Transcoding is something no one likes to do. Everyone prefers buying a player that supports whatever format you have natively. This is why I purchased a Philips DVP-642, one of the very first DVD players on the market that could handle DivX and XviD files.
Either phones lack the horsepower or the software hasn’t been written yet, but there are a lot of file formats out there that will simply not work with your Nokia.
When using a computer you can download these things called codecs that allow you to view any file you come across on the internet. Maybe some day Nokia’s Multimedia Computers will mimic the behavior that real computers have had for quite a long time. Let Jukka know how you feel about the codec situation. Should it be a problem we solve on the PC side of the equation or on the phone side?
Enough bashing, I don’t see other phone manufactures releasing these sort of tools for free. Check out the Nokia Video Manager:
Nokia Video Manager supports conversion from avi, mpeg, wmv and mov (DivX, XVid, MPEG-2 and Quicktime codecs) to mp4 (H.264). As such it is only compatible with devices that can play back the H.264 format.
Current S60 phones that are capable of playing H.264 are the the N71, N73, N75, N76, N80, N91, N92 and N93 (some may require a firmware update) and all S60 3rd Editions Feature Pack 1 phone – N95, Nokia 6290, Nokia 6110 and Nokia 5700.
Thanks for making things easier for us Nokia.