Apple's jump to portable video not being appreciated much? As Ars Technica reports, owners of video-enabled iPods haven't been using the video capabilities of their iPods much. Based on Nielsen Media Research's findings, only 15.8% of vid-iPod owners actually played even a single video on their iPods. And for those who actually watch video on vid-iPods, it only took up around 11% of their iPod time.

Nielsen's theory is that most who purchased a video iPod simply purchased them for the extra gigs of memory rather than the video playback function. Another probable reason is that portable video isn't taking off as fast as the market hoped it would (Insert implications for Microsoft's Zune here). Nielsen did admit that there had been some "technical difficulty" in collecting this research data, which led to instances of incomplete data in their presentation.

On the other hand, video sales on iTunes are taking off, despite this apparent low portable video usage from vid-iPods. The probable conclusion drawn (we don't know if it was by Nielsen or by Ars Technica - they weren't specific) from this is that watching video on the boob tube pwns watching video on the small screen of an iPod any day of the week. Nothing earth-shaking about that discovery, come to think of it.