I'm going to bed - work tomorrow, but hopefully one of these may help someone:

Tutorial with screenshots:
http://adubvideo.net/how-to/encoding...motorola-droid
Bear in mind the above is for the Droid, but the N900 has a similar resolution and the same principles will apply. [nb. replace the word Droid with N900 ]

Video Tutorials:
How to Rip a DVD movie with HandBrake
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byZHx...eature=related

How to Rip DVDs With HandBrake-Windows Vista/XP [note: turn up the volume to hear the guy, it's very low]:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmDvs...eature=related

If there's a problem with copy protection, use the free DVDshrink or DVDdecrypter to rip the DVD to your harddrive uncompressed and then use that as your source.

[note: there are many tutorials with screenshots on videohelp.com for these programs]

If it expects a disc in a drive and won't accept files, use your burning software to create an image. If you don't have any software, I would recommend the freeware ImgBurn. I find it better than any commercial software, and it is the one piece of software that doesn't screw up dual-layer DVDs. Nero messed up quite a few, which I verified many times with additional CRC checks afterwards.

Download and install the free Daemon Tools which will allow you to have virtual DVD drives on your computer. Mount the image file that you had created earlier, and the PC will see it as if you'd inserted a DVD into a physical drive. Use this as your source.

Personally - and I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who wants an easy life as there are too many discrete steps - I would rip the DVD(s) uncompressed, then use something like TMPGenc or Super (both of which will queue multiple files) to encode to a DivX or XviD (avi) file, or Videora iPhone Convertor for iPhone standard compatible mp4s (which work great on my Blackberry Bold). The N900 seems to play Xvid/DivX/MP4 quite well in my experience, via TV out or not. For your tests, I'd stick to just an iPhone mp4 format for now until you can get it working.

Good luck!

And now a request for some help:
I bought a DVI to HDMI/DVI splitter, but I am getting no picture when I plug in the DVI to the GeForce 6800GT (old, I know) and the monitor's DVI cable into the splitter box, and the TV's HDMI cable into the splitter box. Or if I just try one in the splitter box. I had this problem with a previous DVI cable as well, but no problems if I use the Dell-supplied DVI cable direct to the monitor.

Any advice? PMs are welcome as it's off-topic.

Gotta order an SSD now and get to bed. I don't want to be wrecked again after staying up til 4am watching the Hurricanes get beat... but after the earlier game with Bowling Green, I don't want to sleep