spokesman gave me, "No comment — until we know what our position will be." And an HBO mouthpiece said, "We're nowhere close to launching anything on the iPod. I don't think there are discussions far enough along to speculate if it even could happen."

Baker explains, "This is still an experiment for everybody, and it's still very much in the early stages. The TV networks' big concern — and part of the reason the iPod's resolution is only 320 x 240 — is that they don't want to be putting top-notch content on an Internet service because they're scared to death somebody's going to hack into it."

Still, Jobs was right: "They’ve gotta expand their catalog," Baker says. "Five TV shows and some Pixar shorts isn't enough to drive demand for video on this product. They have to convince CBS, NBC, Fox, and maybe even HBO and Showtime. They probably need some sports stuff, too. And movies are a possibility — certainly they could strike a deal with a CinemaNow or Movielink. But those services have been fairly slow to take off, simply because Hollywood seems hesitant to put its best-selling titles on them."

Meanwhile, Baker says, Apple will continue reinventing the iPod as it's done so many times before. And don't worry: this new iPoding of video is certainly no threat to the high-definitioning of America. Über-fidelity TV won't disappear, like the Concorde. "People watch video on multiple platforms now," says Baker. "The ultimate value proposition for the consumer will be: any content, anywhere, on any device." Think: Lost, in the jungle, on a coconut.

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