What file is this that won't play on anything? Have you downloaded other files that do work? If so, I agree you should trash this one. It's just one of those mysteries that might be solved by Einstein, but no one else. I long ago decided computers work on magic; we just think we understand how it all works. But don't mind me. I believe the same thing of the combustion engine.
I went to Google to look up the extension abbreviations and found most of them. AVI is Audio/Video Interleaved. (I haven't figured out leaves yet, though.) MOV is QuickTime content developed by Apple, but that hardly explains the m and o and v. MPEG is Moving Picture Experts Group and MPEG4 is the International Standard. WMV is Windows Media file with audio. (What's the v for then?)
I also looked up codex and got codec which is COmpression/DECompression, an algorithm that encodes or reduces the bytes for large files or programs. Is that the same as codex?
Somewhere in all that I got links to sites for downloading codexes. I made a couple into favorites, if you're interested in seeing if they are sites you haven't already tried.
I still need to know how to take a new movie DVD and download it to my computer in a shareable file form. Is this some cabalistic secret that only the FEW know and can do? I got some neat movies I'd like to share.
Is it true that you can really only download to your system movie files that several users already have on their systems? Without enough hosts, it takes forever. Using DSL with 4 hosts it took two days to download the last movie I wanted. And without multiple locations, I can't get anything but "Need more resources" now. Didn't use to be this hard to download a movies. Is there just too many of us trying now? I have 7 to 10 folks uploading from my system night and day, sharing 19 KB/s between them. That's gonna take a long time.
I had to turn off the screen saver on my system (the hibernate is already off) because everytime the screen saver came on LW would put my connection to sleep. I don't remember it doing that before, since I could download all the time. The turbo charged connection never went to sleep like it does now. I could set it to downloading and it would finish it on it's own without me having to continually wake it up.
I've blathered on again. I should change my nickname to Chatterbox Grandma.

well the file i'm talking about is the new episode of sm*llv*lle. i don't know if problems have cropped up with other files too, but it seems that if the file really is not readable than it must be done on purpose. I have finally been able to locate a version that according to bitzi lookup works.
As to what the file extensions mean it doesnt really matter... other than the fact that wmv and wma (windows media video file, windows media audiofile) aren't supported by most players, other than windows media player, but they aren't useful anyway.
AVI being interleaved, as far as I know, means that the audio and video are stored side by side not seperately. if it helps think of it as being interweaving rather than interleaving. Not that thats in any way important.
Mov is short for movie... clever huh? thats not really important either.
Anyway I have not spent much time figuring out how to copy dvds into avi format , which is probably the most compact format for quality movies. Try a program called VirtualDub,. the best way to get this is by going to http://www.divx.com/divx/create/divxpro/guides/?lang=en

this is the divx players users guide which gives you good instructions on how to convert files with virtual dub and includes a link to download it. It's not an easy program to use because it has a LOT of options. It's quite good so give it a shot, but really you need the users guide.

As for ppl downloading too slowly... maybe you should limit the number of uploads you get. you can change that in the limewire preferences somewhere.

Wow! Thanks!
I know the extensions don't mean much, but I just need to know what I'm working with. Now I can forget them.
And I like thinking of interleaving as interweaving. That explains a lot. Thank you.
And thank you for the site to get the program for avi copying. That's great. If I need a user guide for it, there must be one around somewhere. I'm terrible with written instructions because I'm slightly dyslexic. I do best when shown how to do something, which isn't possible most of the time on computers.
I really really appreciate your help on this. I think I just may get the hang of it one day. Sorry your TV show won't play. I wonder how they get TV shows into shared files. But I've got enough on my plate for now. Once I get the movies figured out, I'll go on to the next project.
Thanks again!