2 questions about PPCs in general

[mitsubishi411b]

#1: What is a good SD card company? A SD card (Secure Digital) is just an expansion card, right? I've seen Viking, but that's about it.

#2: I want to play DVD's on my PDA, when I get one, either a PPC (iPAQ) or a Zire 71. I have read it can be done, and actually how to make convert the DVD onto the SD card itself...I could do it...but it requires quite a few state-of-the-art programs, which I have no desire to buy just for this purpose. Will the DVD be the exact same? You turn your PDA around, so it's horizontal, not vertical, to watch the movie, right? Can I just buy the DVDs already on a SD card? I've seen some for like $20, but the card alone is around $100. Do I need some 500mb card?

[mooreman]

I personally use a Sandisk brand sd card, but many people in these forums really push the Lexar brand over Sandisk for whatever reason. I have never had a problem with mine, but you'll find once you start converting (or "ripping") dvd's for use on your PPC, the cost of Sandisk storage will be potentially prohibitive. I ultimately wound up going the pcmcia route and have a 2gb pcmcia hard drive for it, for which I paid LESS than $150 for the sleeve and the card, and it will hold several movies. For the same money, you can buy a 256mb sd card and store only one or MAYBE two movies.

As far as software to do the conversions, follow this link and you should be able to make the magic happen...

http://www.pocketmatrix.com/guides/dvd2divx/

Bear in mind however, this method is not a quick conversion, each of the dvd's I have successfully converted have taken the better part of a day from start to completion because of all the steps involved and the time it takes per step AND the last few steps will more or less hog MOST of your computer's resources while in the conversion process, so you won't really be able to run any other programs while it's going through the processes. Hope this helps and good luck to you.