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Originally Posted by gadgetguru
Video on PDAs is a joke, who would want to watch the latest blockbuster on a tiny screen...short films yes, but full-length movies, the time needed to convert it is horrendous and not worth it.
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I agree with you and ripping movies from DVD and re-encoding is a cumbersome and time consuming process. Tapwave recently told attendees at the New England Palm Users Group Meeting they are exploring alternatives including better compression and the possibility of offering Zodiac-optimized content. Whether it will take the form of a download service for short films, TV shows and movies or availability on secure SD/MMC remains to be seen. The Tapwave VP of Worldwide Sales, David Wenning also stated that compression is under development has is capable of fitting a viewable feature length movie onto a 128MB memory card. He also said content will drive the Zodiac. I co-wrote (I'm and "Staff" writer) an in depth article about the NEPUG meeting over at Tapland that you may find interesting (shameless plug).
I'd personally be interested in buying episodes of my favorite shows like "The Family Guy" pre-packaged on a memory card at a reasonable price through a retail brick and mortar store. Watching this type of content (20-30 minutes at a time) makes more sense to me: Less eye strain and less battery drain than a feature length movie. Unless you're on a flight or have a lengthy rail commute, I don't see a huge demand for full length movies on a portable entertainment device like my Zodiac. TV shows and short films like the BMW series "The Hire" are probably where the biggest demand will be.