Some players (eg an old standalone sony or philips dvd player with divx playback included) are rubbish at playing back movies that have a high bitrate. If converting a video did work, and everything converted to a simpler format did play back ok when on the phone, then its surely something a software update by nokia could fix for its playback. Ill try and convert some of my own recorded videos to see what happens, although im still in doubt that thats the solution! thanks

does anyone know of any third party video recording apps for the n900 I can download? perhaps they are much better than whats built in to the phone at the moment. i know the phone has not been around for very long, and there will no doubt be slight improvements to the default applications in the future