... and now they appear to have dropped the 400kbps stream altogether; even for programmes where the first few in a series were available at this bit rate, the stream has now been withdrawn! (this is the --mode=flashlow version). They are trying to thwart us!

So, the only way to watch unconverted content is by O/C-ing to at least 850 and using the 500kbps stream with mplayer. This stream won't play on the stock media player because it is "main" profile*.

Side note: ffmpeg

Downloading Main/High videos and converting is quite inefficient in terms of power, bandwidth and time but doing so overnight, while charging and connected to wifi, it's an option. However, Maemo's ffmpeg (v0.5) cannot convert from High/Main to Baseline - it seems to be limited to being a transcoder. A new version was released recently (v0.55), which might make its way to the repositories (with a bit of luck!) - maybe this will make conversion possible.

Maemo versions aside, I have seen reports of people using ffmpeg in EasyDebian to convert videos from Main or High to Baseline
Questions
- What version of ffmpeg can be used with EasyDebian?
- Is it necessary to upgrade to Squeeze (or will Lenny handle it?)?
- If you're an EasyDebian-ffmpeg user and have found a client, what is it and can you recommend it?
- If you just use CLI ffmpeg, what switches/values would be suitable to make the following mp4-h264 streams play on the N900 (a) 500kbps @640x360 and (b) 1500kbps @832x468; padding permitted but no cropping. (stream info can be found here - filter to show video only then click on an item)
- Also, Do the more recent versions of rtmpdump work OK in EasyDebian?

*Not accounting the new DSP driver and DSP-overclocking.