Never mind the iPod Video, my wife gave me an iPod shuffle and absolutely love the thing. I'm amazed at the sound quality that comes out of the tiny thing when I connect it my Grado headphones. Let me dare say, I think people who say the sound quality from an iPod sucks are slightly full of themselves - better than the sound card on my laptop that starts distorting when I play 50Cent and not much worse than a CD. Only problem is, it took me forever to convert my whole WMA collection into iTunes.

Ive got a solution for that

The biggest revelation that hits my clients like a ton of bricks is that because default quality is 128kbps they have 5000 crappy songs (not to mention the bootleg 16kbps's from napster)

fyi - go into preferences and change the import bit rate to 320

iPods are great. Apple hit it, and they can charge what they do because people will pay for it. MP3 players have been around for a long time, but Apple has really brought it to the masses. We're close to the point where most consumers will call any MP3 player an 'iPod.'

Clients love being able to have an iPod, then drop it into a station at home and have all that music available. I see video on iPods as a fad and not mass used, but for personal music and sources... they'll be around for a long time. Steve's comment on changing the bit rate is valuable, but for most multiroom apps and headphones, the sound quality is fine. I do think we rail about the lack of sound quality a little to much. Technosnobbery?

Anybody remember the "HALT DIGITAL MADNESS" t-shirts at CES when the first CD players were introduced.
A friend of mine got all hacked off when the first CD boomboxes came out. He couldn't understand putting a high quality audio souce in such a crummy system.

iPods are about convienience, not sound quality. Think mini, portable fireballs, with poorer sound.

I was once a dis-believer myself. I though "who in there right mind would want a yuppie device like that?" Well......I now own a 60gig iPod video. Every song I own is on that thing. And at 320 bitrate its GREAT to carry around, dont have to worry bout scratching your CD's. There is a site that can send in for $200 a 4th Gen. iPod and put in some top qualtity DAC's (digital to Analog converters) that make the iPod sound as good if not better than a CD. No MOD's for the higher generation ones yet, bummer. One thing I would have like to see would be bluetooth iPods.

Anyways, embrace them and intergrate them!! Crestron, Integra and others have iPod direct connects. Also DLO's Home Dock Deluxe is an AWESOME piece of hardware for an already existing system. Simple to integrate and cheap for the customer also.