Coming Soon To A Pocket PC Near You...

[Brad Adrian]

<a href="http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/story/17757.html">http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/story/17757.html</a><br /><br />One of my favorite ways to use (and show off) my Pocket PC has always been by watching videos and movies. Having a digital flick on my Pocket PC has helped me pass the time on many a long airline flight. It's always been a challenge, though, to create or find interesting content for viewing. Buying and ripping DVDs is a pain and there's precious little downloadable stuff I'm interested in. Until now...<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/ppcfilms.jpg" /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/lionsgate.jpg" /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.pocketpcfilms.com">Pocket PC Films</a> has announced that is has struck a deal with <a href="http://www.lionsgatefilms.com/index_flash.html">Lion's Gate Films</a> to distribute their catalog of more than 1,500 films, all to be formatted for Pocket PC and Palm (ugh!) devices. There's no mention yet about just which of the <a href="http://www.lionsgatefilms.com/CorpSite/video/video.html">Lion's Gate listings</a> will be made available, but there are definitely enough titles to please everyone.<br /><br />This is an idea whose time has finally come. I know that historically, moviemakers have had a lot of misgivings about distributing their digital content in ways other than on "secure" DVDs. However, a quick look at Audible.com shows that it is possible to provide digital content AND protect against piracy (I know, I know, Audible's not doing well financially, but that's not for lack of technical capabilities). Personally, I'd have no misgivings about paying near-full or full price for a feature film for my Pocket PC and wouldn't care if it was entirely copy-protected.<br /><br />As my friends and family are constantly reminding me, though, I am not like most other people. How much would you be willing to pay for a new release, full-length feature film for your Pocket PC?

[Steven Cedrone]

I think the cost should "slide" depending on whether or not we are watching recent releases or BW classics......

That being said, I would pay all the way to say 75% of the DVD/VHS price....

Just my .02

Hmmmm.....

Just looked at their offerings, looks like they don't have any BW classics, but they still have a decent selection....

[Gordo]

As far as I am concerned, watching a movie on my iPaq is still a novelty. With all of the dust, the small screen, the only think useful with movies on my Pocket PC is to impress co-workers.

[Brad Adrian]

...the only thing useful with movies on my Pocket PC is to impress co-workers.

Right. So what's your point? :)

[carlosgp]

A reasonable price for me is one similar to videoclub ones. A few bucks for movie.

[jizmo]

personally i think it's far from being novelty. surely the display on ipaq isn't the best available for viewing a movie, but then again if it's not big enough for that purpose, one might say it's not big enough for gaming or other use either. i see people on buses and trains using the more clumsy portable tv's with small display, and they're stuck with viewing what ever happens to come out at the moment. and if you're traveling during the day, before prime-time, most programmes do suck.

still, i wouldn't pay one penny for movies on ipaq. i own a video digitizer that i use to pack a tv-programme with divx4 on-the-fly and then view it later with pocketdivx. one hour with almost flawless picture takes somewhere around 60mbs. :wink:

/jizmo

[JonnoB]

battery, oh the battery... I need to watch a movie, play a few games, and then work without running out on an airplane. My extended battery on my 568 still gets eaten up by Media Player, PocketTV and PocketDiVX.

[Don't Panic!]

It all depends on the format they release their content in. WMV I'd pay $5.00, MPEG-1 I'd pay $10 to $15.

Don't Panic!
Bobby

[PeterOA]

Personally, if I've paid 20-30 bucks for a movie already, I'd be pretty hard pressed to want to pay again just to watch it on my iPAQ. Can you say "SmartRIP, VirtualDUB, TMPEGenc" and so on? ;)

[briansturdivant]

Between $5.00 and $10.00

[Ben]

Anyone know what happened to filmspeed.com?

Have I missed something? it seems to have completly dissapeared recently.

[Gerard]

I'd say $5 - $10 is comparable to the effort I put into running a VHS-to-WMV feed through my IREZ cable. I spend a few minutes configuring the PC before, set up the moment of film start on the VCR, run the thing and go away. Around 5 minutes before the scheduled end-time I go and babysit the PC, as show runtimes are often wrong on the box.
The results I get are weak, but at less than 60MB for a 2 hour movie I'm not complaining. On the iPAQ they are almost unwatchable, but on the Casio I can even make out the better grade of subtitles on non-english films. Not wanting to waste a lot of storage space, I only grab a few movies. This is especially useful is when a rented video is about to become overdue and I haven't time to watch it. I can hold onto the encoded version until I get time, then delete it in a second after watching.
Still haven't managed to get a single DivX movie to work, but thought the image quality of samples I've downloaded is very nice, I'm not thrilled so much that I try all that hard. Looks like TMPGEncoder is throwing registration messages onto anything I try now anyway, so I'll uninstall it. Too buggy to buy; just crashes my PC half the time or more. Pocket DivX is worse, rarely staying installed properly for more than a single use. I have tried every released beta, and none work properly.
So if this content is to sell to someone like me, it will have to be cheap enough, of adequate if not mind-blowing quality, and play in either Pocket TV or in Windows Media Player. What would be nice is a dual-version mini-CD. If a 3.5inch CD with two or three different formats could be mailed out, I'd buy that. Heck, if it proved reliably decent and offered recent titles and classics, I'd possibly spring for the $15/movie. No more though. For $20 (including mail cost) I'd start expecting full DVD quality.