At zunester.com he mentions video codecs in this post.
His words allude to a firmware update that includes DVR-MS & DivX support! Or am I wrong to assume this?
Quote:
Video stipulations
Lots of comments on my video posts. Let me stipulate some things to respond to folks:
It would be better to never have to transcode, but you probably need to do it sometimes. it's just a matter of how often.
Zune makes transcoding utterly automatic for the user; you add a supported file to the library, and if it needs transcoding it gets transcoded prior to sync. We do pre-transcode files for folks so they won't have to wait, but sometimes this doesn't work and users must transcode a lot during sync. Sorry. Go have dinner, maybe get a nap, then use your device. Or get a quad-dual-core machine. 
The key phrase above? "supported file". The biggest crux in comments: DVR-MS files. The challenge with DVR-MS is that it's mpeg-2, which is cranky and possibly unreliable (if you use an existing codec) or expensive (if you build one in to the software).
Let's agree DVR-MS and Divx support would be great. I wish we had it at launch.
My preferred solution, TMPGenc, is more poweful than most people need and more expensive than I'd like. Bummer. Can people suggest free/cheap alternatives and I'll play around with them? Frankly I suspect free stuff will be rough because (a) video is hard to program and (b) codecs and expensive. But I'd love to be proven wrong.
Thanks. The feedback is great and I agree this is an area for future investment and differentiation from the iPod.
posted by David Caulton at 4:30 PM 17 comments
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