[thealien]

I have been reading the portable player threads and I have a couple of questions. I am not sure if I want dedicated Music or if I want video capability. How hard is it to get DVDs I own on to the players? Are they durable? Battery life?


How do you get TV episodes and or movies I do not own loaded on the players.


I am going in for surgery soon and I need something to keep me entertained!



Thanks in advance

Mark

 

[malaugh]

You need to rip the DVDs, much the same as ripping a CD. I takes a long time, around 2hrs per movie. There are numerous formats you can use, the most common format is divx, which works with most media players.

 

[Denophile]

i used the ipod video for that. enjoy having the wisdom teeth out.

if you look at blu rays they have "digital copies" that you can download easily onto them--maybe even some regular dvds have this but i havent looked at any of those in a long time...

 

[thealien]

I wish it was wisdom teeth. I have an umbilical hernia about the size of a tennis ball. I had it fixed a year ago and it is back. I was in the hospital for 4 days last time.


I am having such a hard time deciding which direction to go. The 8-16 gig players are $100-200 and for a little more money $150-400 I can get from a 80-160+ gig players.


I have heard about some zune problems, I am not a huge fan of the apple products due to their proprietary filing. The aqous (sp) looks interesting.

 

[Denophile]

it was just a guess...

anyway, video takes up a lot of room--plan on 1/2-1 gig per movie...

these things can make great music servers too if you encode in lossless so if you're going to spend the money id get something that will hold a few movies for future plane trips etc...

 

[Brown Radagast]

The Cowon A3 is supposed to be pretty good for being able to play most formats of A/V. Simplest for DVDs would be to rip and then combine .vob file for playback, or play .mpg2 files too.


Otherwise, like others mentioned, you'll have to rib from DVD, then transcode to .mp4 or H264 variant.


I don't have one, but if I didn't also want games (I have a PSP phat), I'd go for one of those...


Another consideration is battery life and where are you going to be with your pvp/pmp/etc. For me, I go hiking, camping, or am at an airport, etc. I can easily carry spare PSP batteries and switch them out, whereas with some other brands you have to recharge whats there (i.e., ipod) (exception is for those who don't care about voiding their warranties and open up the case and replace...). There are some portable charging solutions out there, including USB chargers, so you might want to look at those too.


But the Cowon seems the simplest to get files into and then roll, without too much other processing by a PC, etc.