Looking for TV to Go

After I wrote the Gym’tronics article earlier this week, I decided that maybe some portable video would be cool. I could consume interesting shows when doing the stationary machines like cross-trainers, bikes and treadmills. All I need to do is find video that I can get onto my iPAQ (currently, my only portable video option).

That may turn out to be quite a trick…

For example, I recently noticed that Amazon Unbox sometimes has free TV episodes, so I headed over for a look. Sure ’nuff, the season opener for House is $0.00. I signed up, paid my $0 and downloaded it. Great price, eh?

First wrinkle: Need to install the Unbox client. While doing that, I noticed the option to get mobile versions of the downloads. Sweet!

Once it was done downloading, I went to have a look. Um, WTF is a “.amzn” file? *sigh* Turns out mobile doesn’t mean “small”; it means it only runs on a select few devices (Amazon urls are so funky, I really dunno if that link will work). The file was 200MB, so I wouldn’t mind the size if I could play it. If nothing else, I was intrigued to see that Archos has devices in that compatibility list (I dig their latest video player).

I guess Unbox isn’t the answer for now, but the video quality on my PC is pretty impressive, for what that’s worth.

Keeping in mind that I don’t do iTunes, where do folks get shows that can be downloaded? Any good suggestions out there? The video iPod geeks carry all those shows around, they can’t all be watching Diggnation, right? Right?

Side Note: the Amazon Unbox client keeps track of disk space in a rather unusual fashion:

HOW much space is left?!?