I wasn’t completely sure that I was correct when I said that the 8830 required an .mp4 container, but I’ve come across a Document on the BlackBerry site that lists supported media for the 8100, 8300 and 8830. It clearly states ‘The BlackBerry World Edition smartphone is unable to play .avi files’.

Not sure why it can’t, when the rest can, but it certainly explains my trouble trying to generate playable .avi files.

I also came across information that suggests that mencoder can output using the correct container format, and that the trouble could be the fourcc being used…. I’ll follow up on that once I’ve had a chance to do some testing.

update:

While you can convince mencoder to use other containers, the support is still buggy. The .avi container is the one to stick with if using mencoder, unfortunately, that makes it useless for the 8830.