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Video iPod gets a little steamier

Content for Apple's video player is appearing online, and--big surprise--leading the way are some digital pinups.

John Borland Staff Writer, CNET News.com
John Borland
covers the intersection of digital entertainment and broadband.
John Borland
2 min read
Independently produced content made for Apple's new video iPod is beginning to appear online--and as with any new technology, it may be sex that sells first.

Pinup site Suicide Girls said Thursday that it had launched a new, free feature: downloadable videos of interviews and photo shots with its models, all configured for the video-capable iPod. At least one unambiguously adult site, Povpod.com, has also released content for the device.

Apple unveiled the video-enabled iPod last week, along with a new version of the iTunes music store that sells music videos, some short films and episodes from five TV shows, for $1.99 each.

The Suicide Girls "featurettes" are among the first of what is likely to be an eventual flood of video reconfigured for the iPod player. A handful of video podcasts are already available through the iTunes store.

The iPod also supports any video content stored in H.264 or MPEG-4 formats. Though Apple itself has not added a way to take content directly from a TV source, the satellite or cable feed can provide an abundant source of video for the device.

Add-on tuners, such as Elgato's EyeTV, offer both the means of recording the shows onto the Mac as well as the ability to export the shows in a format that works with the video iPod.

"Exporting to the iPod is merely a question of configuring the H.264 export settings correctly," an Elgato representative said.

Elgato plans to streamline the process in a future software update--as it already has for sending shows to a Sony PSP. But for now, users have to export their shows into H.264 format and select the video iPod's 320-by-240-pixel resolution.