MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Best format to buy books for Sony PRS-500

superglide · 12-14-2008, 11:56 AM

I'm looking for the best format to buy books for my Sony PRS-500. I don't want to start yet another DRM format discussion, but if I can't remove the DRM, I'm not interested in the format. I have books from when I used my Palm TX for reading, and I have used ereader2html.py to unDRM and convert them. This seems to work well. If it weren't for the unDRM capability, those books would be useless on my current reader. Sony lrs is undesireable for this reason.

Lit also works well with convertlit, but it requires using an authorized windows machine for the downloading of the books from the vendor. This is a significant disadvantage because I can't just buy and download a book while on travel since my only windows box is a desktop machine in my basement. Using some random computer, at a friend's house for example, would require installing MS Reader and authorizing the machine etc. So, lit is off the list for me.

I'm looking the rationale behind the following.

From the Calibre FAQ:

What are the best source formats to convert?
In order of decreasing preference: LIT, MOBI, EPUB, HTML, PRC, RTF, TXT, PDF

Lit is a nice package with html inside, as is epub. Is the conversion software just more mature than the epub, or is lit inherently better for some reason?

I haven't tried mobi.

It's not clear what prc is. It could be any number of palm formats.

I know why pdf is last, it's a page layout format and the pages are usually too big for most ebook devices.

I have been seeing reader resets when using epubs directly on the reader, but I don't recall ever seeing them when using lrf. This is true for books converted with calibre as well as periodicals downloaded and converted by calibre.

What about the ereader format? It isn't even on the list, but books I have converted seem to work well. Does it have some limitations like small images or no tables or some other shortcoming that makes it less desireable?

Thanks for any inputs on these questions.

12-14-2008, 11:56 AM	#1
superglide Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Massachusetts Device: PRS-505	Best format to buy books for Sony PRS-500 I'm looking for the best format to buy books for my Sony PRS-500. I don't want to start yet another DRM format discussion, but if I can't remove the DRM, I'm not interested in the format. I have books from when I used my Palm TX for reading, and I have used ereader2html.py to unDRM and convert them. This seems to work well. If it weren't for the unDRM capability, those books would be useless on my current reader. Sony lrs is undesireable for this reason. Lit also works well with convertlit, but it requires using an authorized windows machine for the downloading of the books from the vendor. This is a significant disadvantage because I can't just buy and download a book while on travel since my only windows box is a desktop machine in my basement. Using some random computer, at a friend's house for example, would require installing MS Reader and authorizing the machine etc. So, lit is off the list for me. I'm looking the rationale behind the following. From the Calibre FAQ: What are the best source formats to convert? In order of decreasing preference: LIT, MOBI, EPUB, HTML, PRC, RTF, TXT, PDF Lit is a nice package with html inside, as is epub. Is the conversion software just more mature than the epub, or is lit inherently better for some reason? I haven't tried mobi. It's not clear what prc is. It could be any number of palm formats. I know why pdf is last, it's a page layout format and the pages are usually too big for most ebook devices. I have been seeing reader resets when using epubs directly on the reader, but I don't recall ever seeing them when using lrf. This is true for books converted with calibre as well as periodicals downloaded and converted by calibre. What about the ereader format? It isn't even on the list, but books I have converted seem to work well. Does it have some limitations like small images or no tables or some other shortcoming that makes it less desireable? Thanks for any inputs on these questions.