I disagree. Given a choice between two e-book readers I'll choose the one that makes it easier for me to read what I want to read. Given a choice between two e-book readers that both solve the above problem, I'll definitely choose the one that also plays video. Being able to quickly switch from reading a book to watching a movie without having to change device seems like a feature at least I'd want. Also imagine books and newspapers with embedded video clips to help illustrate their point. Most news websites contain at least some video or motion graphics, why not extend that to the ebook reader?
Call me unimaginative but I think this would be feature creep. First, e-book readers are very very far from solving the problem of being as much fun to read as dead tree books so I would concentrate on that first.
Second, books don't have videos in them. They have mostly words and a couple of illustrations. I don't see this changing in the short term. I think videos in books would be way too distracting. Books are very different from newspapers.
I can read e-mail on my computer and on my phone. I can read the news on my computer or on my phone. A device that is sold as an e-book reader but isn't as fun to read as dead tree books but it can do the same things as my phone and my notebook has no appeal for me.
I guess it depends a lot on what you want an ebook reader for. I want one that can handle all my dead tree reading. For me a good 50% of my day to day reading is newspapers, magazines and journal articles. If a device can't handle that and only does novels them I'm flat out not interested. That being said I agree with you that I'm never going to buy a device that isn't first and foremost really good at reading books, no matter what other features it may have. Once they have that cracked then if they can also add video (without making at worse ebook reader) then I'll be even more happy.
The iPhone seems to be a usable phone,mp3 player and web browser. Perhaps not necessarily class leading in any one of those areas (although a lot of people will argue that it is), but certainly usable and convenient.
They had cut quite a few corners when they first released the iPhone. It certainly wasn't suffering from feature creep. It didn't support 2G, video recording/playback, it didn't have a GPS etc. They have gradually added features after the initial release.
A phone that could also play mp3s AND browse the web AND play videos AND display photos AND... many would call that feature creep when it comes to a phone. Certainly more so than a device that can display text AND play videos.
