Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle

Joseph writes, I have recently picked up the Creative Zen portable media center, and while I can download video from online and from my TiVo, I am looking for an easy way to convert my legally owned DVD's to WMV files to be able to watch on the Zen. I see lots of ways to do DVD to DivX conversions, but not any easy ones for DVD to WMV. The easiest ones still look like a 5 or 6 step multiple file conversion process. Any suggestions?

Keeping in mind that the legality of converting your DVDs to any format is somewhat questionable, there are a number of software apps providing a solution to your problem. If you're looking for a free solution, the number of steps is greatly increased, because you'll have to pass your DVD through many formats before arriving at the WMV file end result. I wrote about converting VOB files from DVDs to WMV with free tools sometime back. For around $30 there are several options for converting DVDs directly to WMV.

The first and best known of the WMV converters is Pocket DVD Wizard. The app steps you through a very simple wizard interface for converting a DVD directly to a WMV file.

CarryDVD is another app offering a straightforward solution for converting DVDs to WMV. The interface isn't as clean as the Pocket DVD Wizard interface, but it has plenty of preset profiles for choosing the right file size for your player.

Of course the free options for converting VOB files to WMV do work. It's just a question of whether you want free or simplicity.