I have the best portable entertainment setup in the world: iPod plus EyeTV. I have an endless stream of video and movies, mostly automatically, and totally for free.

I’ll back up, to make an embarrassing admission for a tech writer specializing in Apple-platform products: I haven’t been able to review the lion’s share of iPod accessories because the last iPod I bought was in 2003. It’s been great, all these years. It plays music, holds nearly all of my music library, and the battery usually lasts for as much time as I want to listen to music -- even on long plane flights. But like everyone else, I was pretty sure that Apple would eventually get around to releasing a widescreen iPod that rocked at video.

Finally. I bought one of the new iPods shortly after they were announced. I went big, since history suggests this is a once-every-four-years purchase, and my iTunes library more than tripled over that period. Then moments after I got the confirmation email from Apple, I thought, "Well, I guess I need some video."

I’m traveling a lot this fall, or at least a lot more than usual. I’ll spend about 25 hours on planes in October, and who knows how many hours waiting in Airport terminals. What’s a weary traveler to watch?

Where to Get Your Video
iTunes Store: I put it here because it’s true. You can, of course, buy video from the iTunes Store. It’s good quality, has artwork, and some programs, particularly hour-long TV specials, can be a great deal at US$2.

DVDs: For those of you with huge DVD libraries, you need to check out Handbrake, if you don’t have it already. Ever wonder why you couldn’t put a DVD in your Mac or PC, have it show up in iTunes, and hit an "Import" button to rip it into your library? Well, it’s likely because the United States Federal Government’s DMCA has been interpreted to prohibit it.

Fortunately, there’s Handbrake, a DVD backup utility that’s open source, has a GUI interface, novice-friendly presets for types of DVD imports, and is free. If you’ve got a lot of DVDs and always wish you could carry them with you, this is the way to do it. Disclaimers: importing a movie takes a long freakin’ time (about an hour each on my Mac Pro), and if you want chapter names, you’ll have to add them yourself.

TV: And then there’s the gold mine -- the cable connection you already pay for. I don’t have a big DVD collection. (I think in my house we’ve imported the Led Zeppelin DVD, Pirates of the Carribean, and The Last Unicorn.) So if you’re like us, and you have cable and a video-capable iPod, buy one of Elgato’s EyeTV products. They aren’t inexpensive; we’ve previously reviewed the $200 EyeTV 250, which is a mid-range product in their lineup. Thing is, Elgato’s TV tuners are the single best way to add value to your iPod, period.

(Quick note here: if you already have TiVo, there are several free tools for getting TiVo content onto your iPod, and Roxio’s Popcorn will do it, too. But if your goal is to get TV on your iPod, Elgato’s products are a better bet.)

With the EyeTV software you can search the TV schedule. For example, "Daily Show," "politics," "comedy," or "movie" return programs of varying specificity. I’ve been using this approach to discover and stack up a busy roster of programs to record. EyeTV can also be set to automatically convert all these shows to iPod format and dump them in your iTunes library. In this way I’ve quickly built up more than 48 hours of TV and movies.

Sure, EyeTV’s software doesn’t have the best interface. Sure, the movies have comercials. But it’s free! You can watch the showws you record or not. You can delete what you don’t like without guilt. You can record the video in whatever quality, to save disk space or maximize fidelity. People pay good money for the DVD version of shows. I’m way happier with the broadcast version, minus the DVD extras, and plus iPod portability. Oh, and minus the DVD retail price.

It’s worth noting that there are EyeTV products on either side of the 250 in price and features. Be wary of products that use your Mac’s CPU to do the video encoding -- these will seriously slow down your machine. Converting files to iPod format can be murderously slow as well, but the $99 Turbo.264 solves that problem. Another caveat: you need to hook up their products to both a cable connection and your Mac, so don’t rush to purchase if your only machine is a laptop that’s always away from the desk. Also be aware that depending on the specific model, EyeTV can do up to HD-quality recording, if that’s how you’re more focused on the TV experience than the iPod library.

YouTube: Okay, I said it. I’m not huge on YouTube; at least, I haven’t subscribed to any channels, or otherwise made it a regular source for entertainment. But if you do -- or if you discover a long video you’ll want to view later -- you can use one of the bajillions of tools available to get YouTube content on your iPod. I’ve been using JoeSoft’s Jax, which lets you drag-and-drop YouTube URLs, and there are others that we’ve covered before. If you have a favorite method for this, you can share it in the comments section, below.

Notice that all of this is also true for AppleTV, though as a TV-centric, internet-ready, non-portable product the emphasis is different than for iPod.

What’s your favorite iPod extension? Sound off in the comments below!