Foreign Perspectives

The speed of movement in technology is such that many people still see various devices as being distinct with no possibility of transferring content from one to another other than via very limited transfers.

But these transfers aren’t, by and large, limited.

For example, it’s quite easy to record TV programmes onto your computer. From there you could create your own DVD and play that. You can also transform the recorded programme and play it on a range of phones and even MP3 players. The business of playing videos on MP3 players in particular seems to throw people: they’re for music, so how could you play video on them? Yet, even on my 2 year MP3 player I can do that.

The new media players are even more capable. If you get one with an SD card you can store up to about 4 hours of video at pretty good quality and play that directly on the built-in screen or on your TV and you can even record TV programmes directly onto the device.

What’s not so good is moving from low resolution devices upwards. For example, videos recorded on a phone come out very poorly when played through the TV.