New iPod, Old Problem

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on December 26, 2007

Santa brought me a brand new iPod classic, with a nice big 160 gigabytes of storage capacity. It’s terrific.

But this morning, while getting it ready to take with me to the office, I noticed the recurrence of a problem I’ve seen before, but never been able to lick. I had bought a couple of Bugs Bunny cartoons from the iTunes Store, and now try as I might, they simply will not sync to the new iPod. They play perfectly well in in iTunes on my MacBook, but don’t show up on the iPod, even though they appear in the “TV Shows” playlist.

I have a few theories as to why this might be, but they are only theories: 1) I bought the videos, then paused the download for awhile, and perhaps that caused some kind of file corruption. 2) When I resumed the download, it was taking place at the same time as the initial sync with the iPod; perhaps this caused some kind of file corruption.

I’ve seen something like this problem before, and was just as confused about then as I am now. I had purchased from iTunes the entire collection of the French band Rinôçérôse and found that 10 of the 12 songs on the album “Music Kills Me” won’t play on any iPod I own, period. I’ve checked for authorization issues, and there are none. And as I write, I’m looking at the new iPod and its slightly worse than before. On my old 5G iPod and a 2G nano, if I tried to play one of the problem song, they’d just be skipped over. WIth this new one, the iPod hangs as if its trying to play it, but not succeeding. It remains mired in silence rather than skipping to the next song until I hit the advance button.

My solution for the songs would be simple (I just haven’t done it yet): Burn them to a CD, then re-import them as MP3s. Technically that’s a no-no, but the way I see it, its not as if I haven’t paid for the songs in the first place. But a “burn and re-import” move is going to be a little trickier and more time-consuming with the cartoons, and probably a lot less effective.

I don’t know what it is about these particular songs, or about these cartoons. But I’m going to start getting really annoyed with iTunes if this becomes a regular thing. Has anyone else seen this sort of thing? If you have ideas or suggestions, leave them in the comments below.

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