Lately, the products I've found most fascinating have been portable video players (PVPs). Think of a PVP as an MP3 player for video, with a color screen and an output for watching video with or without a television. Though only the most ambitious former couch potato would try to watch a video while jogging, portable video does make sense--for car trips, plane rides, and such. Plus, some models can record shows directly from a TV; you can then upload them to your computer or watch them in another location. Loads of PVPs (some of which we've reviewed) should roll out between now and the holiday season, from such companies as Archos, RCA/Thomson, and Deltron. We'll post new reviews next week.

Due to the many parameters of video files, portable video potentially faces many of the same obstacles portable audio does. For instance, you can download TV shows and movies from Kazaa right alongside your MP3 files and load them onto a PVP. Or you can rip a DVD as you would a CD, storing a copy on your hard drive for transfer to the device. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) still makes it a felony to do this, even for reasons normally associated with fair use.

Perhaps Hollywood will create a livable environment for studios, consumers, and device manufacturers alike.

Hollywood has been watching the digital-music battles intently in an effort to formulate its own strategy for tackling similar movie-industry challenges. Rather than aping the RIAA's Sand vs. Water approach to digital distribution--that is, ignoring the problems in the hope that they will just go away, then hiring lawyers to try to make them go away--perhaps Hollywood will create a livable environment for studios, consumers, and device manufacturers alike.

Out of all the digital-music developments, there is but one shining example of compromise between these three parties: Apple's iTunes Music Store/iPod offering. Apple has succeeded because it controls the whole process: the company signs deals with labels, distributes the service, writes the software, and designs the hardware. As a result, consumers don't need to worry about compatibility, reliability, or legality the way they do with services such as Kazaa and MusicNet. Record labels get royalties on music they never would have sold otherwise. As the distributor, Apple got to watch as 2 million songs were downloaded in the service's first two weeks. And as the device manufacturer, Apple built the best player it could.

Hollywood should learn from Apple's success and apply the knowledge in both major areas of video distribution: television and the Internet. Listen up, Jack!

Non-soul-destroying DRM
Like other label-sanctioned music services, Apple's iTunes Music Store wraps every AAC file it sells with internally developed digital-rights management (DRM) technology to prevent you from burning the same playlist more than 10 times or transferring the songs to more than two other Macs. That's it. While other companies set much stricter rules that make users furious, Apple has found a nice balance between the rights of the music label and those of the consumer. As Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller told BusinessWeek Online, "[Apple's] goal is to make it transparent for the user so that they never have to think about DRM." I agree--treating law-abiding customers like corrupt criminals is not the smartest business strategy.

Seamless viewing on portable and home devices
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Entertainment should not feel like work. Video files must often be jiggered so that they display properly on a smaller screen. Hopefully, when Hollywood launches its version of the iTunes Music Store, it will keep this in mind and cooperate with device manufacturers to ensure that the videos they're selling can be played easily.

	Early adopters the world over have been pining for the Archos Video AV120 (pictured here), as well as its larger-screened cousin, the upcoming AV320. (Click to enlarge.)

A decent selection at a fair price
Apple launched the iTunes Music Store with 200,000 songs, which leaves a lot to be desired (no Beatles songs are listed). But there's enough music to attract users, and since you don't pay a regular subscription fee, you don't feel gypped when something's missing. A one-time price of $1 per song seems fair, as long as you get high-quality audio. How about $10 for movies and $3 for ad-free TV shows?

Studio cooperation
This one is a bit obvious but needs to be said. Hopefully, Hollywood will work with online digital-video distributors before they exhaust all other options.

Come to think of it, all these suggestions seem intuitive, but that didn't stop the record labels from dropping the ball, only to have it scooped up by Steve Jobs. It looks from here as though he's making good headway toward the end zone. Let's hope, for the good of consumers, studios, and online movie distributors alike, that Hollywood will take notice before the availability of PVPs, increasing bandwidth, and larger hard drives create a massive appetite for legitimately downloaded and recorded-from-broadcast videos, the sort of demand the record labels ignored at their own peril.