Today I explored using video playlists on the ipod: so that I can play video clips(video podcasts in my case) one after another without stop or me having to do anything in between. It's sad, but I found the need for this as I often have lunch by myself and watch video podcasts. But by default on the ipod after a video finishes, it just goes back the menu and stops. If I want to watch something else I have to go look for something and click on it again. This sucks. What I want is a continous stream of videos. You can do this on the ipod but it's an obscure feature. What you do is you create a playlist or smart playlist containing videos - in my case I created a smart playist of all the video podcasts that I follow: the episodes of which I haven't seen. If you are doing a smart playlist you could use a filter like: kind contains Video, kind contains Movie, or Video Kind is Movie to filter in all the videos. To sync it to the ipod - this is the tricky part - you go to the music tab(yes, you that's right, music tab), and make sure the playlist is included in ones to sync. You would have thought they would put that in a videos tab or something, but this just shows that it's not just Microsoft: Apple produces a lot of UI WTF as well - and trust me, this isn't the only example. Anyway, back to the ipod, select Videos, and then Video Playlists, and you should see the video playlist you created, click the play button and there you have it!
Major bummer: this doesn't work in front row, so my podcasts-as-if-it-were-tv experience is limited to the ipod for now, I hope this changes in the future.
update: This ipod feature only works when shuffling is OFF, and this setting applies for the entire ipod, not just videos. Also, I think the videos that I skip while watching the stream should not be revisited again in the stream, but the way it is now, ipod always starts from the top of the list and then down.