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mmplayer, great for playing multimedia video files without having to convert them into Kinoma.

I currently have a Treo 600. It's really been a great phone/pda. The camera's pictures aren't the best, but they're about what you'd expect from a phone-camera. I use it (together with my 512 mb SD card) as my mobile mp3 player using Pocket Tunes, and even use it to watch movies using MMPlayer and avi's specially encoded with mencoder thusly:

The only drawback has been the low-res screen (160px^2). I'd love to get a version with a 320x240 or something like that.

You're right, it is absurd to directly compare a laptop to a PDA and vice versa.

I will say, however, that I can and do watch MPEG & AVI videos and even full DVD movies on my Tungsten|T3. I put the video (DVDs transcoded using dvd::rip to ~400MB XviD AVIs w/96kbps MP3 audio @ ~320x240 resolution) on my 512MB SD card and watch it using MMPlayer. Works pretty damn good actually, especially in widescreen. I stick a few on my 20GB Neuros and load 'em up whenever I want using a portable card reader and whatever PC I happen to be at.

Also, portable keyboards, like the Stowaway work well and allow quick entry and retaining maximum portability. I had one for my Prism and used it a lot during meetings. I have yet to need one for my T3 since I don't do a lot of data entry any more and the virtual qwerty keyboard is sufficient for what I do (though I long for the IBM ATOMIK layout I had on my Prism).

Many people can and do "pick up" grafiti quickly. I think it took me about 1 hour to get the general hang of it and maybe 2 days to be really comfortable and proficient... Grafiti2 is even easier! Of course, I still prefer tapping out letters on a virtual keyboard; or better yet, using my stowaway (when I had it) for a lot of typing, such as word processing with WordSmith.

I have even transcoded entire DVDs down to ~400 MB using dvd::rip, put them on my 512 MB SD card and have watched the entire movie on my PDA in Landscape widescreen. The resolution is excellent for a PDA and the 400 MHz X-Scale CPU is very quick. Battery life is OK, but with the BoxWave miniSync (w/Car and Wall adapters) I never worry about it.

The best part is the price of my setup:
$300 PDA
$80 Ericsson T68m BlueTooth Phone
$99 512 MB SD Card
$40 BoxWave miniSync + Accessories
$40 Iambic Agendus Pro
$40 SnapperFish SnapperMail Standard
$50 SplashData SplashWallet
$35 Mapopolis 1-year North America w/o GPS Support
$30 BlueNomad WordSmith
$15 MMPlayer
$12 ZLauncher
$10 PDAMill Solitaire
$0 OliveTree BibleReader+
$0 BigClock
$0 MyCheckbook
$0 HandyShopper
$0 HandZipperLite
$0 IconMgr
$0 SeaTraffic
$0 TuSSH
$0 upIRC (limited shareware)
$0 Warfare, Inc. (shareware demo)
====
$751

I actually paid $611 total for all the above because I purchased many of the software items listed above long ago for my previous PDAs, but the above is what someone would pay to buy it now.

I think anyone that tried to convince a jury that I shouldn't be allowed to watch a movie I bought on a device I bought would be laughed out of court.

I see this current activity as damage control, public relations, and possibly a backdoor into monitoring/ratings. After all, if they can show that x people watched the movie on their portable player, and were forced to view the commercial attached to it, they can get revenue from that commercial.

Palm doesn't include a JVM on the Zire line. You can get one for about $5 from them, but it also sucks a good chunk of memory. You can get something like SuperWaba, but I don't know what kind of audio API's is has.

As for an OGG player, MMPlayer seems decent.

c.

The latest version of mmplayer for connected PalmOS machines (the Tungsten C has built-in WiFi, as does the Sony UX50) now supports HTTP streaming over the wireless connection. Not just audio, but video as well.

For example, use MMPlayer to play any one of the many full-length movies that would fit on a large card, using a Treo 600 (which albeit uses SD rather than CF).

Thanks,
Peter

Not to mention DivX plays well on Palm and PPC. PocketMVP for Pocket PC and MMPlayer for PalmOS both play DivX just fine.

Check out MMPlayer for a DivX/MPEG-1,2,4 player that works on regular Palms.

David

Checkout mmplayer.com.

I'm trying to develop a mobile media player that supports most codecs, formats and protocols.

I think this will be most useful when finished.