Windows Phone Thoughts: Video Reviews? Yes, No?

A few days ago, I published a video review of an hp LightScribe DVD burner on Digital Media Thoughts. The product review wasn't anything special, but the delivery mechanism was a little different: I used Photo Story to create a review where I combined photos, music, and a voice over track. I'm pleased with how it turned out, and feedback on Digital Media Thoughts has been positive. I'd like to explore the possibility of starting to do similar reviews here on Pocket PC Thoughts for things that can be reviews through pictures: hardware accessories, cases, etc. That review style doesn't work very well for complex products (such as Pocket PCs), but I think for a lot of other items (perhaps even software) this would be a viable way to review a product.

I'm currently the only one that will be doing reviews in this manner, so there's no fear of us suddenly having no text-based reviews. In fact, this will mean we'll just end up with more review content overall, which I think is a good thing.

One of the issues I'd probably address for this site would be to create video formats compatible with a greater variety of mobile devices - Photo Story 3 uses the WMV9 Image Codec v2, which makes the output compatible only with devices that have WMP 10 Mobile. And given how poorly the OEMs have done at getting this software out to you, this means that the bulk of Pocket PC owners won't be able to watch the videos on their Pocket PCs. So I'd create WMV versions that are compatible with both VGA Pocket PCs with WMP 10 Mobile and QVGA Pocket PCs running WMP 9 Mobile.

Check out the LightScribe review and let me know if you'd like to see this sort of review here on Pocket PC Thoughts.