Reviews
iLuv i182 Home Video Recorder for Your iPod and PSP
By Jeremy Horwitz
Editor-in-Chief, iLounge (Google+)
Published: Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Category: Video Recorders
The idea's supposed to be simple: buy a dock, connect it to any video output device, press a button or two, and the video's stored on your iPod's hard disk. That's iLuv's i182 ($230) in a nutshell, but there are a few twists: the dock stores up to 640x480 videos on iPods, 400x192 videos on Sony PlayStation Portables, and 720x480 videos on other storage devices - all in MPEG-4 ASP format. It includes a USB and Memory Stick/SD/MMC memory card adapter for connection to non-iPod storage devices, an AC adapter, and RCA-to-RCA video adapter, plus two iPod dock adapters and a Windows XP-only CD that's supposedly necessary if you want to sync i182-created videos into iTunes and then watch them on your iPod. In other words, without iLuv's software, videos are just stored on the iPod but not viewable - apparently an Apple-imposed limitation.
i182’s top surface includes a timer that lets you turn off the recorder after 30, 60, 120, or 180 minutes, plus a manual stop button if you’re not using the timer. Its rear ports (including the S-Video port) are all for video input rather than output, so i182 can’t be used as a typical iPod AV-out dock. Recording settings are changed from within the i182 software, toggling between three iPod-specific modes: 640x480, 412x240 wide screen, or 320x240, each with multiple bit rates. Macrovision copy protection is respected by the device, precluding i182 from being used to duplicate protected commercial videos.
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Editors' Note: iLounge only reviews products in "final" form, but many companies now change their offerings - sometimes several times - after our reviews have been published. This iLounge article provides more information on this practice, known as revving. |
