I like to watch movies/episodes on my tv, using the mediaserver functionality on my ps3.
But that shiny black box tend to be picky on the format of file its made to play.
searching the web for free video converters is hard, as most are kaka. And it takes time to convert a file.

owners of a 'recent' ATI card can use ATI Avivo Video Converter to quickly convert video files to alot of different formats (wmv, avi, mpeg, psp, etc)

It uses your grfxcard to convert instead of your cpu, so it goes alot faster.
-> i used it on a 55m avi file - 7min to make a mpeg2 file =acceptable in my eyes

although ATI's site states: "The ATI Video Converter is only supported on ATI Radeonâ„¢ 4600 and ATI Radeonâ„¢ 4800 Series GPUs."
it works on X1000 series and up (I have 3870X2 and it works), you just need to download the convertor sepperatly.

get it here

how to use it

the Avivo page

here the same thing for Nvidia

Thanks for the tip. Luckily I just got 4850.