We take a look at Movies on TomTom which is one example. Essentially it's a program designed to add video playback function to the Go or 100 range and adds a conversion process, so you can rip DVD/DivX files to your device or PC for that matter - well that's the theory.

Installation

You can either get the software on CD (from selected resellers) or the main preference is a digital download.

Installation is relatively standard with the software adding any additional components it requires during the installation process.

However on one of the computers we used to test the software our PC seemed to take an age to install the software and in the end we had to do a ctrl-alt-del to break out of the software in order to re-install.

Design/Interface

Once running you get two choices of interface, a basic option and an Advance option.

The basic option is indeed pretty basic in both looks and controls, essentially from here you can select the quality of your video to be exported to your TomTom, then choose your device type (i.e which TomTom you have) and finally your installed memory card size.

The advanced function - as the name suggests - will give you more control over the file that can be exported to your device. In here you can customise your devices screen size, trim your files so only the parts of the film/file you require are exported, do double passes over the conversion process to improve quality and finally adjust the sound and video output.

In both options there is also a preview mode available which allows you to see the DVD/File you are working on, but this did not seem to work on a few occasions - in both modes.

Conversion Process/Performance

In theory the software allows you to convert DVD/DivX content to view on your TomTom or store files to your hard disk. The latter allows you to convert to a medium that could be used on other devices such as PDA's (in MP4 or WMV format).

However the real problem with the DVD conversion option is it simple does not work and probably won't work on 99.9% of the DVD's you own. The reason for this is that it can’t convert protected disks.

So really you are only left with the option of converting downloadable DivX content or files that have already been saved to your hard drive. Which is a job that can be carried out by other software for free.

What’s worse is that on a couple of occasions the program crashed during the conversion process and performing updates or using the support website gleams no answers to the problem. In fact the support section does not even list the Movies on TomTom software as a product.

Once you are ready to start the conversion process the software will convert the file and then transfer a basic player to your TomTom.

We used the TomTom One for our tests and found that the transferred player only has standard playback controls.

But the biggest problem was the playback of the movie itself, for one the screen did not scale properly to fit the dimensions of the TomTom (even though we selected the correct device from the software), plus it was a touch stuttery and the sound did not sync with the voices properly.

Of course this is probably due to having to use an already converted file for our tests, so if we could have tested the DVD rip process things may have been different.