[AC37]

Hey all, I received a Dell Axim X30 and a 1 GB memory card for Christmas, and I've really been enjoying it so far. I was thrilled to discover I could even play video on it, except for one small caveat...the Windows Media Player 10 Mobile it comes installed with seems to be limited to playing .WMV and .ASF files, two formats virtually none of my movies are currently in, and I can't seem to find any codecs or updates from Microsoft to allow me to play .MPEG or .AVI files, or any other format for that matter. With the 1 GB card I have ample room for the movie files, I just don't have the software capability to play them at the moment.

What I'm wondering is this...are there any good free players, file converters, or updates out there to enable me to play either .MPEG or .AVI files on my PDA, or convert them into the .WMV format? Those are the two formats 95% of my movies are in, with probably 80% or more of those being .MPEG/.MPG. I haven't had the best luck finding what I'm looking for online so far, I haven't found any free ones and only a couple ones to buy that haven't exactly inspired my confidence. All the ones I've found so far are $20-$50+. Now I don't mind spending the money for this if I absolutely have to, but it would suck to shell out that kind of money only to find I could have done it for free, or significantly cheaper anyway. If there aren't any decent free programs like this out there, is there at least one or two video players/converters that have a good reputation? All the ones I've seen so far that you have to pay for don't have virtually any reviews for them, look very proprietary, and are created by a company I've never heard of before, so I don't know if there's one specific one that all others are judged by or not that's generally regarded as the best. As much as I want to avoid spending money unnecessarily, it would suck to spend the money to get one of these types of programs, only to find it has virtually no user support, updates, or doesn't work very well. TIA for any recommedations or help on this.

[newshooter.45]

Try Kinoma. Thats what I use. It's "free" on Limewire.

[AC37]

Thanks for the help newshooter.

Great news...I just found a free program for playing MPEGs on PDAs! It was exactly what I was looking for. I just finished testing it on my PDA and it works great too. It's called PocketTV, and has great support to boot. The only (very minor) downside is it only plays MPEGs, but that covers 80%+ of the movie files I have, and it's easy to convert the few remaining AVIs to MPEG if need be.

The website is PocketTV.com. There's also a great forum called PocketMovies.net that was exactly what I was looking for in terms of informational resources for finding the player and helping me figure out how to get it working. The PocketTV.com website is not as user friendly as could be, which I suspect is why I had as much difficulty as I did in locating this player.

Here's a link to a thread about downloading the player, the first version I downloaded for it from another site was for WM5 instead of what I had: http://forum.pocketmovies.net/viewtopic.php?t=1509

The PocketTV.com website is a little counterintuitive on the purchasing/registering point along with everything else on the site, and while it initially appears that only the 7-day trial is free, upon further investigation of the site and I discovered that while you do have to register PocketTV, registration is free, very quick, and very simple. The FAQ walks you through it step-by-step, including any problems you have along the way, so it's a total piece of cake.

I guess it all worked out for the best in that I gave up a minute too quickly, I can't be the only one that's wanted to play MPEGs on their PDA and had a tough time locating a free program to do it with. Hopefully anyone else here on GT looking for this will read my thread and save themselves the time and frustration that I went through trying to locate something. GT has given me so much great information over the years that I'm happy that I finally have a little something to give back to the community.