Tungsten

Apr 27 2009

DVDs on the Small Screen

In keeping theme with Jame’s Tungsten review and eBook tutorial, this week we’re going to rip DVDs for viewing on your handheld. And of course we’re going to do it with free software.

mu DVDs on the Small ScreenHandBrake

This OS X/BeOS/Debian Open Source project will be our tool this week. This DVD ripper is also a flexible encoder. We’ll use it to rip a DVD to AVI (though it also supports MPEG’s) that is playable on Palm and Pocket PC handhelds.

HandBrake1 DVDs on the Small Screen

Getting started is as easy as selecting your drive (or a previously ripped DVD folder) and selecting your title. Options let you select which language you going to run with and which format and codec you’re going to use.

HandBrake2 DVDs on the Small Screen

As I mentioned, I’m going AVI with MPEG/MP3 encoding. A critical feature for handheld-watchers, we can base our bitrate on target file size (as well as bitrate) to be sure we fit on the device or memory card.

Unless you’ve got a VGA Pocket PC, your device likely best fits video at 320×240. This resizing is done with a quick trip to the Crop dialog.

HandBrake3 DVDs on the Small Screen

Once you hit Rip, the software goes at it. On a newer Mac expect to spend a little more than the movie’s length in encoding time. Give HandBrake a few minutes to settle in to an accurate rate.

HandBrake4 DVDs on the Small Screen

I shot for a 200 MB file, and the resulting quality wasn’t bad, but got a little blocky on action scenes. Again, your results will vary according to your settings.

New Palm OS devices can load and play AVI’s through a QuickTime conversion. The files must be dragged to the “Send to Handheld” droplet in order to receive the proper conversion. To watch you new movie on a Pocket PC, you’ll want to grab PocketMVP, a free video player (no, windows media 10 for Pocket PC does not play anything but WMV’s)

Brian

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Jul 3 2005

Review– Tungsten E2

If you’re looking for a palmOne handheld device with good features at a good price, look no further than the Tungsten E2. The Tungsten E2 is the perfect solution for any normal businessman.

Note:

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Jul 3 2005

Tungsten E2

If you’re looking for a palmOne handheld device with good features at a good price, look no further than the Tungsten E2.

The Tungsten E2 is packed with features and currently available for only $249. It’s stunning feature set includes PalmOS v5.4, an Intel 200MHz Xscale processor, a 320×320 TFT color display with support of more than 65,000 colors, 32MB of non-volatile internal memory (you won’t lose your data if you forget to charge your Tungsten E2), an expansion slot that support SD, SDIO, and MultiMediaCard expansion cards, a stereo headphone jack, built-in Bluetooth, and support for creating and editing Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel file. And, all of this is packed into a nice 4.7oz package.

The Tungsten E2 is small, light-weight, inexpensive, and has enough power to run most PalmOS applications. Unfortunately, if you’re a heavy PalmOS gamer, you may want the Tungsten T5 instead, though the Tungsten E2 is perfectly capable of handling some of the “lighter” PalmOS games. As I said, The Tungsten E2 will give you good features at a good price. It’s the perfect solution for any normal businessman. The Tungsten E2 will give you everything that you need to survive in the business world, but it may not give you everything you want. You won’t find any “toys” (camera, voice recorder, etc.) inside the Tungsten E2. If you’re looking for toy-like features, try the Tungsten T5 or Zire 72.

The Tungsten E2 is another great product from palmOne and makes an excellent business companion.

Pros: The Tungsten E2 is small, light-weight, inexpensive, and has enough power to run most PalmOS applications. It’s the perfect solution for any normal businessman.

Cons: The Tungsten E2 does not come with any “toy” features, like a camera or voice recorder. Heavy gamers will find the Tungsten E2 to be slow and cumbersome. HotSyncing via Bluetooth is significantly slower than HotSyncing via the included USB cable.

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