I want to say that I put a lot of thought and preparation into purchasing the NOOK Color. I also have to say that I did not purchase this for myself. It was a purchase for my wife for her birthday. I also had some discussion with a colleague about some of the details as well. He has one and we were able to do some brief testing on some things I wanted to make sure would work.
So why did I select the NOOK Color? Well my wife already has a Kindle. She has had it for a couple of years, so it is one of the early models. She really liked it but was looking for something that could do more. Her list of requirements was not large but they were very specific. I must add that a data plan was not part of the consideration. We felt that Wi-Fi would be sufficient.
- Ability to read books, magazines, etc
- Lightweight
- Small to be able to carry in a travel bag
- Able to hold a charge for a long flight
- Ability to browse the Internet
- Ability to send and receive email
- Affordable
- Ability to copy files to and from the device via her laptop
- Ability to play movies during travel (FYI, this was the tough part)
I have had the luxury of experimenting with the Apple iPad, Motorola Zoom, and BlackBerry Playbook. I even got a peak at the Galaxy TAB. Some of these are able to meet the needs above but the price points kept them off the list. The other concern with the Apple iPad we discovered in our experimentation was that these were not easy to read if you were in the sunlight or wearing UV sunglasses.
I wanted to make sure that we could address the last bullet item on the list. So I did some research online. I found plenty of information on the fact that it could play movies, however following the discussion lists I had my concerns. Everyone was talking about the fact that they were not able to make it work after the purchase. I decided to call Barnes and Nobles. I was able to get straight through. The person on the phone was very pleasant but unsure of the answer. They put me on hold briefly. While I was on hold I also submitted the same question to the Barnes and Noble online support email. Just as I finished typing and hit submit, the support person came back on the phone. They said yes this is supported and here is the list of supported file types.
- Nook Color can only play these video formats: 3GP, 3G2, MP4, M4V, and OGG and supports MPEG-4 Simple Profile up to 854x480, H.263 up to 352x288, and H.264 Baseline profile up to 854x480.
About 30 minutes later I received an email from support and they basically gave me the same list. So I reached out to my colleague with this new found information to see if we could experiment on his NOOK Color. We were able to get this to work with a movie he owned after getting a utility to convert the movie to one of the above formats. We used MP4, more on that later.
Finally, I made the purchase at our local Barnes and Noble store. I did this just to confirm once more with the store that this would be easy to configure for movies, plus if my wife has any questions, etc she could take it back in to them.
I decided to read the 3 pages of full instructions. Yes I sometimes avoid this step but I figured I could handle 3 pages. The first step was to do a full charge. Once that was completed it was basically turn on the device and walk through a few steps. The device also comes with a help system and some training videos. I left these videos for my wife since she was actually going to use the device.
I worked down through the configuration and meeting the list of requirements was pretty easy up to that point. So I have it connected to our in home Wi-Fi. I configure it for to attach to her email account using POP. I browse the internet and purchased a book on Barnes and Noble as well as connected to one of her magazine subscriptions. I also connected it her laptop and was able to copy over a PDF file, some pictures, music and an MP4 video file. Then I went to the NOOK and what do you know it was all working. Feeling good!
Now on to tackling the item I had a concern with, loading movies. This was easy for the existing MP4 video that I had tested earlier. Now I wanted to take a couple of movies that my wife owns and put them on the NOOK for her to watch during travel. We were also looking to possible rent a movie and put this on the NOOK as well. No, this is not as easy as copying or renting a movie on the laptop, then drag and drop onto the NOOK. In fact the renting of movies I have still not been able to conquer.
I want to say that I am not endorsing any of these products other than stating that I have used them successfully in my implementation.
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First I copied a movie that my wife owns on DVD
- After many hours over 3 days of surfing, reading and testing I stumbled upon a thread with the help I needed.
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See the 8 th message in the following thread http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/NOOK-Color-General-Discussion/where-to-get-mp4-videos-for-Nook-Color/m-p/789888/message-uid/789888/highlight/true#U789888
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Second I found an MP4 movie online
- DVD Catalyst – you can try this for FREE and it is very inexpensive to purchase
My wife took her NOOK on a trip. She read magazines, a book and watched a movie on the plane. She arrived at the hotel and was able to quickly attach to the FREE Wi-Fi to surf the internet and do email. The only issue over a few days at the hotel was a popup in the browser while surfing that would not clear. I found the exact issue at Web Browser Frozen on Nook Color response number 2 and it fixed it right up.
In a future blog I will be discussing one of the other cool features of the NOOK the add-on Memory. These allow you to do many things, one of which is to install another boot operating system such as Honeycomb.
