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SPVM5000 AS PERSONAL VIDEO RECORDER

Hi guys is it possible to connect the M5000 to the tv or skybox and record TV programs ie like a PVR? If so how do i do it and do i need any additional software?
Thanks

rb33 said:
Hi guys is it possible to connect the M5000 to the tv or skybox and record TV programs ie like a PVR? If so how do i do it and do i need any additional software?
Thanks
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No.
It doesn't have the required software. Nor does it have video input. It isn't powerful enough to do MPEG2 (or 4) encoding on the fly (other than the terrible QVGA 10FPS you can do with the camera), and it doesn't have enough built in storage to record much. Other than that, it's perfect

thanks!!!!!

Using the Athena with a projector

Anyone here with the experience of using the X7500 with a projector. With the resolution it offers will e.g. powerpoint images become choppy?

Hello,
I use the Ameo very often with a projector. You must build the PPT Images with 640*480 resolution otherwise they will become choppy.

bigsmart said:
Hello,
I use the Ameo very often with a projector. You must build the PPT Images with 640*480 resolution otherwise they will become choppy.
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Thanks bigsmart. I understand you mean when I create my presentation I need to use the 640*480 resolution. I realize this is not a powerpoint users guide, nevertheless I have two questions:
1. How do I build the images with 640*480 resolution?
2. If I receive or inherit an old presentation, how do I then handle it? Save as pdf and show?
Thanks!

slingplayer performance

I am sure anyone who has had experience of it will agree slingplayer is one of the best applications for a pocket pc.
However on the Ameo, which is the variant I have, its performance is a lot to be desired. Whether I use it on the wifi or HSDPA it seems to be jerky all the time (not a very good user experience). The stats say the 300kb/s to 400kb/s is being achieved but the frame rate doesn’t go much above 10 (is it the darn video driver again?). The settings i use are:
Enable slingstream optimization
High action
video resolution : 320 by 240
audio : mono low
Managed to borrow a dell Axim X51 (qVGA screen, 412Mhz version) the other day, and tested its slingplayer performance and frankly was amazed at the difference. It was managing 30 frames per second and was super smooth whether portrait or landscape (same slingplayer settings by the way).
Ameo has the same processor as the Dell only faster, different graphics chip though.
Is it because Dell has a proper video driver or the fact that it is only a qVGA resolution i.e. 4 times less area to display. You will note that best performing devices as far as SPB graphics benchmark are qVGA.
I have read on threads people being pretty happy with slingplayer performance but that’s a subjective statement.
Could people who have used slingplayer on any variant of the athena, i.e. advantage X7500, X7501, dopod 1000 etc. state the frame rate and the bandwidth they are achieving (either cellular or wifi connection) so we can narrow down the problem.
1) Lack of proper ATI driver on all or some of the athena variants.
2) VGA screen taxing the processor too much (shouldn't be as the slingplayer application is still trying to display qVGA resolution, assuming 4 pixels displaying the same image is less strenuous on the processor than displaying 4 distinct images)
3) Some other reason such as splingplayer not optimized for the ATI chip?
Any feedback will be greatly appreciated

I tried this last night and I am getting 10-15fps whether connected to my wi-fi network or via 3G and my vid is jerky as well. Disappointing but hopefully will get better... I am using the default settings (slingstream optimization and medium action).
EDIT: FWIW, the Axim x51v is VGA 640x480...
EDIT2: My bandwidth is 200-300kbps whether connected to wi-fi or 3G.

assuming you guys are using win media player to play the videos, you are probably running into the same issues I had trying to stream from ORB to my ameo, the fix was to use the windows mobile 5 (windows media video 9) codecs for windows media player ! simply unpack the attached files and copy into your windows folder then reboot.
apperntly there is an issue with the Windows media video 10 codecs supplied with win mobile 6 !

ice_coffee said:
assuming you guys are using win media player to play the videos, you are probably running into the same issues I had trying to stream from ORB to my ameo, the fix was to use the windows mobile 5 (windows media video 9) codecs for windows media player ! simply unpack the attached files and copy into your windows folder then reboot.
apperntly there is an issue with the Windows media video 10 codecs supplied with win mobile 6 !
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The slingplayer mobile application is self contained (no WMP involved) and plays live streaming video only...

same problem here

billu said:
1) Lack of proper ATI driver on all or some of the athena variants.
2) VGA screen taxing the processor too much (shouldn't be as the slingplayer application is still trying to display qVGA resolution, assuming 4 pixels displaying the same image is less strenuous on the processor than displaying 4 distinct images)
3) Some other reason such as splingplayer not optimized for the ATI chip?
Any feedback will be greatly appreciated
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Click to collapse
The reason is that SlingMobile is using DirectDraw. The DDraw API on WM is slooooow. Thats the reason players like PocketTV or TCPMP went out of their way to code driver support for GPUs
The X7501 def has the ATI Imageon drivers there (I pointed this out on another thread), but it doesnt matter much. DDRaw+ATI=slow. DDRaw+Intel 2700=not TOO bad (hence the X51V working)
Basically, every PPC ever made from the Axim X51V forward should have had the Intel 2700. That they didnt has crippled the platform when it comes to video. The Imageon has potential, but ATI seems very hard to work with and getting it optimized is NOT easy.
The Marvell may save this situation if devs can start to take full advantage of WMMX2. Early reports show that with straight DDRaw, the Marvell proc alone is STILL not up to Intel 2700 standards, but Id bet that with direct WMMX2 enhanced code, it would be.

you can increase the buffer, but you have to do it in the registry, once you change it you cant go back into settings and change anything without changing the buffer back to 4 seconds
hklm\software\sling media\slingplayer\player
precharge duration = 10000
the 10000 in milliseconds

Thanks for the comments.
So it seems that the only hope is if an update of the slingplayer software decides to use the ATI Imageon driver.
Just to clear something up, the Dell I used was a X51 (320 by 240) and NOT a X51V (which is 640 by 480)
Is it possible to get the slingplayer to use the ATI driver using a registry tweak??

I would assume if they had developed ATI support they'd expose it. It may be possible that there is some undocumented dedicated support for the Imageon, but I havent seen anything.

I have just got my slingbox this week and I liked the idea of been able to watch my sky+ recordings, but playback via 3g is watchable but only about 15 fps , there is no improvement using wifi? However my cctv camera works smooth and looks great- possibly becouse its a black and white camera?
As a previous poster said orb works very good playing back full size divx from my home pc via either wmp or tcpmp without problems over 3g? but orb requires the pc to be on all the time, which is why I got the slingbox.
I just hope someone with more skill and knowlage than myself can sort a solution

Sling has released a new version of their mobile player that uses GDI instead of DirectDraw. Has anyone tried this on their Athena to see if it improves performance?

citivolus said:
Sling has released a new version of their mobile player that uses GDI instead of DirectDraw. Has anyone tried this on their Athena to see if it improves performance?
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I tried GDI but the frame rate dropped off significantly.
There are 3 major problems with SlingPlayer on the Athena. As said before, it does not use the ATI video driver. But also the maximum supported resolution is only 320x240 and the maximum bit rate is only 600kbs. So it's never going to look as good as TCPMP for example.
The best setting to change to make SlingPlayer watchable is to specifically set the video bit rate to 600kbs. Unless this is done, the SlingPlayer never seems to use more than 300kbs and the result is very poor video. With 600kbs bit rate and 320x240 resolution, I get about 15fps on average. If I drop the resolution to 224x176 I get nearly 30fps.

My Slingbox video stream is 77kbs
I hope any body can help me with this issue.
I have my slingbox set in NY,USA, and I'm now in Bahrain my internet provider speed is 2mbs download/ 512 kbs, and the internet provider in NY is verizon at 6mbs/ 760kbs upload.
However, every time I start my sling box on my laptop (Dell D610), the video optimization start at 600-700 kbs and end up in 2 min in 77 kbs and stop there.
I don't know, if this is something has to do with the setup or what exactly...?
Can any body help me with that??
Thanks

Are you saying you have a problem using your slingbox on your Athena or your laptop? If your laptop then you are posting in the wrong place!

anyone figure out the optimal settings for our athena's to get buffering/playback more manageable?

video output??

Im curious, is there a video output for the mogul, or a way to get a video signal out?? would like to plug into my indash screen if possible

Yes its kinda expensive.
http://www.spectec.com.tw/sdv842.htm

Has anybody actually used or seen this before?

Yeah, I've seen this before.
You can get them for less than that.
But it doesn't do what you're thinking... its not a "video out" in the way that you're picturing it. The mogul's graphics hardware does not support the 1024X768 resolution this claims to give you, nor does it support external video out at all.
Unfortunately, the Windows Mobile OS does not support alternate video hardware, so you're stuck with whatever graphics hardware is embedded in your device, and no SDIO add on is going to change that.
What this does, however, is project slides for presentations. Using special software on your PPC, you can import a powerpoint or similar presentation, and send the slides to this card which can then display them on a larger screen.
Basically, your PPC can replace a laptop for presentations, and you can control the slides from the touch screen.
What this will not do, however, is display whatever is on your screen currently. It only receives still images (or stills with slight animated components perhaps) from the software installed.
Hope that clears things up...
Meanwhile, if you want your mogul's output to appear on an external computer monitor, you can always use Ateksofts' webcam plus. One of the options is to capture screen output, which will effectively put the contents of your screen onto a nearby windows desktop. But this is not the same thing, really.

You guys inspired me to try this.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LWZ6nSk0gdQ
video captured of my PC Monitor playing video out from my mogul in real time. Its on the slow side, but it works, especially for doing a presentation that doesn't require a lot of motion.
Write up of the software here:
http://mobile-enthusiast.blogspot.com/2008/03/ateksoft-applications-bring-interesting.html

Video Quality

Playing back videos that are stored on my sd card, as well as youtube videos, are not clear at all. They aren't even close to how clear they appear on my ipod touch. Is that because the file source resolution does not match the HD2's resolution? Even when videos are played in original resolution, they still are grainy and pixelated.

You will find all videos related stuff here, Simple search can do a trick

Has anyone seen a chart that would be similar to this one for the Sony Ericsson:
http://www.howardforums.com/showpost.php?p=8491877&postcount=24
I'd like to set up the optimum settings in my SUPER conversion software. If you have setting in SUPER that you are using and really like, could you please share? Thanks.

For Youtube, if you're using the Youtube client you should set the quality to the best.

Use Core player, I get very good results. Plays all of my divx/xvid movies without conversion. Better Quality than any ipod i have seen. Just search for best settings to use!

Has anyone test driven the "Kinoma Player"? It is supposed to be very good and works with Leo. I don't know, just trying to find out some information about the quality of this product.

original_ganjaman said:
Use Core player, I get very good results. Plays all of my divx/xvid movies without conversion. Better Quality than any ipod i have seen. Just search for best settings to use!
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For purchasing core player to use with the HD2, do you download the WM Pocket PC version, or the WM Smartphone version?
I believe these are the ideal settings once it's downloaded (correct?):
Menu/Tools/Settings/Select Page/Video and set :
1-Video output to DirectDraw (not GDI)
2-Smooth Zoom to ON

mojohio said:
For purchasing core player to use with the HD2, do you download the WM Pocket PC version, or the WM Smartphone version?
I believe these are the ideal settings once it's downloaded (correct?):
Menu/Tools/Settings/Select Page/Video and set :
1-Video output to DirectDraw (not GDI)
2-Smooth Zoom to ON
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Click to collapse
wm pocket pc version is the one you want, the smartphone version is for non-touch screen devices.
Those settings are fine. GDI works also.

bahardman said:
Has anyone test driven the "Kinoma Player"? It is supposed to be very good and works with Leo. I don't know, just trying to find out some information about the quality of this product.
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Click to collapse
I'm biased, of course, but Kinoma Play is a pretty great app.
The product page is a good representation of what it can do: http://kinoma.com/play/
You can see it in action here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfYZ-bC20eM
Plus, there's 30-day money-back guarantee in case you're not delighted.
-- Charles Wiltgen