can you help me with a few basic questions before I purcahse an iPhone?

[db-01]

Hi, I'm in the Uk and thinking about buying an iPhone. Similar to you guys in the US, the iPhone is a significant cost and hence I have been researching the product to make sure I can do what I want to do with it.

I've been playing around with my wife's iPod Nano 3rd gen to see if I can correctly use iTunes etc, so far I have been successful in syncing Outlook contacts and Calendar and also syncing music and video (at the same time) onto the Nano. (I have worked out that it is only possible to put both music and video on the nano if I 'manually manage' my files.

I've read on this forum that you cannot manually manage your files onto the iPhone, so my questions are as follows;

How do you put both Music and Video content onto the iPhone?

Am I correct in thinking that the contacts and photo's are not affected by the 'manually manage' option?

My final (long) question is regarding video, I have downloaded the Videora converter for iPod and iPhone and I have succesfully converted a home made video and transfered it into iTunes and onto the Nano. However, I thought that I would be albe to convert any video from any source, but I tried with a TV programme I downloaded from the BBC website (the BBC the biggest TV station over here in the UK) via their iPlayer website www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer but the video would not convert, it failed repeatedly after a few minutes. Is this because it is copy protected? (is there a way round this?)

The reason for so many questions is that the videa feature of the iPhone is quite an attraction to me, I commute for over 2 hours a day to get to and from work and I would like to watch video on the iPhone during my commute. Can I only watch home made movies or those downloaded from iTunes?

If you guys can help me out with basic answers to my questions, I would be very gratefull.

Cheers

 

[gavinj1999]

Hi, I will try to give you some answers to your questions

I am an iPhone owner so can answer from experience

Hi, I'm in the Uk and thinking about buying an iPhone. Similar to you guys in the US, the iPhone is a significant cost and hence I have been researching the product to make sure I can do what I want to do with it.

I've been playing around with my wife's iPod Nano 3rd gen to see if I can correctly use iTunes etc, so far I have been successful in syncing Outlook contacts and Calendar and also syncing music and video (at the same time) onto the Nano. (I have worked out that it is only possible to put both music and video on the nano if I 'manually manage' my files.

I've read on this forum that you cannot manually manage your files onto the iPhone, so my questions are as follows;

How do you put both Music and Video content onto the iPhone?

>>I manage Music using playlists, this way I maintain a list of what I want to have on the iPhone from my iTunes collection, not a big deal as I don't really need all of my collection with me all of the time and I manually select what video (Movies / TV Shows / Music videos) in the iPhone config page.

Am I correct in thinking that the contacts and photo's are not affected by the 'manually manage' option?

>>Correct

My final (long) question is regarding video, I have downloaded the Videora converter for iPod and iPhone and I have succesfully converted a home made video and transfered it into iTunes and onto the Nano. However, I thought that I would be albe to convert any video from any source, but I tried with a TV programme I downloaded from the BBC website (the BBC the biggest TV station over here in the UK) via their iPlayer website www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer but the video would not convert, it failed repeatedly after a few minutes. Is this because it is copy protected? (is there a way round this?)

>>iPlayer video is copy protected via DRM, Conversion would be difficult without the DRM being removed.

The reason for so many questions is that the videa feature of the iPhone is quite an attraction to me, I commute for over 2 hours a day to get to and from work and I would like to watch video on the iPhone during my commute. Can I only watch home made movies or those downloaded from iTunes?

>>For a commute it is ideal, however if the phone function is not essential, the iPod touch offers the vast majority of functionality at a lower price, with more storage and no monthly bill.

Overall the iPhone is extremely flexible. I personally rip DVD's using handbrake and find it to be brilliant.

Hope this helps

 

[db-01]

Thanks for you help.
The phone part of the device is just as important as the rest, I hate carrying lots of gadgets around with me, hence the iPhone appears to give a good alround solution.

I didn't realise that video syncing was controlled by the iPhone, I though it was all done via iTunes.

I guess that with a Playlist, an example would be to create one called iPhone and drag and drop the albums I want into it and then setup the iPhone to only ever sync with that playlist?

 

[gavinj1999]

Apologies for my poor explanation, when I say "iPhone config page." it is the page on iTunes where you select your movies.

Dave Taylor shows the options here

 

[Jesse Hollington]

Hi and welcome to iLounge.

Yes, syncing is controlled by iTunes, but there is no "Manual Management" option on the iPhone itself. The only solution to this would be to create a playlist (or series of playlists), and then select them for automatic synchronization to the iPhone.

Playlists can be used to control automatic synchronization of music, music videos, and TV shows. Movies are simply selected individually by title.

TV Show and Movie selection is done from the "Videos' tab, as shown above. For TV Shows you can either sync all episodes or all unwatched episodes of a specific TV Show (or set of shows), or you can use playlists to select which TV Shows you want to sync. For movies, you simply select the individual movies that you wish to sync from a list of titles.

Videos that you want to put on the iPhone need to be converted to an iPhone-ready format, but this is fairly straightforward with the right software, as long as they are not DRM protected videos from a source other than iTunes.

You can find more information on converting videos for the iPhone in our iPod Tutorials section, specifically the following set of tutorials:

About iPod and iPhone Video Formats and Display Resolutions

iPod/iPhone Video Conversion (Mac)

iPod/iPhone Video Conversion (Windows)

Managing Videos in iTunes

 

[db-01]

cheers everyone !

My biggest dilemma now is whether or not the lack of 3G on the iPhone is a huge issue.
Surfing the web with EDGE is very very slow.

Also, will Apple add the ability to attach pictures to text messages?

 

[Jesse Hollington]

Well, I suppose it depends on how much surfing you plan to do when away from a WiFi access point.

Web surfing over EDGE is somewhat painful depending upon what types of sites you're surfing to, but for iPhone-optimized sites (or mobile-optimized sites in general), and other applications like reading/downloading mail into the Mail app and the Google Maps and stocks/weather widgets, it's really not bad at all.

Although I'm sure we'll see a 3G iPhone eventually, it's anybody's guess as to when, and you might also want to consider the 3G coverage in your area and the areas that you plan to travel around, as it can sometimes be spotty even on the best of networks.

The ability to add pictures to text messages is called "MMS" and is not officially supported. If you're comfortable hacking your iPhone, this can be added through a third-party application, however. You can, of course, attach pictures to e-mail messages, and send them via e-mail-to-MMS gateways (if the recipient's carrier supports this). As to whether Apple will ever add this feature, again that's anybody's guess, as Apple is usually not very forthcoming about such things.