As I’ve mentioned before, I am currently without an iPod. Well, my generous and kind missus has offered to buy me a new iPod, or other portable media player. So now, I have to decide which one I want, and I’m hoping you guys can help me.

First, let me tell you some of the things I want:

• I would like a lot of storage space. I have about 40GB worth of music, and even though I don’t need constant access to every single song, I got spoiled with my old iPod, and I have realized that just carrying 2GB worth of songs on an SD card doesn’t cut the mustard. I’ve heard that devices that use flash memory have longer shelf lives, but they tend to have less space.
• I would like to have a player that plays video. That’s not much of an issue, since most players also have video capabilities nowadays, so I should be more specific: I would like to be able to quickly and easily transfer DVDs onto my player, and I want to be able to watch said movies/TV shows on my player on a screen that won’t make my eyeball muscles twitch in agony. It would also be nice to be able to watch DVR’d television shows on my player, though I realize that’s not a common feature. Oh, and even though I want the screen to be big, I don’t want the thing to be so large and unwieldy that I can’t take it with me for a jog.
• I would also love to be able to use the thing to get online, so I could check my email, search for movie times, and even blog when I’m on the go and bored. This could make for far more productive commutes.

So now let’s look at some options:

• An iPhone. Despite having some bad luck with Apple products, all of my music and playlists are set up through iTunes, and it would be nice to not have to recreate all of my lists.  The iPhone seems unlikely mainly because I would have to leave my affordable Family Verizon plan to go on a more expensive AT&T plan. Storage space would be an issue, but it would be nice to have the unlimited internet access.
• An iPod Touch.  It has most of the functionality of the iPhone, I don’t have to switch my cell service, and they just finally dropped their prices.  But with a Touch I can only get online in Wi-fi hotspots, and if I want to watch recent TV shows, I have to buy them.  And as cute as the new Nanos are, I think the screen size is just too small.
• An Archos 5 120 GB Internet Media Tablet.  The wife and I fell in love with Archos when we were given the devices (temporarily, of course) when we flew First Class on our honeymoon.  These guys have touch screens, play music and movies, and you can buy a DVR dock so I could watch last night’s TV shows on the following day’s commute.  The DVR dock is sold separately, and I’m not sure how it would work with my existing DVR cable box.  Anyone know?  Also, this thing says it is equipped with 3.5G plus Wi-fi – I’m not totally sure what that means, though.  I think that I would have to buy a separate dongle for the unit, and possibly pay extra for the service.  Is that right?  If that’s true, it would kind of put the Archos closer to the iPhone, excepts for the DVR functionality and the higher storage capacity.
• Any other player out there – the Zune, a Creative player, or some other brand that I haven’t heard of.  Suggestions?

Help a brother out here!