Certainly, I’m not alone in admiring the iPod video player. My Lord, has there ever been a sexier piece of electronics? I mean, outside of any given mixing board, with all those knobs and buttons and slide-y things…

No music geek can resist a mixing board.

But, back to the iPod video player… This is going to be more revolutionary than even the original iPod. And the significance, it seems to me, has less to do with the machine itself than with the concept of selling individual episodes of popular TV shows, music videos, etc. at a couple bucks a pop. That, more than the ability to watch videos on a tiny, portable, color screen will be the lasting legacy of what Apple has just unleashed.

Already, my badly overworked girlfriend is eager to start downloading episodes of Lost that she’s missed so far this season (how can you live having not seen the “Orientation” episode???). And just to test out the cool new technology, we felt compelled to buy a Kanye West video — you know, the one with that awesome backing vocal track — last night at an extremely bizarre hour. It was really… neat.

Now, I suppose there’s some question how useful the TV downloading function is, given the prevalence of various DVR-type devices and services. But there’s something to be said for catching up on an entire season of Lost on a train or plane ride — whether on your laptop or an iPod. Again, the medium for watching these videos seems a lot less important to me than the ability to buy them item-by-item at a low price.

Also, I’m guessing they can sell a whole lot of music videos, unlocking a huge amount of untapped value. Videos have for years just been expensive ads. Now, you can get people to pay money for the ads themselves. Maybe this can even foster something of a revival in the art of music-video making — an art that’s been in bad shape ever since MTV started its long Grind into oblivion.

And lastly, this could be a real boon to independent filmmakers and artists. I think audio Podcasting was an utterly bullshit phenomenon. I have neither the time nor the inclination to listen to a Podcast, and I don’t know a single human being who feels differently. But Apple’s distribution system could be used to sell any variety of sketch comedy, or parody, or animation, or short film — and I think people might pay for that. Now, some of this type of material is already circulating for free on the Web. But when you’re talking about $1 a download, I don’t think that the price is much of a hurdle.

I’m pretty excited. I don’t really want to buy one of these gizmos, to be honest. I don’t think I’d find it too gratifying to watch a little screen on the subway. I’ll stick with my now-bulky-seeming original iPod for some time yet. Plus, it’s good to let Apple work out the bugs when they release something new.

But this is going to change the media world something fierce. And I can’t wait to see what people do with it.