One of the features of the new video iPod (the “Generation 5.5” one) is that it handles videos bigger than 640×480 just fine. This shouldn’t be surprising for geeks who own the older video iPod that plays 320×240 video, since the alpha geeks will know that the older video iPods could play some videos bigger than 320×240 just fine.

A nice side-effect of this is that if you are ripping DVDs to MPEG-4, you can very likely rip them at native resolution: I had zero problems playing Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica on a new video iPod, and it had a native resolution of 704×400. (Note: This is with a standard MPEG-4 video profile, not H.264 baseline low-complexity.) This is pretty cool, since you can now hook up a little video iPod direct to a big-ass TV and know that video resolution is no longer a differentiating factor between DVDs and MPEG-4 video. Now if only the iPod had component video connectors available…