Want your Zune to play DivX?

While I was in the US I got one of these Zune thingies. 

 While being quite happy with it - a few things got me really annoyed.

 Firstly the lack of DVR-MS support that allows me to play recorded TV on it from my Media Centre was just frustrating.

 Secondly and even more irritating is the all you can eat music service is US only!!! Arrgghhh! For those of you not in  the USA you can relate to just how frustrating that is!

Anyhow - Im also a DivX fan and given it doesnt support that either I started looking around for a decent DivX to WMV convertor. Theres lots out there including TMPGEnc 4.0 and others like PQ Zune Video Converter but Im too cheap to shell out $$$ for yet another tool.

I started to look around for free alternatives and little did I know that there was one in my own backyard so to speak!

I use Windows Media Encoder (the 32bit version - there is a 64 bit version too) to do all my blogcasts so Id see if I could do a file convert from DivX to WMV with it. I installed the latest DivX 6.5 from divx.com and tried a convert. The first one I tried using VBR failed.

Then I tried DVD quality video (CBR) and CD quality audio (CBR) to encode against and it worked a treat!  It seemed to have problems only if you chose VBR...Works much quicker if you choose lower quality video and audio which still looks fine on my Zune.

So It’s definitely not the quickest or as quick as either of the two above but at least it works and its free. Havent tried it with other codecs or anything but at least I know it works with DivX :)