I'm looking for some advice bc most of the posts I've found here have to do with converting/transcoding files other than dvr-ms.
I have tv shows like battlestar I want to be able to watch oln my 810. I'm using mcebuddy to rip to wmv and mp4 (h264). Neither played worth a darn on the 810 so I used the nokia ITVT app-- dragged and dropped. Conversion worked, dropped new mp4 to 4 gig card.
I've installed mplayer and canola2 beta. Mplayer sees the mp4 but craps out- the video is screwy- tilted 45 degrees, maybe 1 fps. Playing wmv causes gmplayer to hang. Canola2 doesn't see the mp4 or wmv as a suppoted file at all. Built in mediapleyer sees the files but reports no codec support.
So my q's
1. is there a codec pack for N810
2. is anyone successfully converting dvr-ms to something watchable, and if so what pc app are you using to convert, what format/coddc, and what player on the 810?

There's a bug request in Bugzilla to support this. See here:
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2644

I've asked the user who filed the bug to attach a small sample file so that we can take a look at it, but as of now there's no response.

If you can produce a small (under 2MB) file in this format, please attach it in Bugzilla.

Sure thing. I'll record a couple seconds of TV, it'll create the dvr-ms file, and I'll upload the attachment. (Of course I'll make sure that ITVT still chokes on it).

It would be a very good thing to be able to go straight from dvr-ms to the ITVT --> to the N810 without the middle step of mcebuddy.

FWIW There's a download for XP (non MCE) that allows non-MCE OS's to watch dvr-ms files inside of windows media player. Maybe ITVT needs this codec? I've been using this functionality to watch my recorded tv from pc #1 (MCE box) on my pc #2 laptop (XP box) and never had a problem but without the update if you try to watch a dvr-ms on an XP box WMP will choke on it.

ok just uploaded a 2 second clip to the bug issue tracker. ITVC (sorry about screwing up th acronym in earlier posts) won't recognize the format.

I'm stll hoping someone out there regularly converts dvr-ms's to something playable on the n810 and is will to share their secret- which transcode app, what reso/bitrate/codec, and what version of what N810 player they are using. thanks!

I'll look into this, but I suspect that this codec (as most MS codecs) has serious limitations on commercial distributions. But either way, I'll look into it.

Do you by chance have a URL where this codec can be downloaded? Searching the MS site didn't come up with anything useful.

Try http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms787495.aspx
it has a link to the qfe.

FYI, all the recorded tv files (dvr-ms) I'm creating are unencrypted, i.e. the broadcaster has not set the copy protection flag

Ok, that was my next question if there was DRM on the files

I've opened up a bug in our internal Bugzilla on this so stay tuned and let's see what happens.

victor- does ITVC always output the same video properties, regardless of the input-- i.e. whether I throw a 1900x1080 video or a 640x480, that ITVC will transcode to 400x240? How about bitrates for video and audio- does ITVC have a static setting that's optimized for our tablets or does that vary by the type of video input?

I'm pursuing parallel paths here-- the author of mcebuddy may be willing to add a configuration setting for video output support for the N810's since he's got the conversion of dvr-ms's to pretty much any format (but not n810 friendly settings) in his code, while you've got the n810 friendly results but aren't dvr-ms friendly yet.

Yes, the bitrate and resolution of the output video/audio will always be the same. It's pretty much the optimal size/resolution/bitrate for playback on the tablet. If you look in the advanced settings, you can see where you can tweak that a bit, but our design goal was to make it work as good as possible, for the majority of the cases, straight out of the box.

Even if we don't do dvr-ms support right away due to codec distribution issues or whatever, there's a very simple (and powerful) API that a 3rd party dev could tackle to add any kind of functionality that they desired to the app.

I am unfortunately not that developer
But if some kind soul lurking here uses MCE as their DVR and wanted to add support for dvr-ms, I would be very grateful.