I am very new to this and would really appreciate whatever help you "old pros" can give.

My music downloads have been great, but I have downloaded a couple of "DVD movies and, when I attempt to play them in my Windows Media Player they are only sound.... no video.

The file sizes have consistantly been around 600mb so the size seems right.

My ultimate goal is to play them on my palm.

Any help you can give is greatly appreciated.

Might be a codecs issue....
You could try to use a different media player such as the free VLC player with built-in codecs which can play almost all media files without problems. You can download it from here:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
As a side note, to preview files with it you'll have to open the files directly from the Incomplete folder and not via the LW preview function.

__________________

"Never Argue With An Idiot. They Will Drag You Down To Their Level, Then Beat You With Experience"

I'm a newby to this also and I had the same problem. After reading through the forums I found this free download to fix the "codec" problem. Go to this site: http://www.codecguide.com/ scroll down the page to K-Lite Codec Pack 2.83 Full/Standard/Basic and download.
I downloaded the full version and I went back and was able to see and hear the video with no problem. Hope this helps!

Just double click the Video icon.