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Perian - play most video formats in QuickTime for free
The veritable ocean of available video formats can often instigate a confusing and frustrating adventure in hunting for plugins and explaining to grandma why that DivX email forward she received plays the audio, but not the video. Fortunately, instead of bookmarking the plethora of codec download pages and backing up loads of installation disk images, a new plugin called Perian brands itself as a "swiss-army knife for QuickTime," as it aims to help solve all our video format woes. Perian supports an impressive list of codecs, including DivX, XviD, 3viX, FLV (y'know, those Flash files you can save but can't play because Adobe's Flash player doesn't seem to install an actual GUI front end?), AVI, and much more. Of course, you still need Flip4Mac if you have to play WMVs, but it looks like Perian can have you covered for most of the other formats you (and grandma) might encounter in your journey across the internets. As an upcoming bonus for Democracy Player users, Perian will be included in the next version.Perian is offered for free from Perian.org, though I can't track down any system requirements or whether it works on both Mac and PC.Thanks Rick
PiMPstreamer homebrew streams video
One of things I wanted in the next official firmware upgrade was the ability to stream video. A reader by the name of Joel stated that "the PSP doesn't have a Core 2 Duo, it has 237 Megahertz. Live streaming video needs mmuch more."Well, looks like homebrew has proven you wrong. Very wrong. A homebrew application called PiMPstreamer has just been updated, and the responses have been overwhelmingly positive. The program lets you stream movies and music from your PC to your PSP. Movies can include traditional MPEG, AVI and even WMV files. It's only been tested on 1.5 firmware, so those of you that homebrew-compatible PSPs might want to check it out. For the rest of us, I think it's a clear indicator that the PSP is very capable of a video streaming function, and we should demand Sony implement it in the next firmware.[Via PSP Hacks]
Sorell DN10 GPS/DMB-enabled Korean PMP
We haven't featured a foreign PMP on these pages in awhile, so for those of you hungry for a feature-filled device that you'll never get your hands on, we proudly present the Sorell DN10. With only 1GB of internal flash memory, the DN10 isn't going to win any capacity awards, although an SD card slot allows you to jack that total up to a still-low-but-acceptable 3GB. Features, then, and not storage, are what should draw Koreans to this model, as it boasts a 3.5-inch screen and both a GPS receiver for navigation and DMB tuner for watching OTA programming when they get sick of the two movies that they were able to cram onto the device. Filetypes supported include AVI, DivX, XviD, WMA, MP3, and JPEG, and pricing comes in at under $400 (measured in won, of course).
Samsung's YM-P1 20GB PMP available for pre-order
It's hitting our shores a little later than expected, but you can finally queue up for the US version of Samsung's hot little YM-PD1 personal media player (pictured), the YM-P1 (the absence of the "D" refers to the lack of a DMB over-the-air DTV receiver). Since we've been following this model for some time, you'll no doubt recall that it features a 4-inch widescreen TFT display, sports in-line recording to a 20GB hard drive, and supports a gaggle of formats including MP3, WMA, OGG, AC3, MPEG-4, DivX, XviD, AVI, WMV, JPEG, and BMP. You can also jack up the memory a bit via the SDIO slot, listen to and record FM radio, and even play some videogames (although the controls don't look all that well-suited for serious gaming). SamsungHQ spotted the P1 available for pre-order on Datavision's website at $370 (where "Our prices are too low to advertise!"), although there is no mention of when the devices will actually be shipping, so don't toss your Archos aside just yet.
Splitting Large AVI and DivX Files
So you've got a lot of large AVI and/or DivX files lying around. Perhaps you've decided to rip all your DVD's to DivX format to create a media center with your new Intel Mac mini. But because ripping takes a lot of time and you don't trust HD's, you also want to back up the ripped movies using that stack of 100 blank CD's your Grandma bought you for Xmas. But CD's only hold 700MB of data and your Divx files are much larger. How can you easily split the large files into more manageable (and backup-able) chunks?Enter Explicit, a free open source Cocoa application that provides a very easy interface for doing just that! Here's a screenshot of the interface:The author of this software used to have a program available called Xmerge, which allowed you to go the opposite direction and merge two or more files together into one large one, but it seems to no longer be available. (Ah...looks like it's an open source Linux application for which he just built a GUI). I have a copy of it on my Panther machine at home and still use it occasionally to combine files.
