Database Users

3D drivers & Video playback

Hi All,
I m pretty new to winmo scene but I have read that there is a huge concern on the video playback of HTC devices.
My question would be if this phone will actually have proper video drivers.
It is advertised as a phone which could play back DVD quality movies.
Does that mean that I would be able to take a normal "downloaded" episode of lets say Lost and play it back on the device without conversion?
I realize that I would need a program such as CorePlayer but would I actually be able to play the movie without having to convert it into some lower format?
The lucrative thing about the Xperia is the resolution and the video playback possibility.
I m just hoping that the device wont experience the problems of the Kaiser etc.

FunkyMike said:
Hi All,
I m pretty new to winmo scene but I have read that there is a huge concern on the video playback of HTC devices.
My question would be if this phone will actually have proper video drivers.
It is advertised as a phone which could play back DVD quality movies.
Does that mean that I would be able to take a normal "downloaded" episode of lets say Lost and play it back on the device without conversion?
I realize that I would need a program such as CorePlayer but would I actually be able to play the movie without having to convert it into some lower format?
The lucrative thing about the Xperia is the resolution and the video playback possibility.
I m just hoping that the device wont experience the problems of the Kaiser etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Who wants to watch LOST?
I'd rather watch Supernatural, or House, or Bones, or Heroes, or... the list goes on - but no Lost!
Anyways... i think i read somewhere that it has XVid support (which is what the episodes are usually encoded with/in or whatever). I'm not 100% sure if i read this for Xperia specifically, but it was definitely an WinMo device, but if that has it, so would Xperia have it or we could add it via codec pack or something.

Hehehe well your right about Lost
Rather watch Heroes or Californication ))
I m just thinking that Xvid support will not be out of the box and we will have to get it through a program called Coreplayer
My only concern is that HTC has a track record for not "enabling" proper video acceleration in their devices. This might be different for Xperia since SE is making the software.
I just hope we end up with a device that can play episodes of our favorite stuff .. without having to convert the files.

FunkyMike said:
I just hope we end up with a device that can play episodes of our favorite stuff .. without having to convert the files.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I second that!
Haven't watched californication yet... maybe will give it a try.

Ok... so i just checked, it was Omnia. Samsung Omnia has Xvid support out of the box... i hope SE does the same for X1.

FunkyMike said:
Hehehe well your right about Lost
Rather watch Heroes or Californication ))
I m just thinking that Xvid support will not be out of the box and we will have to get it through a program called Coreplayer
My only concern is that HTC has a track record for not "enabling" proper video acceleration in their devices. This might be different for Xperia since SE is making the software.
I just hope we end up with a device that can play episodes of our favorite stuff .. without having to convert the files.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually the Touch Diamond and Pro have 3D acceleration.
And since my old as time Nokia can play xvid files after installing some codecs, i cant imagine WM not being able to

Ok... so i just checked, it was Omnia. Samsung Omnia has Xvid support out of the box... i hope SE does the same for X1.
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Hmm I think your right about Omnia although I haven’t seen any reports on the Xvid playback.
I heard that Omnias video drivers were ripped onto other HTC devices to increase the FPS for playing videos.
and you should definitely find some time for Californication
Lets hope we get some reports soon on avi playback. The 384 ram sounds encouraging.
Actually the Touch Diamond and Pro have 3D acceleration.
And since my old as time Nokia can play xvid files after installing some codecs, i cant imagine WM not being able to
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your right about them having 3d acceleration but there still seems to be some issue with having proper drivers that enable the ATI chip that speeds up the video. It has something to do with HTC not wanting to pay the license for those drivers I think.

FunkyMike said:
Lets hope we get some reports soon on avi playback. The 384 ram sounds encouraging.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Let us hope then...!
FunkyMike said:
and you should definitely find some time for Californication
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Click to collapse
Yes Sir! I'll try an' make time for it.

FunkyMike said:
Your right about them having 3d acceleration but there still seems to be some issue with having proper drivers that enable the ATI chip that speeds up the video. It has something to do with HTC not wanting to pay the license for those drivers I think.
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Yes, HTC did not enable the ATI chip in many of their devices with the MSM7x00 chips, such as the tilt. When this was exposed, it made many very angry. I believe the new devices (diamond, pro, hd) have true 3D acceleration enabled. HTC cant make the same mistake anymore.

msalmank said:
Who wants to watch LOST?
I'd rather watch Supernatural, or House, or Bones, or Heroes, or... the list goes on - but no Lost!
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I'd rather watch obese Asian men play dodge ball naked...

Black93300ZX said:
I'd rather watch obese Asian men play dodge ball naked...
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And that is going to give me nightmares today!!!

Touch HD playing videos

How do you think HD will be playing HD videos? Remember the great deception that the Kaiser was.. and I still I'm not over it..
But If it is like my Diamond, will be superb!
However, the screen is bigger, and will require more from the hardware.
Here is a link for a video and in the last minute (8:40) where he runs CorePlayer and watches House.S05E01 - (will it be HDTV.XviD ??)
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-OT4wr_E5ZkQ/htc_touch_hd/R/efp_video
If someone could translate that part would be great.
Thanks

bigger screen does not need better hardware , its just bigger pixels that need better battery capacity

manuelcalavera said:
bigger screen does not need better hardware , its just bigger pixels that need better battery capacity
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Its not only bigger screen... its also bigger resolution (By 25%)...
If its another type of screen, it could even have better performance at less ennergy consumption
Great video tough i can't undestand that language either.

atomikpt said:
How do you think HD will be playing HD videos? Remember the great deception that the Kaiser was.. and I still I'm not over it..
But If it is like my Diamond, will be superb!
However, the screen is bigger, and will require more from the hardware.
Here is a link for a video and in the last minute (8:40) where he runs CorePlayer and watches House.S05E01 - (will it be HDTV.XviD ??)
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-OT4wr_E5ZkQ/htc_touch_hd/R/efp_video
If someone could translate that part would be great.
Thanks
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Click to collapse
I don't understand what you mean.
the maximum of vids you can play (or lets say that the screen will show you) is ofcourse its own resolution. So you will not see real HD videos as this screen has not got a real HD resolution. But its own resolution is no problem for the CPU. Playing a movie with a bigger size, will just downscale the video to the resoultion of the HD but as there is more data to process, it may slow the CPU more down, depending of how big the movie is. but you would not want to play a 1080p video on this anyway as it would just use up huge amount of storage space, but doesn't look better. You will get the best and sharpest images if you convert your movies to the exact resolution of the screen.

Oh I understood your point, cause you probably use PocketDivXEncoder..
I was just comparing with HTC Kaiser.. On videos as well as other stuff, it sucked.

This is an important question.
That linked video showing house didn't look very smooth, i was hoping for better playback quality than that. Was it the HD, coreplayer orthe video conversion that made it stutter a little?
Does any one know of any other exmples of the HD video playback? HTC say that its makes it closer to watching the cinema on a mobile, is this statement going to be true?

donbronzi said:
This is an important question.
That linked video showing house didn't look very smooth, i was hoping for better playback quality than that. Was it the HD, coreplayer orthe video conversion that made it stutter a little?
Does any one know of any other exmples of the HD video playback? HTC say that its makes it closer to watching the cinema on a mobile, is this statement going to be true?
Click to expand...
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i cant imagine that the HD as any problem with videos. It often just highly depends on the play. Windows media play is crap in playing videos most of the time. But even my old Compaq Ipaq could play videos very smooth.
Some players are faster then others.

language is czech

I thought it was Czech!!
But can you translate that part?
I think that it isn't very fluid the streaming..
Sometimes we notice some delays.. On my Diamond I can see it too..

atomikpt said:
How do you think HD will be playing HD videos?
Thanks
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to answer the original question, no it will not be able to play HD videos.
HD by definition is at least 720p, that's 720p or 1080p by today's market distribution, may be later on, there will be some weird resolution at 960p or something like that. but right now HD video are only available in 720p or 1080p
1. the video chip is not powerful enough to decode HD content,
2. windows mobile 6 doesn't support HD content
3. Touch HD only has screen resolution of 800x640, again far from HD
4. CPU isn't power enough to decode HD content (even a full desktop/laptop 500 MHz cpu isn't enough to decode, let alone a stripped down mobile cpu.)

im sure that this "HD" will have some serious problems on playing good resolution videos ...
man , qualcomm's 528 Mhz is the CPU of htc diamond, and they let that beast to have this heart on his chest ! its not fair

I might complain that the HD does not have a flash, or little base memory - but not being able to play HD video - come on guys, dream on

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=3fAROWXVQiw&feature=related
Look at 7 min, he shows a youtube movie wvga quality. It doesn't play very smooth either. Let's hope its because of a bad connection or something.

And lets not forget that the units floating around as preview units did carry unfinished ROM and early-stage drivers

Lucas0511 said:
I might complain that the HD does not have a flash, or little base memory - but not being able to play HD video - come on guys, dream on
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oh i totally agree, i dont expect it to play HD videos, as long as it play good videos at a decent framerate. but i can see how the name is misleading some novice users to think it can play HD files.

buggybug0 said:
oh i totally agree, i dont expect it to play HD videos, as long as it play good videos at a decent framerate. but i can see how the name is misleading some novice users to think it can play HD files.
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it will play videos of its own resolution ofcourse, what are you thinking? i don't understand this topic. it has a 480*800 screen and will ofcourse be able to play videos at that size with no problem. and as i said before, even my 6 years old pocket pc could do so. and it woulkd make no sense if you would try to play a video with a higher resolution. as the screen will still only be able to show you 480*800 pixels. ofcourse, if you are talking about play real HD videos, than ofcourse i can tell you it may have probleems doing so. but it makes no sence even trying to do so.
So, take every video you have got and convert it to 480*800 and thats it.
ps: about the youtube video beeing a little choppy:
ofcourse it is, its a youtube video... and on that, it is beeing streamed!! from the net and for that, it runs very well. that has nothing to do with the cpu. its only streaming.

Raziel1 said:
it will play videos of its own resolution ofcourse, what are you thinking? i don't understand this topic.
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i am thinking of the OP's original question "can HD play HD videos" of course i understand the resolution of this phone and the video it will play.
so i dont know what you are thinking posting without reading the entire thread.
my post, which you quoted was wishing for playing good video at a decent frame rate. sure you can play videos on your 6 year old ppc, but try play, say a jet li movie on there, all his actions are a blur because the framerate isn't fast enough to capture all his kungfu actions. dido for sports videos. you understand now?
and if you are confused regarding why the OP want to watch and HD video on a non HD display, well i can tell you it is possible to put a video with higher resolution on a device which lower resolution display. it will just be upto that CPU to decode and shrink the video. suuurree, it doens't make sense, but it's do-able.. uptill a certain point (resolution), above which it will be too heavy and too much work for the CPU. and if you want to ask why, well i'm guessing 1. the OP was mislead by the phone's name Touch HD, 2. he may not have the time or software or doesn't want to reprocess the movies to 800x480.
and if you are still confused after reading all that.. well... ummm... LOL

Raziel1 said:
it will play videos of its own resolution ofcourse, what are you thinking? i don't understand this topic. it has a 480*800 screen and will ofcourse be able to play videos at that size with no problem. and as i said before, even my 6 years old pocket pc could do so. and it woulkd make no sense if you would try to play a video with a higher resolution. as the screen will still only be able to show you 480*800 pixels. ofcourse, if you are talking about play real HD videos, than ofcourse i can tell you it may have probleems doing so. but it makes no sence even trying to do so.
So, take every video you have got and convert it to 480*800 and thats it.
ps: about the youtube video beeing a little choppy:
ofcourse it is, its a youtube video... and on that, it is beeing streamed!! from the net and for that, it runs very well. that has nothing to do with the cpu. its only streaming.
Click to expand...
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Aye but i'd love to seen a flawless WGVA streaming video....

Raziel1 said:
that has nothing to do with the cpu. its only streaming.
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technically i disagree, but from a practical standpoint, sure, i'll go with that. those net videos doesn't require much processing power to decode, very little load on cpu.

Raziel1 said:
it will play videos of its own resolution ofcourse, what are you thinking? i don't understand this topic. it has a 480*800 screen and will ofcourse be able to play videos at that size with no problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Traditionally speaking, all HTC devices have very poor video playback .
Till the latest batch of VGA Devices (Diamond and Touch Pro) which i have no access to and hence cannot comment upon, all previous VGA devices had problem playing back video ENCODED AT THERE NATIVE RESOLUTION. (for reference, have a look at this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=324371&highlight=video)
the best i could manage was a 532x300 xvid with a bitrate of 800-1200.
so it will be a very pleasant surprise if the HD can playback video encoded at 640x480 leave alone 800x480.
On a side note, since HD will be pretty similar to the Diamond / Touch Pro , you could probably ask your friends to run a benchmark with different resolutions and bitrates.

[APP] DIVX for WM

Thought id post this for those who are looking for a divx player.
http://labs.divx.com/node/6211

CorePlayer still works faster on the Diamond.

How fast?
can i simply drop a regular ~700mb xvid/divx movie on the internal storage and play it in full screen(with dithering and smooth zooming enabled) without lag or frame dropping?
just wondering since i'm probably buying the diamond, and this could really be a deal breaker.

leonatan25 said:
CorePlayer still works faster on the Diamond.
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Click to collapse
My friend I think you didn't try watching divx on Diamond...We can't watch divx even with core player. But this is possible on Omnia. So we are watching other programs ore codecs...

sorry but, have no problems watching dvix 700mb files on my diamond witch coreplayer

Doritoch said:
My friend I think you didn't try watching divx on Diamond...We can't watch divx even with core player. But this is possible on Omnia. So we are watching other programs ore codecs...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm sorry, but I have no problem watching 640x272 files on my Diamond with CP.

I have 2 diamonds and for a few days the omnia i900. I think nobody can see a full 700Mb movie on Diamond, without cuts. But on omnia is no problem at all. Omnia is much much faster than Diamond. I was thinking to buy one, but i will wait for the 480x800 version.

katerini said:
I have 2 diamonds and for a few days the omnia i900. I think nobody can see a full 700Mb movie on Diamond, without cuts. But on omnia is no problem at all. Omnia is much much faster than Diamond. I was thinking to buy one, but i will wait for the 480x800 version.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Omnia resolution screen is just 240 x 400 pixels
Diamond is real vga - 640 x 480 ...
so Omnia has less resolution with faster CPU ...
as result, u have BIG cut in the resolution with the Omnia..

Diamond is not for Multimedia. Is one of the slowest mobile that I`ve been testing so far. The only thing that can chage this is the release of Ati video Drivers from HTC and a new O.S (maybe windows mobile 6.5?). Until that, I recomend you to buy another phone with better multimedia support (iphone or nokia)

I downloaded DivX player from divx labs and installed it.
After that, I started downloading movies from the following site:
http://moviesmobile.net/
and now, I have aproximatly 10 movies installed on my phone, that I can watch with rather good quality, (not crisp)
So I think it's very well doable, but you shouldn't try to cram a 700 mb movie trough there.
also, I used core player once and it starts showing some weird deformations when I run a 700 mb movie on my diamond
The speed stays nice and stable, but the movie itself looks like crap.
Hope this helps

Err, that site only has 320xXXX resolution, awful lol.

"700MB divx" don't mean anything.
You have to look the bitrate of the video. The diamond with the last Core Player can handle videos (almost perfectly) with a bitrate <~ 550 (and a resolution under the 640x)

No problems with video at all. Make sure to tailor your videos to the Diamonds resolution, I use DVD Catalyst to switch up resolution, then DL to my phone. Typical 1 1/2 hour movie is around 550 to 650MB, I use size to denote quality although even a 550MB movie looks awesome on my Diamond.
Mind you, this is using the new Telus ROM
Whatever Telus did with the ROM upgrade, it turbocharged my media capabilities

by 700 mb I ment all comon .avi files cam,TS,DVDrips and so on you can find. Had no problem whatsoever.

Videos with a higher bitrate than 600~700 will have frame drop on the diamond.
Its hard to see them, especially if the movie don't have many actions scenes.
With a movie ~90mn/700MB, you have generally a ~800KBp, so no problem really, some frame drop, but it seem perfect.
But if you try a ~20mn/400MB or ~40mn/700MB (midle quality TV Show for example), the bitrate is most higher than 1000KBp and the video its almost unviewable...

yeye2 said:
Diamond is not for Multimedia. Is one of the slowest mobile that I`ve been testing so far. The only thing that can chage this is the release of Ati video Drivers from HTC and a new O.S (maybe windows mobile 6.5?). Until that, I recomend you to buy another phone with better multimedia support (iphone or nokia)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://www.glbenchmark.com/compare.jsp

I`m watching 700MB movies whitout problems, is very important what program was used when the movie was processed, there are some that hang some time. I watched movies that had 1500kb bitrate without problems, and the quality is great. Try the CorePlayer 1.3 is the best. I will always choose my Diamond over an Omnia .

yeye2 said:
Diamond is not for Multimedia. Is one of the slowest mobile that I`ve been testing so far. The only thing that can chage this is the release of Ati video Drivers from HTC and a new O.S (maybe windows mobile 6.5?). Until that, I recomend you to buy another phone with better multimedia support (iphone or nokia)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't know that HTC Diamond got an ATI chipset
Maybe it has a HD4850

blacriderv said:
I didn't know that HTC Diamond got an ATI chipset
Maybe it has a HD4850
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Click to collapse
well the Diamond uses a Qualcomm cpu which has a embeded ATI Imageon. Programs like coremedia player uses this to improve the performance, but windows mobile comes without drivers. So bassically your diamond is running windows mobile like a failsafe version of windows xp.
check this link http://www.mobilewave.ro/news/Performanta-grafica-a-lui-HTC-Diamond-Touch-Pro-259.html, there are a few videos about the bad Diamond´s graphic perfomance. Devices with one, two or even 3 years have better perfomance than diamond
spippo said:
http://www.glbenchmark.com/compare.jsp
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Click to collapse
thats very funny , a synthetic benchmark is very helpfull to see the true potencial of the device, but that doesn´t meen that you are using all of this power in a daily use. Just one example, try to play a video (H.264 at VGA (640×480) resolutions at 30 frames per second) in a diamond and then try a nokia n96. The nokia device plays the video smooth and without lag, the diamond video is laggy with frame lost, but ehy! you can run the benchmark on the diamond to feel better afther that.
htc performance post.http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=449391

Can someone explain to me the lack of video acceleration?

i have heard that qualcomm has the drivers or something to that effect, and wont release the info for programmers to take advantage of the graphics accelerator. the effect is i cant play simple videos, unless i run them through a program first to recode them
if that is the case, why would sony ericsson give them the contract, knowing this?
When do you think this problem may be cracked?
Why wouldnt sony ericsson include codecs in their media panel ( i understand this has video acceleration)

Although QTv is still not very well understood, CorePlayer can (and does) use it to accelerate video playback.

Leddy said:
Although QTv is still not very well understood, CorePlayer can (and does) use it to accelerate video playback.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i thought it didnt yet??

I don't know how they do it.. but coreplayer is 99.9% smooth !
only the really fast scenes in normal xvid sometimes drop a frame... but it's very acceptable.

as the others said keep an eye on the core player 2.0 release which is said to do better hardware decoding. its not bad now though .
dont know much about the details of qc driver mess as i am new here. but even if you have full proper access to the driver, applications needs to written to take advantage of the accelerated hardware to notice a performance increase.

Thanks for information

THE GRIZZ said:
as the others said keep an eye on the core player 2.0 release which is said to do better hardware decoding. its not bad now though .
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It is bad, real bad. My 3 years old Palm T5 plays movies 20% faster, at 100% (ie the same resolution). But then no WM device of X1 generation is any better. Faster devices only starts to appear (like new ASUS and Toshiba promised 1GHz device).

Dr.Sid said:
It is bad, real bad. My 3 years old Palm T5 plays movies 20% faster, at 100% (ie the same resolution). But then no WM device of X1 generation is any better. Faster devices only starts to appear (like new ASUS and Toshiba promised 1GHz device).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But the T5 doesn't have to display all the extra pixels.

I say with no scaling .. so extra pixels should not count. I mean when the picture is small enough to fit on both displays at 100%.
When playing at fullscreen, Xperia is even slower, while not much ..
With null video the speed is more or less same. But even copying the image with no scaling seems to be slow on Xperia. On Palm 100% scale is only a bit slower then null video.
On the other hand Palm is slow at scaling. For Xperia (crystal player, qTV driver) scaling makes only little difference.
I only watch language lessons on Xperia, and only rarely. I don't need that to be perfectly fluent. And then, you can always convert the video, which should help.
I guess the reason is Palm T5 was really good at that time. The difference is it was just PDA. No wifi, no phone, no gps. It could have strong CPU. Communicators have to feed and cool all that, and they started with weaker CPUs (even communicators from Palm, or even models with WIFI (Tx) had slower CPU). Only last year communicators catch up with CPU power. But then there are many other things, like buss speed, display driver, OS support (Palm is quite simple OS).
The ultimate pocket movie player is just not here yet. T5 was a bit closer to it then Xperia (it also has bigger screen, worse colors on the other hand).
Anyone knows how is TouchHD in this aspect ?

read this
http://mobile-enthusiast.blogspot.com/2009/02/saga-of-htcs-video-performance.html

Good find ! That explains a lot. Only if I knew it earlier

Video playback on LEO

Will there be issues on video playback like all other HTC devices ?
Will leo be able to play a not converted divx ?

firiel said:
Will there be issues on video playback like all other HTC devices ?
Will leo be able to play a not converted divx ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think it's able to play till 480p res. videos even no exist video acceleration or drivers... It's powered by brute cpu force with snapdragon to process vid. codecs IMO...

firiel said:
Will there be issues on video playback like all other HTC devices ?
Will leo be able to play a not converted divx ?
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Click to collapse
I'm not gonna worry about that. For Touch HD, I used Total Video Converter, I used Iphone H264 MP4 best settings and play in Windows Media Player, even in Touch HD it is smooth and stunning at full 800 X 480, only that scrolling through time frames or during video startup is sluggish. And for HD2, I believe the loading time will be shortened.
Playing high quality videos have been non issue with these HTC devices, you just need to do it right.

precsmo said:
Playing high quality videos have been non issue with these HTC devices, you just need to do it right.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you don't mind wasting time on conversion, that is.

From HTC website: Video supported formats: .wmv, .asf, .mp4, .3gp, .3g2, .m4v, .avi
Can't speak to quality because the phone isn't out. ;-)

Reason4444 said:
I think it's able to play till 480p res. videos even no exist video acceleration or drivers... It's powered by brute cpu force with snapdragon to process vid. codecs IMO...
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Click to collapse
Which means that when a device from another manufacturer like samsung or acer grabs the snapdragon we will cry with the results, right ?
And dont have me even mention tegra

rebecker said:
From HTC website: Video supported formats: .wmv, .asf, .mp4, .3gp, .3g2, .m4v, .avi
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Touch Diamond2 specs also mention .avi, but it's a half-truth. I use a Topaz ROM on my Touch HD and can't view regular DivX/XVid videos with anything built-in. Maybe the FullScreen Player from HTC Album (or Windows Media Player) here can play .avis with some weird codecs, but it's absolutely irrelevant to real-life scenarios.

vangrieg said:
Touch Diamond2 specs also mention .avi, but it's a half-truth. I use a Topaz ROM on my Touch HD and can't view regular DivX/XVid videos with anything built-in. Maybe the FullScreen Player from HTC Album (or Windows Media Player) here can play .avis with some weird codecs, but it's absolutely irrelevant to real-life scenarios.
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Click to collapse
I've gone back to the stock rom on my hd, after an unfortunate incident with some muggers. But Coreplayer (ver 1.3.2) seems very adept at handling any native divx/xvid files

AshHD said:
I've gone back to the stock rom on my hd, after an unfortunate incident with some muggers. But Coreplayer (ver 1.3.2) seems very adept at handling any native divx/xvid files
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Then we probably have very different HDs because mine reminds me of the era of 200MHz HTC devices. Playback of unconverted is jerky with visibly very low FPS, dynamic scenes are more like slideshows than films, even with 700MB rips, 1.4GB ones are even worse. This is not to mention that CorePlayer doesn't support AC3 audio which means that half of the movies I have are mute. If this is called being "very adept at handling" then I don't know what isn't.
Stock ROMs are exactly the same in terms of video performance, the reason why I mentioned Topaz ROM is simply because that device boasts .avi support, which it is in fact lacking. That said, ".avi support" is pretty much a meaningless phrase since .avi is just a wrapper, there could be a full zoo of codecs inside.

firiel said:
Which means that when a device from another manufacturer like samsung or acer grabs the snapdragon we will cry with the results, right ?
And dont have me even mention tegra
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In what way do you imagine that these devices will be superior to the HD2 when it comes to video playback? If the HD2 can play back video at full screen resolution (800x480) with no dropped frames at all and support any wrapper or codec you might want, how much better can any other device really get? That (most likely) is what the HD2 running Coreplayer will deliver.
The only time there's likely to be an issue is if you expect to play back a high-definition (e.g. 1280x720) video downscaled to the screen resolution in real time. But, even if it's only for reasons of storage space, you'd probably want to downscale any clips like that to 800x480 resolution anyway.
It's possible that other devices (the ones that can use GPU acceleration when playing xvid and divx stuff) will offer better battery-life during video playback, I guess, but I doubt it'll be that big a margin.

Shasarak, it's not clear how the downscaling will work performance-wise without GPU support, and CorePlayer doesn't support AC3 sound. Not that I need to listen to AC3 on a phone, but I certainly have movies with it. So at this moment CorePlayer is definitely a mediocre solution as far as I'm concerned.

Shasharak,
Am not arguing that the device hopefully might be able to play, by CPU power 480p, but what about HTC not delivering for once again, what our money worth.
If u search for comparisons of omnia and any htc 528 based model, you will see great differences on video playback. This is unacceptable from me.
And what about gaming or 3d accelerated apps. We are getting to a new age of handheld devices, that should be (MUST BE) able to deliver video, web, audio and entertainment. And should do it with all their power.

vangrieg said:
Shasarak, it's not clear how the downscaling will work performance-wise without GPU support, and CorePlayer doesn't support AC3 sound. Not that I need to listen to AC3 on a phone, but I certainly have movies with it. So at this moment CorePlayer is definitely a mediocre solution as far as I'm concerned.
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Well, as I say, I don't imagine anyone will want to downscale video on it anyway - HD video won't look any worse if it's downscaled off-line, and it will take up far less space on the memory card than the original HD file.
Coreplayer not supporting AC3 is a problem, I'll grant you. It's possible that Coreplayer version 2 will support it. If not, then you'll have to see if you can get TCPMP running on the Leo - I expect there will be a version that does.

firiel said:
Shasharak,
Am not arguing that the device hopefully might be able to play, by CPU power 480p, but what about HTC not delivering for once again, what our money worth.
If u search for comparisons of omnia and any htc 528 based model, you will see great differences on video playback. This is unacceptable from me.
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Click to collapse
Yeah, but that's the point: you won't see those differences on the HD2. I own a Touch Pro2, so I understand how annoyed you are. But the difference with the HD2 is that the CPU is so powerful that it should be able to play back anything with a resolution of 800x480 or less without dropping any frames using the CPU alone - why would you care if it's using the CPU or the GPU if you can't see any difference in the playback? The Snapdragon CPU is nearly three times as powerful as the one in the TP2. Even without GPU acceleration it'll still work just fine.
firiel said:
And what about gaming or 3d accelerated apps. We are getting to a new age of handheld devices, that should be (MUST BE) able to deliver video, web, audio and entertainment. And should do it with all their power.
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Click to collapse
Well, we know from existing benchmarks that the Leo will deliver hardware-accelerated OpenGL ES, so that's a good start. On some 3D benchmarks it's more than 20 times as fast as a TP2. (I doubt there will be any 3D-accelerated apps for Windows Mobile, anyway - otherwise people who own cheaper, slower WinMo phones will buy them and then complain they can't run them. WinMo apps tend to be written for low-end hardware.) Web should be fine - especially once we have a version of FlashPlayer 10.1 which will be in beta before the end of the year. I wouldn't worry.

Shasarak said:
Well, as I say, I don't imagine anyone will want to downscale video on it anyway - HD video won't look any worse if it's downscaled off-line, and it will take up far less space on the memory card than the original HD file.
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I, on the other hand, can't imagine why anyone would want to convert any videos to watch on the phone. I have a notebook with a 60GB SSD and some 1.16GHz processor - it's blazing fast for Office/internet use but it'll take forever to convert any videos. I also store files like videos on a network drive, so using the more powerful desktop is still slow. And I need to watch videos only occasionally - when going on a trip I can copy a movie or two to take with me on a plane. So space isn't a problem really while ability to watch unconverted video is.
In any case, there was a question you asked about how another device may be more powerful in video playback - I guess with proper driver support they can be, and there are use cases when this is important.

vangrieg said:
I, on the other hand, can't imagine why anyone would want to convert any videos to watch on the phone. I have a notebook with a 60GB SSD and some 1.16GHz processor - it's blazing fast for Office/internet use but it'll take forever to convert any videos. I also store files like videos on a network drive, so using the more powerful desktop is still slow. And I need to watch videos only occasionally - when going on a trip I can copy a movie or two to take with me on a plane. So space isn't a problem really while ability to watch unconverted video is.
In any case, there was a question you asked about how another device may be more powerful in video playback - I guess with proper driver support they can be, and there are use cases when this is important.
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As a TP2 owner with a slow desktop PC I feel your pain, I really do. I'm simply pointing out that the HD2 won't suffer from this problem to anywhere near the extent that current-generation HTC phones do. My best guess is that no video clip that runs at 800x480 or lower will require conversion; it's only ones in higher resolutions that will. And the chances are that even your netbook wouldn't be able to play a 720p video smoothly, so what use is it to store the videos in hi-def format in the first place? You might as well download a lower-res version.
If you end having to convert something very occasionally then just leave it running on your desktop PC overnight - it's not that big a deal.
The key difference, here, is that a TP2 can't even get close to playing a 624x351 xvid clip without conversion, while the HD2 will play it perfectly. It'll play anything other than high definition clips perfectly without conversion - so there is exactly one use-case where GPU acceleration is relevant, and it's not an important one.

Shasarak said:
I'm simply pointing out that the HD2 won't suffer from this problem to anywhere near the extent that current-generation HTC phones do.
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This is most certainly true. I still bought HD even though I knew about these problems, but it's still an annoyance. HD2 will be better for sure.
Shasarak said:
And the chances are that even your netbook wouldn't be able to play a 720p video smoothly,
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It's not a netbook, it's a "real" notebook, Thinkpad X300, but anyway - I don't watch movies on my computers - I use a network media server and a network player, they are streamed to my TV. So my phone is the only computer-like device that needs to be able to play videos, actually.
Shasarak said:
so what use is it to store the videos in hi-def format in the first place? You might as well download a lower-res version.
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In fact, I try to avoid downloading HD videos whenever I can as I don't care for viewing them in high resolutions even though I have a large Full HD TV. The problem is only that low-res versions aren't always available, and increasingly so. It's not my preference but rather an unfortunate trend.

So you think that the snapdragon "RAW" is enough. Enough for what ? There are no limits for what to expect.
Should HTC, continue to ignore what GPU means, we should not. once again accept it It was like 2 years ago when I complained about my TC performance, without getting any answer. And now Samsung, on their first winmo device (omnia), has really better results, using the same processor. There will be tons of snapdragon devices, or even tegra powered (hopefully) soon enough.

If Qualcomm refuses to give the guys who write CorePlayer access to their intellectual property, that isn't altogether HTC's fault. Any software actually written by HTC does use GPU acceleration - there's a limit to the extent that they can be held responsible for the deficiencies of third party software.
firiel said:
So you think that the snapdragon "RAW" is enough. Enough for what ? There are no limits for what to expect.
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I set down very precise limits in my prediction: CPU-only video decoding will (IMO) be adequate for all videos with a resolution of 800x480 or lower. Any video with higher resolution may require transcoding - but it obviously couldn't look any better than an 800x480 video if it's being played back on an 800x480 screen.

firiel said:
Should HTC, continue to ignore what GPU means, we should not. once again accept it
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And how exactly should we "not accept it"? I am also pissed off at HTC, but I don't think we can do anything except buying something else, but there are also reasons not to (all of them very individual).
Shasarak said:
If Qualcomm refuses to give the guys who write CorePlayer access to their intellectual property, that isn't altogether HTC's fault.
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True, with a BUT: they (HTC) could enable their software to play real-life video formats. Samsung's Touch Player does that. And a smaller "but": they could also provide generic driver that would provide DirectX/OpenGL interfaces for Qualcomm's quirky technologies. Both options would cost them money I guess, so they chose not to.