I'll admit, that is a real pain. There's no long term future for webOS, but I still think in hardware terms, it's got a lot going for it. We just need to release the shackles.

BTW - to solve the streaming issue, with the latest update (3.04 I think), HP improved the codec support. While you still have the mp4 container issue, support for video codecs is greatly improved, so much so that all you need to do is demux your mkv, or divx content, and remux into an mp4 container and it will play very nicely, streaming over HTTP.

So, in effect, I have apache running on my local server (which is also running serviio for the rest of my DLNA empire), serving the mp4 versions of my files.

Pretty simple to do (pre-req is to have ffmpeg installed):

Vigorous use of find will allow you to convert a whole raft of content if required.

Then browse to the content using the touchpad's browser, click on the mofo and whooooooof, served content in glorious 9.7". 720p content plays back nicely assuming you've got a decent wireless router.

Even nicer is the fact that the codec support means that it will play BBC Iplayer content (using get_iplayer) streamed across HTTP as well in the same manner, without any ffmpeg gymnastics.

I stick with webOS for media purposes and while I am still a bit iffy about Amazon Kindle (I'm an fbreader man), after using fontforge to masquerade the Ubuntu font as Verdana, I'm a lot happy with it.