To clarify-Handbrake works, but my Pogoplug still wants to transcode the file after I processed the file as described in Handbrake.
The Pogoplug takes 10 hours to transcode a movie that is an AVI file!

I found a free program called Any Video Converter that works at super speed compared to these other options. You can also set it to do multiple files. Just save them as mp4s. Tried them out and they play well.

I am probably going to give up on the on the fly transcoding on my pgp pro. great idea but poorly executed. the hardware doesn;t handle it too well either. I guess I could use handbrake to convert the video although I didn;t want to to that.

part of the confusion out there is that most videos I have are in avi format(they are half the size of other formats)but in the case of Android phones, the default Video player can only read h.264 and MP4/MKV. the transcoding would be helpful if it worked reliably because it seems to allow these non standard formats to play in the free default player.

one solution is to download an alternate video player and make that your default. I have been using vPlayer as it supports AVI files. other than constantly buffering, it seems to work for me.