I'm planning on getting creative's response to the video ipod, zen vision: m. I want to know how to get dvd's to play on it, and I want to know where I can buy tv shows or movies onto it. Please tell how to do both.

Hi. You need to find out what video types the player supports. For example, the video ipod supports MPEG4 and H.264 video formats--so any movies you have must be ripped with the correct encoder. I have no idea what formats the Zen supports. Regarding video downloads, I don't think I can recommend any only because in my experience, the quality varies greatly from site to site, I'd rather just rip my own movies (especially if you're paying for a poor quality video).

Let us know how the Zen works out--admittedly I have a video ipod, and if it wasn't a present, I'd rather get an apple alternative.

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AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (@2.6 GHz)
2x1GB OCZ Spec. Ops. PC3200
ASRock Dual939-SATA2
Antec TruePower 550 watt PSU
80 GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 7200 rpm
300 GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 7200 rpm
120 GB Maxtor ATA/133 7200 rpm
ATI Radeon x1950 Pro

I found out that I could get movies online from amazon's unbox service, but I was wondering how you rip dvd's to the zen. The zen supports DivX 4 & 5, XviD5, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG4-SP, WMV9, Motion-JPEG.

The Visions:M's are probably one of the best multimedia players on the market, in my opinion. The Ipod Videos are pretty much a harddrive and a screen which would cost Apple(the makers of Ipods) about $50 dollars to make, but resell at close to $400, where the Visions come from a respected company and have many more fetures such as being able to transfer files from cameras and other media players. Also a 30g Visions:M is around $100 dollars cheaper than a 30g Ipod.

Hi. You'll need to get a DVD ripping program. Two that I have used are Super DVD Ripper and IMToo DVD Ripper. Neither of these programs are free, but in my opinion, Super DVD Ripper works very well, and is worth the money. I believe there is a free version of Handbrake (formerly a Mac program) available for windows--I haven't used it much--just google it and I'm sure it'll come up.

I've found that for AVI conversion, XVid gives the best conversion--I wouldn't bother with MPEG1 or MPEG2. Either go XVid or MPEG4. You'll need a different program to convert an AVI file to MPEG4 as neither of the dvd rippers I mentioned will convert to MPEG4. I like to use PQDVD Ripper to IPod converter--it's a great program for converting AVI files to MPEG4. Apparently it can convert DVD's to MPEG4 directly, but sometimes the program crashes when I try that--so I use a separate ripper before, and just convert the AVI to MPEG4.

Keep in mind that if you use a file format that is more compressed (like H.264 vs MPEG4), then the video will need to be further uncompressed when you're watching it on your player--which greatly affects the battery life. Also a higher bitrate will cause shorter battery life because the processor has to interpret more data per frame--which also uses power. Just two things to keep in mind.

__________________
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (@2.6 GHz)
2x1GB OCZ Spec. Ops. PC3200
ASRock Dual939-SATA2
Antec TruePower 550 watt PSU
80 GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 7200 rpm
300 GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 7200 rpm
120 GB Maxtor ATA/133 7200 rpm
ATI Radeon x1950 Pro

I just ended up googling for a way to do it for free. I got a free program called DVD-WMV. I successfully converted Monty Python and the Holy Grail into a wmv file. Thanks to the creative's many supported video codeecs, I can put it on the instant I get the zen. I'm selling the ipod it replaced and something else so that I can pay for it. I'll tell how it goes with the zen when I get it.