I got mp4 videos on both local storage on my N800 and also shared over the network. So how come they play fine from local storage but if I try over the network I get "media format not supported" like it was the wrong codec?

It would help if you told use how you're "sharing" the media over the network. Is it a Samba share? (e.g. standard Windows share). Also, which media player are you using?

It's a standard Windows share (right-click on a folder and share it; pretty straight forward). And it's the built-in media player. We're talking about the exact same file that's been transcoded to fit the media player - 400 X 224, low bit rate, which plays fine once it's copied to the memory card in the N800. And MP3's play fine shared the same exact way - why not the video?

Interesting, I wonder if there's some caching or random access issue? See if it's reproducible with any old mp4 video (or even better with the video which comes on the device, is that an mp4? It might be a generic video problem) then submit a bug against the media player application.

Samba is being dropped in Fremantle, so I doubt it will be fixed, but it would be interesting if someone explained the problem.

To avoid your problem (perhaps) and to use something which will be supported in Fremantle (and that therefore will probably get a fix) try using UPnP (e.g. for Windows use Windows Media Player and enable sharing and on the N8x0 install Media Streamer from Extras)

Okay I tried it and it kinda works. But not really. It can now find the files shared with WMP and plays (some of) them, the only problem is that WMP only seems to advertise the avi and mpg videos which are not the ones I transcoded, I made mp4s! So the playback is very problematic at best. And if I use File Manager to go find the mp4s on the network, they still won't play back.

I haven't used WMP in years, but you could always try something like XBox Media Center, which does UPnP quite well, and has worked for me in the past for this purpose.

Indeed, there are other UPnP servers (even for Windows ).

Strange that it won't add the .mp4 files to its library though, do you have a decoder installed for them on the PC?

Yeah I have VLC on the PC, plays em fine. Nero Showtime too.

I installed the Xbox thing, doesn't work for me. Crashes. XP box.

Trying to access files using Samba can even lead to a crash. It's a known bug that will not be fixed due to Samba support being dropped.

Is there a workaround for browsers? I'd like to be able to use the browser to open a web page stored on a Windows machine on the LAN. I'd prefer not to make the Windows machine a server, for security.