Genuine innovation is reasonably rare these days, isn't it? For
every shining example of tefal head wizardry, there are a
hundred knock off iPod accessories that are best suited to
lining the inside of your wheelie bin.  It's fortunate, then,
that every so often an item arrives to shake us from our tech
torpor, and the Sandisk V-Mate is just such a device.  The
V-mate is a card reader with video input and output, and it
records and plays the MP4 codec, widely used by mobile devices.
What this means is that you can record to a memory card directly
from any video source, such as set top boxes or DVD players, and
then whack the card straight into your mobile device for instant
portable entertainment. For PSP users, it's a major boon -
there's no need to even switch your PC on, let alone get bogged
down in lengthy re-encodes.  There are a couple of first
iteration niggles, though, and they could prevent the V-Mate
from taking permanent home beneath your television.  The first
problem is that while you're using t