It's an iPod world and we're just living in it. The iPod - which has evolved since Apple first released it in 2001 - has a new version on the market this month. It now can play videos downloaded from the iTunes music store for $1.99. Music videos, Pixar shorts and select ABC and Disney television shows are now all available the day after broadcast as QuickTime downloads for our viewing pleasure.

Or are they? I set out on a quest to find out if the new iPod supports captioning. I emailed some key PR folks at Apple, but they were apparently stumped by my question as two weeks later, I was still waiting to hear from them.

In the meantime, my husband and I visited our local Apple store. When we posed our question to the store employees - also known as Mac Geniuses - they immediately recognized the challenge. One of them got a gleam in his eye and said, "Good question! I love good questions."

Neither my Mac-freak husband nor the alpha geeks of the store could find any way to turn on captioning for videos on the new iPod. The store employees even checked Apple's internal documentation and a video clip they had on an iPod. As an aside, my husband noted that the font used for notes stored on the iPod was legible and about the right size for captioning on the video screen.

There is also no documentation on whether TV shows, music videos, and short movies bought through iTunes have closed captioning. One of the store employees mentioned that he had seen subtitles and they were readable.

Since my husband has the latest version of iTunes on his laptop - which is required for these videos - we bought a sample video (one I know was captioned when broadcasted) and poked around as it can be viewed on the computer as well. Captions do not appear to be present. The videos are encoded in QuickTime and have both audio and video tracks, but there is no captions track. There is also no indication of captioning in the new iTunes settings.

Along with the new iPod, Apple released Front Row, a program bundled with the iMac that lets you access music, pictures, movies, and any DVD you load into the computer. Unlike other programs, this one is designed for use from a distance - like your couch. Apple's DVD Player program has supported captioning for a while but it was unclear whether Front Row would also support captioning of DVDs.

By the way, I eventually did hear back from the PR folks. I received conflicting information from Apple about whether DVD played back in Front Row can be viewed with captions. Again, testing it in the store was the best method of finding answers. You cannot turn on captioning from Front Row. However, we turned on captioning for a test DVD in DVD Player, paused the DVD, and then switched to Front Row and resumed playing the DVD. Captions appeared just like they do in DVD Player. This suggests Front Row uses DVD Player preferences when playing DVDs.

The frustrating thing about all of this is that the technology exists. QuickTime even supports both open and closed captioning. But this is the problem with a first generation product: Apple was apparently eager to get it on the market and is clearly still trying to get the kinks out. The new iPod doesn't have other features common to TV shows either, like audio in Spanish.

If Apple's TV show sales take off like their music sales have, we can only hope that we'll be able to take advantage of this product. As they say, television is our music, and we're still waiting for our iPod.

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