Yes they are binary files, thanks.

Was trying something along these lines but I'm not quite there yet.

try:
    import binascii
except:
    print "binascii not found"

def main():
    filepath = "C:test.pmd"
    f = open(filepath,"rb")
    data = f.readlines()
    f.close()
    i = 0
    while i < len(data):
        text = data[i]
        #print binascii.a2b_hex(text)
        #print binascii.a2b_hqx(text)
        #print binascii.a2b_base64(text)
        #print binascii.a2b_uu(text)
        print binascii.a2b_qp(text)
        i = i + 1

main()
print "done"