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	Media Made Simple

Last update: 11-05-2007	Submitted by Alan Grassia



Media Made Simple It is getting easier to add media to your Palm device. You may just want to hold off on getting that new iPhone or iPod Touch. I’ll admit it. I have a love/hate relationship with mobile entertainment. I love the idea of having gigabytes of music and video just a few clicks and taps away and I hate that my commute to the office is a whopping eight to ten minutes. Life can be so hard sometimes. When I find myself in a waiting room or at an airport, mobile entertainment is really desirable. The trick is getting the content you want on the device you own. Legal issues with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act aside, getting content on your device is getting easier, but it is still a bit rough around the edges. Great applications like NormSoft Pocket Tunes 4 and Corecodec’s CorePlayer Mobile are just two examples of popular Palm OS applications that making using digital entertainment enjoyable. m0k.org’s HandBreak (Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux) is an easy to use tool for converting DVDs to MPEG-4 files. With converters and media players getting easier to use all the time, does it make sense to use your Palm as a portable media platform? Media in the Palm of your hand The best thing I like about my iPod is how easy it is to use. Everything about the iPod and iTunes is easy to use. From the seductive 1-click Buy Now button to the transfer of content to my iPod. The biggest detractor is that my fifth generation video iPod has a tiny 2.5” screen and the new iPod Touch looks like the perfect cure. And then I noticed my Palm TX is sitting there on my desk. I’ve already talked about how the Palm TX is in many ways can match or exceed the feature set of the new iPod Touch here on 1SRC. And we already know that the Palm TX is more than capable of playing music and video. The question do enough people care to convert their own media libraries or would they rather just repurchase ready-to-go content from a small selection of media outlets? Normally I would say that the easy of use of the iPod would win out the day. My recent experience with HandBreak is changing that perception. Software that converts your existing, store purchased, legally owned, entertainment library has gotten easier to use since the last time I took a look at it. Converting, or ripping, CDs has, for many people, a trivial task. After connecting your mobile media player to your computer you are only a few clicks away from new content. Video used to be a tricky and time consuming endeavor that borders on being a mystical art for all but the tech savvy among us. And in the last year, even that has changed. Using HandBreak on the Mac I was able to convert a 48-minute TV show on DVD into a file that could easily use on my iPod, Treo, or Palm TX in about 20 minutes. (If you still have a working LifeDrive, you’re in luck. The LifeDrive makes a great media platform as long as you don’t turn on Wi-Fi.) Conversion presets really take the hassle out of trying to figure out audio and video coding formats making it very easy for people to experiment with mobile video. In just a few clicks, video can be converted for use on your Palm. In conclusion Mobile entertainment is only going to get more popular as time goes on. The question for companies like Palm is what part do they want to play. As for customers, there are plenty of options for getting music and videos on your Palm OS devices. The software available now as freeware, shareware, and commercial packages makes converting your own library an easier job than it has ever been in the past. However, as the old saying goes, time is money and is it worth your time to do the conversion yourself? Only time will tell. Can Palm’s devices be equals in the land of mobile media? Let us know in the 1SRC forums.