To pass the time on the bus, I have gotten into downloading various audiocasts (podcasts to you Apple people) and videocasts. I use Creative’s abyssmal Zencast software to download and sync these ‘casts to my Zen Vision:M. This program downloads these ‘casts much slower than programs like Juice, and even converts tiny battery-saving MP3s to enormous, battery-sucking AVIs. I have no idea why it does this.

Recently, I got it in my head that Nadia’s PC, which is a Windows Media Center, should be the center of our digital entertainment world. It functions as a backup DVR for when Comcast’s shitty DVR decides to not record our shows. It is the central hub for our music (I even signed up for URGE, against my better judgement). Both 360s act as an extender for it, effectively turning the console into a DVR and jukebox.

Since Nadia syncs both her Zens to that PC, wouldn’t it make sense for me to use it to sync my ‘casts to my Zen Vision:M as well?

The audio is no problem. Any player out there can play an MP3 file. The problem is with the videos. Some of the videocasts that I want to subscribe to only cater to the Apple crowd. Namely, the 1UP show and all of G4TV’s videocasts. At least for the former, I can manually download the show every Monday, but the latter doesn’t give a non-Apple option at all.

I hoped to find a codec that will allow for playback of M4Vs and MP4s in Windows Media Player 11, or a plugin for WMP11 that will automatically convert those formats to WMV. I can’t find either one of these things.

I thought that my overall goal, to use WMP11 as my one stop for all portable media, wasn’t too far fetched. Apparantly, it is. What I should have done is bought a video iPod, and none of this would be a problem. Of course, it would introduce a whole new set of problems, such as not being able to stream music files to my 360 from iTunes. This is why I was rooting so hard for the Zune, because it would have given me everything an iPod would without being an iPod. Even though Microsoft missed a few key pieces of functionality that I would have liked (such as built-in RSS), I may be able to live with it.

Maybe. I have a list of beefs with the Zune that I’ll get into at a later time. If anyone out there has a solution for me (other than “buy an iPod”), please let me know. I’m pretty much open to anything right now, except for the aforementioned iPod one.

Update: For the time-being, I’ve decided to continue using my own PC to handle the ‘casts. It has done the job so far, although poorly, but that really isn’t the PC’s fault. That is more the fault of Creative’s inability to write a decent piece of software. I have a couple of ideas in mind which I’ll try out, then come back to this in the future with my results.