iPod 5.5 gen iPod can't play some vidoe podcasts???

I have subscribed to many podcasts vis iTunes Store, some videos as well. Things have been going along just fine, but recently, I noticed that some of my video podcasts are not showing up on my iPod. One is a new subscription that only has videos starting in January 2008 (Anthony Bourdain), one has many episodes going way back, but the ones starting 8/1/07 don't show up (the older ones do) (Food Guru), and one only shows episodes on the iTunes store starting in January 2008 (Cooking up a Story -- notice a common thread here?). None of these are labeled as "iPhone" "Apple TV" or anything in the iTunes store, so feel they should play on my iPod. Has anyone else seen this? Anybody got any ideas what I can do to get these episodes onto my iPod? They play just fine on my computer.

Last evening, I took the time to "restore" my iPod thinking that might help. No dice. I then deleted the offending podcasts and re-subscribed and downloaded. Still no joy. Don't know where to go from here.

As a side note, I have recently noticed some video podcasts that do make it to my iPod will show the progress (elapsed time), but the screen is black and no sound is coming out.

And, one more little gem -- I have a movie that I ripped from my personal DVD and put on my iPod, but now that I have restored it, I am told it is not the right format (this is one of several that I put onto the iPod). I know it did previously go onto my iPod, because I have watched part of it. I even tried using the "convert for iPod" feature in iTunes to convert it again, but no dice.

Anybody know what is going on here?

Thanks in advance!

I can't believe I am the only onw who has seen this problem! Nothing has changed on my iPod or iTunes, but all of a sudden I can't see particular video podcasts on my iPod. I get the error message that says "can't be played on this iPod". what is going on??

Well, they are all in Quicktime or M4p (or is it MP4) format and cannot be converted for use on iPod because they are already in a format that iPod should recognize. The option to change is not available.

Any more ideas?

Kamikaze said:

I recently noticed the same issue between my iPhone and 5th Gen iPod. The same files play on one or the other not both.
What to do think of using the iTunes to "convert Selection for iPhone/iPods"?
I was going to give it a whirl tomorrow? If it works it would be a pain in the rear, but.... it may be worth it.

Click to expand...

When I try that, I am told that the item "could not be converted... does not allow saving or conversion". So that does not work, either!

O.K., here's a new wrinkle! I got fed up with the error messages I was getting, so I went into iTunes and marked the offending podcasts as "not new". Then I tried syncing again. I have iTunes set to sync "all unplayed podcasts". Still got the error message. So, I set iTunes to sync all "new podcasts". Still got the error message!!! What is going on here? Why can't I get rid of the error message! I don't want to delete these podcasts as maybe someday I'll get some time to sit at my computer and watch them. I just don't know when that will be. Why am I getting the error message about videos that are not set to sync?

Has nobody else seen anything similar? Is my iPod dying? Is it iTunes? Or???