How to watch .WMV files on an iPod/iPhone

 One of the major setbacks of Apple products is the inability to watch multiple video formats, specifically WMV videos. Apple iPods and other similar Apple products are restricted to formats that Apple like, such as .MP4. This isn't an issue for other video players like Microsoft's Zune HD and so on. But nonetheless, this issue exists almost exclusively with Apple products. It seems Apple only lets people use formats that Apple likes. Not what the people like.

To start, .WMV is a video container format developed by Microsoft (Windows Media Video). It's a very common video format on the internet and is more compatible than .MP4 and .MOV formats. And unlike .AVI, the .WMV format is always consistent so you don't have so many different types of one format like DivX AVI, xVid AVI, and so on. Natively, Apple products do not support .WMV or .WMA files. But fortunately, there is a way around Apple's iron curtain.

There are a few apps in the app store that will allow you to play .WMV files and many other formats as well. One of them is free though and is very good. VLC Player can play just about any video format that the iPod/iPhone normally can't. You don't have to convert any video formats to .MP4. You can just add the video files natively through iTunes into VLC Player and you'll be able to watch those movies.

Now for earlier iPods and iPhones, they don't have the hardware capable of playing HD videos. Therefore, you'll still have to convert those videos to a lower bitrate so the iPod can handle them. Again, if you have any other music/video player like the Zune HD, then this is not an issue for you. This is an almost exclusive issue for Apple products.

Here is the link to the app on the app store. Some people have reported issues with the app on 2nd generation iPods running iOS 4.0. But for the majority of people, it should work flawlessly.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vlc-media-player/id390885556?mt=8

Enjoy!