Ben:
  However, the video appears to have a real bad horizontal scroll (to test the conversion, I just rename the output to "Video Player.tvi" & place it in the "Video Player" folder . . . maybe this is also part of the problem ?!?).

That's exactly what I did too (renaming as "video player.tvs"), the preview videos doesn't excpet to have audio in them, so it just does not really look good ;-) .... just put your video file into the *root* of the sd card (not into any folder!) and it should work...

ok, tried to unassemble the arcade, nothing broke, the sticker stayed nearly in place, and the connector board somehow got disconnected (or was not properly attached) from the screenboard - with a firm press all was in place again. and worked!

Got mine, assembled it, prepared sd, it worked fine (yesterday). Today I've switched it on, it says "Cant find sd card" and then starts tiny tetris (last game played yesterday, even without sd card) - but the game hangs (doesn't respond to joystick, buttons). I've tried to reupload the arcade menu, but the arduino ide hangs while "uploading". How to completely reset that thing? TinyScreen mentions something about a button, but how to reach that? I don't want to unassemble the arcade (black acrylic) beacuse the sticker do for sure break and maybe some pins....