by Adam Pash
As evidenced by the giant digital music boom ending 2005, a lot of you got shiny new MP3 players this holiday season, and most of them were iPods. While that's great news for Steve Jobs and appears to be a promising trend for the music industry as a whole, we at Lifehacker know that you've put down a lot of good money for that shiny black or white monolith, and we strive to help you work your new iPod to its fullest potential.
Although it's great to buy new music or videos to put on that digital video player, I can think of a lot of other things you can do to take advantage of your new iPod that won't cost you a dime.
Downloading video for your iPod
If you're one of the lucky ones sporting a new fifth generation iPod, I'm sure you're well aware that your iPod can now play videos. iTunes was quick to offer downloads of a couple of popular television shows and music videos for a price, and while they continue to add more, there's a lot of free video content out there for your iPod if you know where to look.
Luckily, you do have options. If you're into BitTorrent, you can download videos encoded specifically for your 5G iPod tracked by one of several BitTorrent search engines. You should be able to find almost any recent television show you like there.
If you're planning on using your iPod to kick your workouts up a notch, why not take the next step - download free exercise videos for your iPod?
Converting video for your iPod
Or maybe you've already got a lot of videos of your own that you'd like to add to your iPod, but, surprise surprise, you didn't think to encode them using the H.264/MP4 video codec (what were you thinking?!). No worries, you've still got plenty of options.
Of course, Apple is happy to help you create your own iPod videos - after you purchase an upgrade to Quicktime Pro. Luckily, there are plenty of other simple options that allow you to convert your videos to create your own iPod videos for free.
If you're a Mac user, Handbrake is an excellent choice. You can easily rip and save your DVD collection to your iPod with Handbrake. Not happy with Handbrake - give iSquint or MovieToGo a try.
If Windows is more your style, Videora or the 3GP Converter are both good solutions.
Let the video come to your iPod
If you're a fan of podcasts, it may be time to step into the world of vodcasts. Forget the whole hassle of going out and finding video content for your iPod - let the free video content come to you.
Take the party to the family room
Finally, if you've yet to purchase Apple's iPod-to-TV cable, why not try playing iPod video on your TV for free, first?
Also, if you're using your brand new iPod to playback videos on your brand new widescreen TV, make sure your iPod is playing that video in widescreen.
How about you, Lifehackers? I'm sure that more than one of you has recently bought, given, or received a new 5G video iPod - what steps have you been taking to get the most out of the video? Let us know in the comments, or send an email to tips at lifehacker.com.
Adam Pash is an associate editor of Lifehacker. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.