[Jane Lee]

Alright folks... in light of some of your disappointments with Thunder Hawk and the inability to view YouTube videos, there's word of another YouTube solution that will work on your Windows Mobile device...at least it will on the Treo 700w/700wx! Now, it's not a direct streaming solution (unless you're viewing with a Nokia 770 internet tablet), but nonetheless it's a way to download for viewing on your device. LET US KNOW IF IT HAS WORKED FOR YOUR POCKET PC!

I'm sure there are a few of you still interested in this, and I now have found a way to get it working. Now, I can't take any credit for this, I am just spreading the word. I found out about this because of my Nokia 770 internet tablet, which has many of the same limitations as Windows Mobile in accessing the newer Flash videos that YouTube and Google use on their sites. The 770 also uses an older version of Flash, thus preventing these videos from working.

Well, thanks to "aflegg" over at Internet Tablet Talk, we now have a solution that works almost perfect.
http://www.bleb.org/services/vidconvert/
This is a little script he threw together in the last few days that lets 770 users convert a YouTube or GoogleVideo on-the-fly and stream or save it to the device. Once I saw this working, I just had to try it on my 700wx, and I really didn't expect it to work. Much to my surprise, I saved the converted file to my SD card, then when it was finished downloading, TCPMP automatically opened the resulting AVI file and it played nicely. Now the encoding rules he is using right now are very low, but this is to save server bandwidth and storage.

To watch a video, all you have to do it copy the video link from the Pocket IE address bar, then go to http://www.bleb.org/services/vidconvert/ and paste the link into the "URL" text box, then click "Convert". You can also upload a file you may already have on your Treo by using the "File" text box. Now keep in mind this is not 100% fool-proof, but it works very well on the YouTube videos I have tried so far. Also, the page formatting is not really Pocket IE-friendly, but once you get in there, you can see how to navigate without any problems.

Once you start the conversion process, you will see the scrolling text going across your Treo screen, and the file size progress will be shown at the bottom, just like when you load a web page. Let it finish it's thing, then the dialog box will come up asking you to save the file, just like it does when you download something in Pocket IE. Go ahead and save the file wherever you want, you'll see the progress bar at the top. When done, if you have TCPMP installed, it should automatically open up the new video file. Click play, and you should be set. Video quality and sound is very good, but I'm sure Andrew will be making tweaks as he goes along updating the site. Also, the conversions use a queue system, so it's first-in-first-out.

There it is, boys and girls...give it a try and see how it works, if you have any questions, let me know and I can help you out. Andrew did this script for the 770 community, and only knew about the Windows Mobile after I told him of my successful testing. At my suggestion, he added a "DONATION" button, so if you find his site helpful, PLEASE make an appropriate donation to help him keep things going.

[via TreoCentral, Windows Mobile 24/7]