I was thinking about getting one of these, but before I shelled out money for something like this I wanted to know if you could put DVD videos onto it. What I mean is to somehow rip one of your DVD's onto your hardrive then put it into your player. Does anybody here no anything about this or how it can be done? I've heard there's a program called DVD Shrink that may be able to rip a DVD onto your hardrive but I'm not to sure about putting it into one of these multimedia players like the Vision:M or iPod Video so that it would recognize the format? Anybody?

Here's the deal:

DVD Shrink converts to .vob, which is a proprietary file extension for DVD Shrink, and you need a codec in order to view it.

Essentially, the problem you're going to run into is converting format a into format b, format b being the format that your device will be able to view. Honestly, I do not think it's all that difficult to learn. All you need is some Google-fu and the wherewithall to download (sometimes) free software and install it.

Just a head's up:

iPod Video uses quicktime format, which is .mov. So, if you want to view DVDs on your iPod, you need to convert to .mov. I'm not sure if it supports other formats, you just need to check out the iPod specifications to see what it supports.

The Zen player supports MPEG1/2/4-SP, WMV9, Motion-JPEG, compatible DivX® 4,5 and XviD. Personally, I like DivX as a codec as it is high and quality and it compresses well. Also, WMV9 is widely used, though, as a rule, I avoid having anything in a proprietary format.

The other big factor you're going to run into is compression. While you can do pretty much whatever you want in terms of converting DVDs to a certain format, you're always going to pay a certain price in three major categories: resolution, quality, and file size. So, you need to consider what you want when you're performing conversions.

Hope that helps.

Chi, you seem to know a great deal about technology, and I have one question that I cannot get a straight answer to: What legal sites, other than the iTunes Music Store, can I purchase songs for my iPod? Thank you VERY much!!!

As I mentioned earlier, I hate properietary formats. In addition, I hate DRM (Digital Rights Management). Basically, DRM is a way to prevent people from pirating music; unfortunately, DRM also restricts the way you can enjoy your own music. For example, iTunes has a DRM that limits the amount of times you can burn a song to a CD.

As far as I know, eMusic is the only site where you can purchase .mp3s without DRMs. As a result, their collection is somewhat more limited than sites with DRMs, as the RIAA non-affiliated record labels will stay away from sites that do not have the "protection" of DRMs. (I place protection in quotes, because all DRMs can be cracked, it's just a matter of time and energy).

Some other places you might want to check out are Wal Mart's music site, Napster, Audio Lunchbox (good indie music), Bleep (audiobooks and assorted electronic learnings) and Urge (a new Microsoft / MTV venture).

Hope that answers your question.

Chi, I can't believe that with the popularity of iPods, someone hasn't offered some competition for the iTunes Music Store. For me, since I only put songs on my iPod and don't do anything else, the DRM limitations do not affect me. It's just that there's a few jazz songs that are not available at the iTues Music Store that I would like to purchase from some other legal source. Thanks for your assistance!!

STeve, there are plenty of products out there that compete with ipod. I have a flash mp3 player that holds tons of music.

There's a nifty one by Archos too. It can come with as much as a 100Gb drive for watching movies. And the screen's bigger than the iPod's too.

He's not talking about MP3 players, but rather, where to get the MP3's themselves.

To do this you can rip your old CD's, you can purchase them from places like iTunes, or you can subscribe to services like LimeWire and Napster.

Or The Pirate Bay, if you're into bit torrent and don't care about legality.

There are plenty of products out there to get mp3s