Download Newsgroup Files To Your Cell or PDA!
Using the BatchDownload feature in Direct Read News, RGInews members can download photos, songs & videos from their favorite newsgroups to a cellphone or PDA!. Optionally you can compress your video files to a 3GP format, which greatly reduces the size of your files, allowing for faster downloads.

How Does It Work?
Select the newsgroup files you'd like to download, and your selections will be listed within a BatchDownload window. At the bottom of that window you'll find several options for managing the download of those files. The window and options will look something like this...

Download Files To My Cell/PDA
This option will automatically decode the files that in your BatchDownload list, and will download them directly to your Cell/PDA. Referencing the above example, 7 files... video (mpg), photo (jpg), and music (mp3)... will be transferred to your Cell/PDA as attachments. The individual attachments cannot be larger than 225 KB, and your carrier's MMS service will be used to retrieve the files. When the "Download" button is selected you'll need to provide a Cell/PDA address to complete the download.

When downloading videos, you can also compress those files to a 3GP format prior to transferring them to your Cell/PDA. The 3GP format greatly reduces the size of video files by adapting them to cell phone screens, which allows for much faster transfers. To take advantage of this feature, simply check the "Convert Video files to 3GP Format" option before selecting the "Download" button.

Send Downloadable Links To My Cell/PDA
When this option is selected, BatchDownload converts your file list into text links, and will send the links to your Cell/PDA as a SMS text message. You can then use your cellphone's web browser to access the links and retrieve the newsgroup files. 3GP formatting can also be applied to this download option. With that arrangement, when you access a video through a text link, the file will be converted to a 3GP format before it's downloaded.

Which Download Option Should I Use?
If your Cell/PDA has a Web browser that allows you to save files, the "Send Downloadable Links" option offers several benefits. For instance, this option uses SMS text messaging to transfer file links to your Cell/PDA. SMS is less expensive than using MMS to download file attachments, and since you're retrieving the newsgroup files through your Web browser via links... as opposed to downloading the file directly as an attachment... you do not have to worry about file size limitations.

If your Cell/PDA does not have Web browser, or if the Web browser does not allow you to save files, "Download Files To My Cell/PDA" may be the best choice. With this option files are being downloaded directly to your Cell/PDA as a file attachment, so you have a one-step process that's very convenient, and you can retrieve & view the files without a Web browser. Since this option uses MMS, the size of each file will be limited to 225 KB, but if you use the 3GP compression option to reduce the size of your video files, the limit may not be a factor.

If you have any questions about this service feature, or suggestions for how we can improve upon it, please do not hesitate to contact us.