Database Users

[Q] so 720p/1080p video is a myth?

read too much in these forums, formatted too much on my comp.
i have got nothing but choppy video and sound delays. I dont buy into the tegra2 not being able to play 720p, that is complete crap.
but my concern is has anyone really been able to achieve some sweet 720p video? and if so can you let us know how you did so?
i have ALOT of converters so im ready to try once more before i begin to hate my life.
PS: I have absolutely no credible sources when i say this, but i believe a update of some sort will occur by this coming sunday (first week of march)

dudeimgeorge said:
read too much in these forums, formatted too much on my comp.
i have got nothing but choppy video and sound delays. I dont buy into the tegra2 not being able to play 720p, that is complete crap.
but my concern is has anyone really been able to achieve some sweet 720p video? and if so can you let us know how you did so?
i have ALOT of converters so im ready to try once more before i begin to hate my life.
PS: I have absolutely no credible sources when i say this, but i believe a update of some sort will occur by this coming sunday (first week of march)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Click the link in my sig and scroll down to Video section.

Use Handbrake. Simple and works great.
Set Video kbps to 2200
Set Audio to 160 kbps and samplerate to 48
On audio I also moved DRC to 4.0
Movies look great. Just make sure it is saving to mp4 and not m4v.

dudeimgeorge said:
read too much in these forums, formatted too much on my comp.
i have got nothing but choppy video and sound delays. I dont buy into the tegra2 not being able to play 720p, that is complete crap.
but my concern is has anyone really been able to achieve some sweet 720p video? and if so can you let us know how you did so?
i have ALOT of converters so im ready to try once more before i begin to hate my life.
PS: I have absolutely no credible sources when i say this, but i believe a update of some sort will occur by this coming sunday (first week of march)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most of the people haven't even gotten their Xooms yet. It IS unfortunate that it doesn't come with 720p decoding build-in, but we know for a fact that Tegra2 can handle even 1080p.
So, like it or not, we'll just have to wait a bit. I'm sure they are working on proper harware-accelerated codecs. Even if Moto isn't, tons of private developers do.
We're early to the party, so grab a beer, sit down and wait for everyone to come =)

your my boy

dudeimgeorge said:
my concern is has anyone really been able to achieve some sweet 720p video? and if so can you let us know how you did so?
i have ALOT of converters so im ready to try once more before i begin to hate my life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just converted a 1080 trailer of Ice Age 4 to an MP4 file of 1920x800 res, 5000Kbps H264 video, and it plays fine.

I use Total Video Converter & it works great..!!

lacesout said:
Use Handbrake. Simple and works great.
Set Video kbps to 2200
Set Audio to 160 kbps and samplerate to 48
On audio I also moved DRC to 4.0
Movies look great. Just make sure it is saving to mp4 and not m4v.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is 160 kbps for the audio going to sound that much better than 128? And is the DRC 4 going to be that different?

keitht said:
Click the link in my sig and scroll down to Video section.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I love you..

Ill have to give some fine tuning a chance with my videos. I just coverted a 720p copy of inception using handbrake. I used the apple preset as its listed to work with ipad so i figured it wouldnt be much difference. While the movie and audio do play as they are supposed to im not happy with the frame rate. Its by no means unwatchable. But it is not nearly as fluid as i would like and the irregularity in framerate isnt even consistent. It gets choppier(i use the term loosely) at different intervals almost like im watching a streaming video or playing on a computer whos resources are tapped out. its really annoying because i cant even really gauge the consistency of it becuase its an inconsistent problem.
Im gonna try the settings someone a few post up suggested and see if that works out better. But even if they do its really a shame as most brain dead people can use an ipad. But they expect your average consumer to be able to do all this just to play a frikkin video and still call this thing an ipad competitor?

dudeimgeorge said:
read too much in these forums, formatted too much on my comp.
i have got nothing but choppy video and sound delays. I dont buy into the tegra2 not being able to play 720p, that is complete crap.
but my concern is has anyone really been able to achieve some sweet 720p video? and if so can you let us know how you did so?
i have ALOT of converters so im ready to try once more before i begin to hate my life.
PS: I have absolutely no credible sources when i say this, but i believe a update of some sort will occur by this coming sunday (first week of march)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No one ever said that Tegra 2 can't play 720p. People have said that it can't play 720p high profile, which is pretty much all 720P that one doesn't encode themselves. Basically not all hd video is created equal. Others have said that it can play 720p but is just lacking some codecs.

verusevo said:
Im gonna try the settings someone a few post up suggested and see if that works out better. But even if they do its really a shame as most brain dead people can use an ipad. But they expect your average consumer to be able to do all this just to play a frikkin video and still call this thing an ipad competitor?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Apple wants all their customers to just buy stuff of iTunes, so if you do that, it's braindead, but if not, they're in the same boat as us. It only plays 720p baseline (I hear XMBC for it can do 720p high profile, but you have to jailbreak to install it) so it needs to be converted too. Handbreak with presets is what I've been doing for my iPhone 3G, 4, and now Dell Streak.
I've been researching this alot this weekend, and to summarize the issue with 720p/1020p video, the deal is with the various bitrates and profiles of h264 video in particular. NVIDIA Tegra 2 and Motorola only claim to support 720p and 1080p baseline profile. So, for conversion workarounds, there is a Handbrake preset - See Keitht's post. I don't consider this an acceptable solution of course. I keep hearing that Notion Ink Adam's can play 720p high profile after an update. It would be nice to have that player on the Xoom - follow this thread here for info on that. As for now, QQPlayer does the best for 720p high profile - my eyeball guess is that it's playing 10fps now... someone on the forums here did the 1.5ghz overclock and said it's "acceptable" but I don't feel like overclocking my xoom 50% myself
So, I think this will be addressed, eventually. There are WAY to many Tegra 2 devices coming out for someone NOT to invest the time into getting a good player for it - LG's slate, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Motorola Atrix, etc etc are all going to be Tegra 2 based.

The details in this thread definitely work, and work well. Yes it is going to take a while to convert things and yes that is a pain the ass to re-encode everything but the results ARE worth it.
THANKS

*SIGH* the trials and tribulations of the educated consumer.... why do they mock us so?!?

Great this definitely works. Just finished up a convert of Megamind 720p and it is smooth as silk.

Phylar said:
Apple wants all their customers to just buy stuff of iTunes, so if you do that, it's braindead, but if not, they're in the same boat as us. It only plays 720p baseline (I hear XMBC for it can do 720p high profile, but you have to jailbreak to install it) so it needs to be converted too. Handbreak with presets is what I've been doing for my iPhone 3G, 4, and now Dell Streak.
I've been researching this alot this weekend, and to summarize the issue with 720p/1020p video, the deal is with the various bitrates and profiles of h264 video in particular. NVIDIA Tegra 2 and Motorola only claim to support 720p and 1080p baseline profile. So, for conversion workarounds, there is a Handbrake preset - See Keitht's post. I don't consider this an acceptable solution of course. I keep hearing that Notion Ink Adam's can play 720p high profile after an update. It would be nice to have that player on the Xoom - follow this thread here for info on that. As for now, QQPlayer does the best for 720p high profile - my eyeball guess is that it's playing 10fps now... someone on the forums here did the 1.5ghz overclock and said it's "acceptable" but I don't feel like overclocking my xoom 50% myself
So, I think this will be addressed, eventually. There are WAY to many Tegra 2 devices coming out for someone NOT to invest the time into getting a good player for it - LG's slate, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Motorola Atrix, etc etc are all going to be Tegra 2 based.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Funny because I ordered a Notion Ink Adam before the Xoom came out and should ship next week. Since I got the Xoom, I do not want to open the box so I can sell it brand new unopened. Wish I could at least test the video.

So can anyone tell me does the "High Profile" mean like high compression because when I am doing re-encodes with the previous posted Handbrake settings I am seeing almost double the file output size of the original?

Nvious1 said:
So can anyone tell me does the "High Profile" mean like high compression because when I am doing re-encodes with the previous posted Handbrake settings I am seeing almost double the file output size of the original?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The profile setting indicates the quality of the video stream. There are lots of different profiles within the h.264/avc/mpeg-4 standards but the most common are (snaffled from wikipedia):
Baseline Profile (BP)
Primarily for low-cost applications that require additional data loss robustness, this profile is used in some videoconferencing and mobile applications. This profile includes all features that are supported in the Constrained Baseline Profile, plus three additional features that can be used for loss robustness (or for other purposes such as low-delay multi-point video stream compositing). The importance of this profile has faded somewhat since the definition of the Constrained Baseline Profile in 2009. All Constrained Baseline Profile bitstreams are also considered to be Baseline Profile bitstreams, as these two profiles share the same profile identifier code value.
Constrained Baseline Profile (CBP)
Primarily for low-cost applications, this profile is most typically used in videoconferencing and mobile applications. It corresponds to the subset of features that are in common between the Baseline, Main, and High Profiles described below.
Main Profile (MP)
This profile is used for standard-definition digital TV broadcasts that use the MPEG-4 format as defined in the DVB standard.[20] It is not, however, used for high-definition television broadcasts, as the importance of this profile faded when the High Profile was developed in 2004 for that application.
High Profile (HiP)
The primary profile for broadcast and disc storage applications, particularly for high-definition television applications (for example, this is the profile adopted by the Blu-ray Disc storage format and the DVB HDTV broadcast service).
You'll probably find a lot of movies available via "usual sources" are in high profile. On mobile devices these usually require some form of hardware acceleration to play due to the high bitrate. Not sure if there are many tablets that can play 1080p high profile natively. The Galaxy Tab is certainly one, but those devices with Tegra 2 chipsets do seem to have a hardware limitation with regards to playing high profile (and hence high bitrate) video. It'll be interesting to see how the Samsung 10.1 fares, as that happens to also have the Tegra 2 chipset. Samsung have always been good at hardware accelerating video, so it would be a backwards step for them to release a new device that can't play media that their previous device could.

paul so basically the xoom can only do 720 p baseline?
do apps like Rockplayer and Vplayer help? (without converting)

SS2006 said:
paul so basically the xoom can only do 720 p baseline?
do apps like Rockplayer and Vplayer help? (without converting)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm sure 720p baseline should be fine with any player. 1080p baseline should be fine. Probably main profile too. The problems arise with high profile HD material, which unfortunately is what a lot of stuff out there is encoded with. Then again, I guess most people aren't going to stuff HD movies on their tablets. The 4GB max file size on fat32 gets in the way as much as anything else .
As an aside. I've been using Plex server to transcode and stream movies (including bluray rips) from nas to tablet (running Plex player) with excellent results. But that's probably best left for another topic...

XOOM vs Ipad 2 Video playback

Ipad 2:
Video formats supported: H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format
XOOM:
If you stick with H.264 Baseline Profile, you can achieve up to 1920x1080p at 30 fps at 20Mbps.
Baseline Profile means:
- No CABAC entropy coding.
- No B frames
- No 8x8 transforms (DCT)
- No Weighted Prediction
For 1280x720p at 30 fps, you can go up to 20Mbps and Motorola XOOM should still be able to handle it. More Realistically, depending on the content, you can get away with 4Mbps and up with varying degrees of quality. If you are tight on space, use 4Mbps. If you want something to look good you can use 10/12 Mbps. At some point though the higher the bitrate will only translate to decreasing amounts of quality improvement. In other words, 20Mbps will probably look as good as 15Mbps, but will just use up more space. Ultimately, there is really no one size fits all solution and it may take a little experimentation to find the settings that work best for the content you wish to view.
Additionally your device does not have a limitation on certain types of B frames (Main profile tool). So you can add in B frames and not affect performance that much. If you are using a encoding tool that uses B frames, such as QuickTime Pro, you should be able to achieve main profile encoding.
If you are using a lower resolution that 720p (such as 720x480 resolution size) in order to encode longer length video , you can get away with using more tools (High and Main profile tools). However, encoding become more complex and may require more experimentation to achieve acceptable results.
In general, if you are concern about performance, use baseline tools and possibly b-frames (with no weighted prediction). This will give you the best performance.
Also as side note, if you are upscaling from a DVD to 720p try to use the best upscaling algorithm provided and don't expect to get true 720p quality from upscaled DVD.
Looks like Xoom is a tad bit better in terms of supported Hardware video decode capabilities.
In terms of GPU - it seems that the Ipad 2 may have a bit of an edge with the new power VR 543 - though this is not official as there are no direct comparisons yet.

Well my Epic4g with the Powervr SGX540 plays back high profile 720p FLAWLESSLY. The iPad will be capable of much more than that with the newer chip. The video standards that they "support" are the ones that they use through itunes and in no way represent the highest possible encoding of video that will play back. The instant XBMC hits the iPad2, I expect at least 1080p main profile to work since 1080p high profile ALMOST works on the iPad1.

muyoso said:
Well my Epic4g with the Powervr SGX540 plays back high profile 720p FLAWLESSLY. The iPad will be capable of much more than that with the newer chip. The video standards that they "support" are the ones that they use through itunes and in no way represent the highest possible encoding of video that will play back. The instant XBMC hits the iPad2, I expect at least 1080p main profile to work since 1080p high profile ALMOST works on the iPad1.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What's that you say, the iPad can output 1080p? Well sort of. The iPad can mirror its 1024x768 display in 1080p but it still won't decode 1080p H.264 videos, and we don't know what type of TV you have, but we'd bet ours does a little bit better job of scaling than the magical iPad. All that being said, the iPad 2's new form factor will increase its desirability as a couch companion --not to mention we'll buy anything with magnets -- but an HD source device, not so much.
That's from engadget
http://hd.engadget.com/2011/03/02/the-ipad-2-and-1080p-theres-nothing-to-see-here/

There are a lot of threads about xoom video limitations.
Am I the only person who just copied dvd rips from my iTunes folder straight to the xoom, and watch them with zero issues?
Maybe my handbrake settings arent top-notch, but the quality/size trade off worked fine on my old I pad, and work fine for the xoom. If I wanted full crazy HD, i'd watch from the blu-ray disk directly, on a TV that does it justice.
Am I crazy?
Sent from my Xoom using XDA App

It won't do it officially. Once it its jailbroken though it will have xbmc and will have ridiculous capabilities. For example the current ipad can play 720p high profile with xbmc now.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

Bauxite said:
Because the specs page for the iPad 2 lists SO many more formats.... stop trolling.
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What the specs page lists for the iPad 2 is irrelevant. Here my iPad1 playing a 720p [email protected] h.264 mkv file:
http://vimeo.com/20636064
Pretty sure the iPad never had that listed on its specs page. For a comparison, here is the Notion Ink and the Xoom playing back that exact same clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXWu6m33EP0&feature=player_detailpage#t=231s

muyoso said:
What the specs page lists for the iPad 2 is irrelevant. Here my iPad1 playing a 720p [email protected] h.264 mkv file:
http://vimeo.com/20636064
Pretty sure the iPad never had that listed on its specs page.
Click to expand...
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How long did it take from the MOMENT the iPad was released to when that became supported by some app?
People act like just because there are no apps RIGHT NOW for the xoom to play additional formats that there never ever will be.

Bauxite said:
How long did it take from the MOMENT the iPad was released to when that became supported by some app?
People act like just because there are no apps RIGHT NOW for the xoom to play additional formats that there never ever will be.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It took a while for XBMC to be ported, 9 months or so. Dont know if they were working on it that entire time. The reason people act like that BTW is because the Tegra 2 is incapable of hardware decoding [email protected] or higher. Here is the guy who ported XBMC to the iPad and AppleTV and who was tasked with porting to Tegra 2 devices talking about it:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=735285&postcount=41
Believe me, I wish that were not the case. Wants me some Xoom or Galaxy Tab 10.1 action.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the only thing difference I seem to see from baseline and high profile h.264 is compression. My Xoom is fully capable of displaying the converted 720p mkvs with no chop/stutter in widescreen format on its screen. I've yet to test out hdmi out to my TV though.
Unless you want to talk about bitrate, but I can hardly tell the difference in quality loss vs source on something that I downloaded off the internet.

iceytea said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but the only thing difference I seem to see from baseline and high profile h.264 is compression. My Xoom is fully capable of displaying the converted 720p mkvs with no chop/stutter in widescreen format on its screen. I've yet to test out hdmi out to my TV though.
Unless you want to talk about bitrate, but I can hardly tell the difference in quality loss vs source on something that I downloaded off the internet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh there is no doubt that you can convert the video to play back perfectly on the Xoom. That isn't in question. I personally just think its ridiculous to have to.
Good read on the differences here, especially on page 3:
http://www.polycom.com/global/documents/whitepapers/h264_high_profile_wp.pdf
Warning, above is a direct link to a pdf.

Thanks for the read, I skimmed it and it pretty much sums up as higher compression without visual quality loss. I never put it together that the development of high profile was used for bandwidth savings though, interesting.

muyoso said:
Oh there is no doubt that you can convert the video to play back perfectly on the Xoom. That isn't in question. I personally just think its ridiculous to have to.
Good read on the differences here, especially on page 3:
http://www.polycom.com/global/documents/whitepapers/h264_high_profile_wp.pdf
Warning, above is a direct link to a pdf.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your posts, and yes, I COMPLETELY AGREE with you! Once I began my due diligence today comparing the iPad 1, iPad 2, and the Xoom I thought to see if high profile h.264 was supported.
I was shocked to find out that the Tegra 2's hw (and Nvidia has confirmed this) does not support high profile h.264. BUT.... the iPad 1 does?! It's ridiculous quite frankly, and in my eyes, Tegra 2 is partial failure because of it.
Anyway, iPad 1 handles that Planet Earth clip (i.e. the de facto pseudo h.264 720p/1080p benchmark for years it seems!) beautifully. How's the batter life when watching h.264? How long can you get? Also, I would think the iPad 2 is capable of 1080p high profile yes?
In any event, I won't be buying a zoom. For the steeper price point, that is just insulting. I'm gonna try to find one of the remnant ipad 1s from Verizon that have been creeping around for ~$300, however unlikely at that price point it may be to find!
Kudos to your efforts and exposing this massive fault in the Xoom. I have NEVER been a fan of reconversion of the years, from divx in its earliest days through xvid (when apple ironically pushed 'reconversion' into mainstream)... glad that w/ this bad boy that won't be necessary as I'd never do it, too much hassle and insulting, imho.

Not being able to play 720p videos is the main reason I returned the xoom. If I am forced to convert videos I might as well do it for the ipad.

I am so tempted to sell my xoom because of this video playback issue...
I have a lot of bluray rips and I cant watch them on the xoom.
They were encoded using the Apple TV2 preset in handbrake, which I'm guessing is high profile

Oh wow, if this is that serious most of the Honeycomb tablets will be losing quite a lot of sells. I hope Samsung doesn't use the Tegra in their tabs. I'm fine with their Exynos, assuming it has the amazing codec support their Hummingbird does.

Its not the chip ( http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-2.html ) supports 1080p h264 just fine. As it stands right now, best I have been able to gather, it is a software/firmware (likely drivers) issue causing the poor playback.

pjcforpres said:
Its not the chip ( http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-2.html ) supports 1080p h264 just fine. As it stands right now, best I have been able to gather, it is a software/firmware (likely drivers) issue causing the poor playback.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That would seem to make since, but I believe in Google...A phrase I never thought I would be saying ever lol.

Sorry. But there isn't much doubt at this time that it IS in fact the "chip"
There are dozens upon dozens upon dozens of articles at this point citing the same thing: Tegra 2 CANNOT DECODE HIGH PROFILE VIDEO.
Period.
If you need me to cite about 50 different sources, I would be happy to do so.

Digital Man said:
Sorry. But there isn't much doubt at this time that it IS in fact the "chip"
There are dozens upon dozens upon dozens of articles at this point citing the same thing: Tegra 2 CANNOT DECODE HIGH PROFILE VIDEO.
Period.
If you need me to cite about 50 different sources, I would be happy to do so.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, no, I'll take your word for it. I guess some of us were hoping that it was just a honeycomb issue that would be fixed with an update.

pjcforpres said:
Its not the chip ( http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-2.html ) supports 1080p h264 just fine. As it stands right now, best I have been able to gather, it is a software/firmware (likely drivers) issue causing the poor playback.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Xoom can play baseline 1080p h.264. The Xoom cannot play 720p high profile h.264. I would venture to guess that 90% of all video that people have that they didn't videotape themselves is high profile h.264 with 9.99% of the remainder being main profile h.264.
hakujin said:
Anyway, iPad 1 handles that Planet Earth clip (i.e. the de facto pseudo h.264 720p/1080p benchmark for years it seems!) beautifully. How's the batter life when watching h.264? How long can you get? Also, I would think the iPad 2 is capable of 1080p high profile yes?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The iPad 1 handles the Planet Earth clip perfectly, but do realize that it is a jailbroken iPad with XBMC installed. The iPad does not natively support high profile h.264 even though the hardware is capable, because Apple wants you to buy media through iTunes.
The iPad 2 SHOULD be capable of 1080p high profile, but we won't know for sure until it too is jailbroken and XBMC is installed/optimized.

tips for playing back 720p mkv

I am having problems playing back 720p move on the device. They stutter with rock player and qqplayer. Any suggestions?

Transcode them to different profile - like mp4 or avi. Or still mkv but main or base profile (I suspect that your movies are in High Profile) that is not supported by Tegra 2. :-(
This problem showed up with release of Xoom and everyone with Tegra 2 tablet has the same problem. As all Honeycomb tablets on the market are essentially the same it is not possible to see if it would be OK on a different CPU/SOC. :-(

>Any suggestions?
Drag-drop.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1102922

galtom said:
Transcode them to different profile - like mp4 or avi. Or still mkv but main or base profile (I suspect that your movies are in High Profile) that is not supported by Tegra 2. :-(
This problem showed up with release of Xoom and everyone with Tegra 2 tablet has the same problem. As all Honeycomb tablets on the market are essentially the same it is not possible to see if it would be OK on a different CPU/SOC. :-(
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's dissapointing. My epic 4g can play 720p mkv straight withou conversion. Is this a problem that can be fixed in the future or will they always need conversion?

Vplayer, maybe? Try the 7 day Trial version first, though it's just about 5 usd. It seems to have more coded emmbedded too.

fhurricane said:
That's dissapointing. My epic 4g can play 720p mkv straight withou conversion. Is this a problem that can be fixed in the future or will they always need conversion?
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Click to collapse
3.1 brought the update to be able to play certain high profile 720p movies in a mp4 container, which was a big step. I'm not sure how much further it'll get since it's a Tegra 2 limitation. This is why Boxee Box dropped the Tegra 2 chipset. We'll have to rely on the devs of market players to take advantage of the 3.1 release for high profile MKV support (not sure if any of the players are capable yet as I haven't been reading the Transformer or other tablet forums. There's at least a couple threads on 720p playback in each tablet forum). Hopefully they can also incorporate the lights out mode instead of having the whole home task bar on the bottom. These limitations are also another reason why a lot of us are very much looking forward to Kal-el.

songmeesay said:
3.1 brought the update to be able to play certain high profile 720p movies in a mp4 container, which was a big step. I'm not sure how much further it'll get since it's a Tegra 2 limitation. This is why Boxee Box dropped the Tegra 2 chipset. We'll have to rely on the devs of market players to take advantage of the 3.1 release for high profile MKV support (not sure if any of the players are capable yet as I haven't been reading the Transformer or other tablet forums. There's at least a couple threads on 720p playback in each tablet forum). Hopefully they can also incorporate the lights out mode instead of having the whole home task bar on the bottom. These limitations are also another reason why a lot of us are very much looking forward to Kal-el.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is there a official source for this limitation?

The limitation that every android Tegra 2 tablet owner is experiencing is official enough for me. When I said I'm not sure how much further it'll get, I was more talking along the lines of 1080p High Profile.

songmeesay said:
The limitation that every android Tegra 2 tablet owner is experiencing is official enough for me. When I said I'm not sure how much further it'll get, I was more talking along the lines of 1080p High Profile.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I really don't think we'll ever see any 1080p high profile playback from Tegra 2 based devices.
I've watched many full length action movies in high profile 720p h264 on the XOOM under HC 3.1, and 720p playback is much improved, but still not perfect. The video will seem flawless for a while, and then when you come to a scene with a lot of heavy action, particularly where the camera pans across the scene, the video will sometimes fall totally to pieces. Slowdown, stuttering and skipped frames - a real mess. These occurrences are very brief and infrequent, but seriously annoying when they occur. For full length action films I've gone back to transcoding the video to baseline profile.
The Tegra 2 handles high profile 720p video only well enough for casual viewing in my opinion - TV shows, comedies that sort of thing.

Digital Man said:
I really don't think we'll ever see any 1080p high profile playback from Tegra 2 based devices.
I've watched many full length action movies in high profile 720p h264 on the XOOM under HC 3.1, and 720p playback is much improved, but still not perfect. The video will seem flawless for a while, and then when you come to a scene with a lot of heavy action, particularly where the camera pans across the scene, the video will sometimes fall totally to pieces. Slowdown, stuttering and skipped frames - a real mess. These occurrences are very brief and infrequent, but seriously annoying when they occur. For full length action films I've gone back to transcoding the video to baseline profile.
The Tegra 2 handles high profile 720p video only well enough for casual viewing in my opinion - TV shows, comedies that sort of thing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That input is greatly appreciated. It'll save me some time when I do my re-encodes.

e.mote said:
>Any suggestions?
Drag-drop.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1102922
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I used this, still yielded an unplayable file.
edit: nvm, plays with stock player, but not rock player

Tegra 2 missing NEON video decoding instructions - any solution to be expected?

the Iconia tablet (stock rom 3.2) has a most troubling issue: no (or no smooth) video playback of HD video files, mostly H.264 encoded mkv and mp4 files. Acer and Nvidia claim the device can run 720p and even 1080p in h264 base profile but the bitter reality is that even 90% of 720p video files don't play smoothy due to lack of proper hardware acceleration. this is really a huge disappointment as even most of today's discount phones can play 720p video and i got me a dual core device with a HD screen and a GPU from a dedicated graphics expert company but have to stick to SD video.
i found a statement in the Nvidia developer forum saying that Nvidia is working on this problem with some software partners which indicates that there might be a software solution to this sometime soon:
http://forums.developer.nvidia.com/...6/is-tegra-2-support-neon-intsruction-set-/p1
my question: is a software solution realistic or maybe just a waste of time? personally i doubt it, especially since the successor, Tegra 3, again includes NEON.
but maybe a custom rom like Thor could add enough horsepower to the device to enable at least smooth software decoding? anyone using this rom already noticed a performance gain?
i am looking forward to your comments.

Just install MX Video Player. Plays everything, perfectly smoothly.

FloatingFatMan said:
Just install MX Video Player. Plays everything, perfectly smoothly.
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you think i would investigate in hardware related stuff and post here if there was a player that could handle all HD video? MX player clearly does not, nor does any other player (dice, mobo, rock, just to name a few of the better ones) handle high profile H.264 video on Tegra 2 devices. so 90% of the stuff available online is not working, means they wont play at all or have massive framerate and sound issues. go and check out the latest movie trailers available in 1080p mp4 or download an x.264 encoded mkv file of your favourite tv show and you can see for yourself.
if you insist on your statement, then please put up a video source so i can verify. i would really love to learn that you are right and i have just a broken device ;-)

uli68 said:
you think i would investigate in hardware related stuff and post here if there was a player that could handle all HD video? MX player clearly does not, nor does any other player (dice, mobo, rock, just to name a few of the better ones) handle high profile H.264 video on Tegra 2 devices. so 90% of the stuff available online is not working, means they wont play at all or have massive framerate and sound issues. go and check out the latest movie trailers available in 1080p mp4 or download an x.264 encoded mkv file of your favourite tv show and you can see for yourself.
if you insist on your statement, then please put up a video source so i can verify. i would really love to learn that you are right and i have just a broken device ;-)
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Well if you're trying to play 1080p video on a device that only has a native resolution of 1280 x 800 as this statement indicates, then the joke is on you sir.

guys, please read my post carefully or even better inform yourself and stop posting such unhelpful comments.
kjy2010 said:
Well if you're trying to play 1080p video on a device that only has a native resolution of 1280 x 800 as this statement indicates, then the joke is on you sir.
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it's Acer and Nvidea who claim that Tegra 2 can play and output 1080p video (base profile h264) through HDMI, not me. i've just fallen for their marketing, trying to play some of my favourite 720p tv shows on my so called "HD device"...
also, i don't get your point about the resolution. are you trying to say that a full HD display is mandatory in order to enjoy a 1080p video? or that its content will look better if video resolution would match the Iconia display resolution? sorry sir, i really think you are the funny guy here.

uli68 said:
guys, please read my post carefully or even better inform yourself and stop posting such unhelpful comments.
it's Acer and Nvidea who claim that Tegra 2 can play and output 1080p video (base profile h264) through HDMI, not me. i've just fallen for their marketing, trying to play some of my favourite 720p tv shows on my so called "HD device"...
also, i don't get your point about the resolution. are you trying to say that you need full HD display in order to enjoy a 1080p video? or that its content will look better if video resolution would match the display resolution? sorry sir, i really think you are the funny guy here.
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OK I guess I'll just have to write you off as a n00btard if you think that playing a 1080p video on a 1280 x 800 screen will benefit you in any way, shape, or form roflol

kjy2010 said:
OK I guess I'll just have to write you off as a n00btard if you think that playing a 1080p video on a 1280 x 800 screen will benefit you in any way, shape, or form roflol
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i did not say i wanted to play 1080p on my device - you are clearly not able to read and most probably just a fanboy.
besides, i still don't get your point. i would chose 1080p over 720p if i had the choice. and you would stick to 720p or SD because you think there is no "benefit" in playing higher resolution content on smaller display? well, quantified the benefit would be at least 80 lines more content, don't you think?
there might be cases where a hard- or software scaler messes up while downscaling a video and picture quality degrades, but generally the higher the resolution the better the picture quality, regardless of display resolution.
now, back to topic please!

uli68 said:
i did not say i wanted to play 1080p on my device - you are clearly not able to read and most probably just a fanboy.
now, back to topic please!
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+1.........................

uli68 said:
it's Acer and Nvidea who claim that Tegra 2 can play and output 1080p video (base profile h264) through HDMI, not me. i've just fallen for their marketing, trying to play some of my favourite 720p tv shows on my so called "HD device"...
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Atleast I can play baseline and normal profile H.264 content at 1080p just fine. It's only high-profile that reverts to software and doesn't play well.
are you trying to say that a full HD display is mandatory in order to enjoy a 1080p video?
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The display itself is 720p, so trying to play 1080p content on a 720p display is kind of pointless. You won't see the extra resolution anyways. Though if you're playing through HDMI to a 1080p display then it makes sense.
---------- Post added at 01:58 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:53 AM ----------
uli68 said:
but generally the higher the resolution the better the picture quality, regardless of display resolution.
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Not entirely correct. Higher resolution doesn't equal better compression quality, so you can easily have 1080p video that looks like ass crap, and you can have SD video that looks better.
That said there are lots of reasons to choose 720p over 1080p on A500: 720p high-profile video generally looks much better than 1080p baseline-profile, high-profile fares a lot better in high-motion scenes, and high-profile takes less storage space than baseline-profile. And well, since you can't see the extra resolution anyways you're just wasting extra storage space on stuff you can't even see.

http://www.arm.com/community/partners/display_product/rw/ProductId/5770/
clearly states 1080p support via HDMI output.... is this what your after???

uli68 said:
my question: is a software solution realistic or maybe just a waste of time? personally i doubt it, especially since the successor, Tegra 3, again includes NEON.
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A software solution will only boost applications that are specifically designed to utilize it, and the hardware simply isn't fast enough to decode 1080p high-profile in software at full speed, so no, no matter what NVIDIA is claiming they cannot do magic tricks here.
but maybe a custom rom like Thor could add enough horsepower to the device to enable at least smooth software decoding? anyone using this rom already noticed a performance gain?
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Thor or some other custom ROM can only increase clock speed, there is nothing else to be done about it. And you can increase clock speed even on the stock ROM anyways.
But as I mentioned I have absolutely no problem running 1080p baseline- or normal-profile content, or 720p content, because I am not using the stock player. Use one of the players from Android Market, they're a lot faster and smarter than the stock player.
Also an important note to you: the stock player reverts to SOFTWARE if audio is AC3 encoded. That is probably the issue you're seeing. The players from Android Market do AC3 in software, but send the video to the hardware, so that's why they don't lag with AC3 audio.

uli68 said:
i did not say i wanted to play 1080p on my device - you are clearly not able to read and most probably just a fanboy.
besides, i still don't get your point. i would chose 1080p over 720p if i had the choice. and you would stick to 720p or SD because you think there is no "benefit" in playing higher resolution content on smaller display? well, quantified the benefit would be at least 80 lines more content, don't you think?
there might be cases where a hard- or software scaler messes up while downscaling a video and picture quality degrades, but generally the higher the resolution the better the picture quality, regardless of display resolution.
now, back to topic please!
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I was on topic, if you can't understand that attempting to play 1080p Res videos on a 1280x800 display has no benefits whatsoever, then maybe you need one of These.
I honestly don't understand what is so friggin' tough about understanding the concept, and you clearly stated 1080p in your first post.

He's trying to playback through the HDMI port, muppet.

Here ya go, educate yourself.
" If the incoming source has more pixels than the display's native resolution, you will lose some visible detail and sharpness, though often what you're left with still looks great. If the incoming source has fewer pixels than the native resolution, you're not getting any extra sharpness from the television's pixels."
http://reviews.cnet.com/hdtv-resolution/

guys, and ladies, please, this thread is not about pro and contra of full hd content on smaller displays.
the question is:
is it likely that (at some point soon) there will be a workaround to overcome the issue of the missing NEON video instruction set on Tegra 2?
again, my goal is not to play 1080p content on my Iconia, just some 720p stuff, mostly TV shows encoded in H264 high profile mkv files. and no, they wont run using MX player or any other player currently available. and i guess that's also due to the missing NEON. please see the link provided in my first post.

uli68 said:
guys, and ladies, please, this thread is not about pro and contra of full hd content on smaller displays.
the question is:
is it likely that (at some point soon) there will be a workaround to overcome the issue of the missing NEON video instruction set on Tegra 2?
again, my goal is not to play 1080p content on my Iconia, just some 720p stuff, mostly TV shows encoded in H264 high profile mkv files. and no, they wont run using MX player or any other player currently available. and i guess that's also due to the missing NEON. please see the link provided in my first post.
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I already answered your questions.

WereCatf said:
A software solution will only boost applications that are specifically designed to utilize it, and the hardware simply isn't fast enough to decode 1080p high-profile in software at full speed, so no, no matter what NVIDIA is claiming they cannot do magic tricks here.
Thor or some other custom ROM can only increase clock speed, there is nothing else to be done about it. And you can increase clock speed even on the stock ROM anyways.
But as I mentioned I have absolutely no problem running 1080p baseline- or normal-profile content, or 720p content, because I am not using the stock player. Use one of the players from Android Market, they're a lot faster and smarter than the stock player.
Also an important note to you: the stock player reverts to SOFTWARE if audio is AC3 encoded. That is probably the issue you're seeing. The players from Android Market do AC3 in software, but send the video to the hardware, so that's why they don't lag with AC3 audio.
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thanks. well, in respect to 1080p content i don't have much hope either. but, and again, 720p content encoded in h264 high profile does NOT work for me. i have massive framerate issues and sound also drops off completely after a few seconds. i tested with google, rockplayer and mx player (all of the latest builds).
here's another example file for you and everyone else to check and report back:
The.Walking.Dead.S02E06.PROPER.720p.HDTV.x264-ORENJI.mkv

Who's the ignoramus?
kjy2010 said:
Here ya go, educate yourself.
" If the incoming source has more pixels than the display's native resolution, you will lose some visible detail and sharpness, though often what you're left with still looks great. If the incoming source has fewer pixels than the native resolution, you're not getting any extra sharpness from the television's pixels."
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You sir are an ignorant boor who is incapable of reading. You couldn't read the posts properly and you can't even read your quote properly.
A 1080p file has more visual information. For example, it's possible to see a small mole on somebodies face in 1080p that in 720p or lower has been smoothed out and is now invisible. Playing that 1080p file on a lower resolution device gives the possibility that the mole will be visible depending on how the hardware scaling is done and since most hardware scaling isn't going for compressed file size and won't be applying gaussian blurs etc... you WILL see that mole.
The new Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire have the same screen resolution, one streams videos at SD and the other at HD. Now even though the tablet isn't capable of HD the one that streams HD is noticably sharper and has more detail. Go look up the pictures if you want. Take your own advice and educate yourself before you berate people for their ignorance when it is you who are ignorant with poor reading comprehension.

jmc23 said:
A 1080p file has more visual information. For example, it's possible to see a small mole on somebodies face in 1080p that in 720p or lower has been smoothed out and is now invisible. Playing that 1080p file on a lower resolution device gives the possibility that the mole will be visible depending on how the hardware scaling is done and since most hardware scaling isn't going for compressed file size and won't be applying gaussian blurs etc... you WILL see that mole.
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Mate, it doesn't work like that. It doesn't matter if the picture is scaled down before compression or after decompression, it's still scaled down. And no sane compression technology uses gaussian blur.
The new Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire have the same screen resolution, one streams videos at SD and the other at HD. Now even though the tablet isn't capable of HD the one that streams HD is noticably sharper and has more detail. Go look up the pictures if you want.
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The difference is due to the fact that the HD video is compressed with better quality settings than the SD video. Besides, Kindle Fire IS 1024x600 pixels in size which means it is indeed almost 720p HD resolution meaning that HD content only needs to be scaled down by 120 lines whereas SD content has to be scaled UP instead: well, OF COURSE it will look like crap.
In other words you're comparing apples and oranges and you don't know what you're talking about either.
---------- Post added at 08:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:44 PM ----------
uli68 said:
here's another example file for you and everyone else to check and report back:
The.Walking.Dead.S02E06.PROPER.720p.HDTV.x264-ORENJI.mkv
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I just tried that file with Dice Player. It stutters for about 5 seconds, then settles down and works like a dream. In other words, working just fine on my tablet.

I had problems playing 720p mkv files as well, no matter which player I used. The stock 3.2 rom appears to be missing the framework for hardware decoding of these files. No such problems since installing various Thor roms though. They all play fine now. 1080p is probably too much though. I use mx player by the way.

HEVC/H265 Capability - How Good Is It, Really?

Hey guys, after repeatedly spending a considerable amount of hours trying to find specifics on the Shield's HEVC/H265 capabilities, I remembered I'm an XDA member and decided to query your collective wisdom here.
Here's my situation, I'll be thankful for your help:
I'v got a growing library of video encoded with HEVC/H265, with max resolution of 3840x2160 @ 60fps.
My encodes are of varying complexity, the highest complexity so far being '[email protected]@Main' according to MediaInfo.
As I do a lot of encoding myself it is possible the encodes will get more complex and will move up to a higher tier and/or level.
My TV has HDMI 2.0 ports and supports 3840x2160 @ 60fps, no 3D.
What I'm looking for is a box that can smoothly play anything my TV can display, specifically video encoded in HEVC/H265. Basically something I can buy and don't have to replace until I also buy a better TV. All around the web I find great reviews about how the Shield has full HEVC/H265 support, but I seem to be unable to find what 'full support' really means here. Even NVIDIA's own whitepaper on the Tegra X1 is sorely lacking this information. There are competing products, most notably by Minix, that also tout full HEVC/H265 support. But in actual tests of use noticeable frame-drops occur with UHD videos and this is unacceptable to me. I've been unable to find reviews that test the playback of UHD video encoded in HEVC/H265 on the Shield thoroughly. The reviews I do find just report that UHD playback is smooth, and move on.
So, what I really need to know is what is the most demanding HEVC/H265(please report tier and level, plus resolution and framerate) you've played on the Shield, and how did it fare? Were there any frame drops, or stutters? Or is the Tegra X1 in the Shield really as good as I keep reading everywhere? How full is 'full support' really, that's what I'm trying to find out.
Hopefully your answers will help me decide whether the Shield really is the perfect companion to my TV, but will also help others with the same video-related questions.
UPDATE
I found a sample vid online. It's on this page and this is a direct link to the vid. It's demo vid for an UHD TV. If anyone could test this on a Shield connected to a UHD TV that supports 60fps, and report the results back here, I'd be very grateful! Basically, if this plays smoothly, I can throw practically any 'normal' HEVC/H265 vid at it.

I played a 1440p H.264 Hi10P 30Hz rip of Berserk with no (perceivable) issues. It did downsample to 1080p for my display, but up until now the only device I own that could play it was my gaming desktop. My work laptop and netbook would stutter with it. The Shield had no problems. Not sure about quality level, but at that resolution I imagine it was at least 5.

I have tested Big Buck Bunny at 4k hevc and done a TON of hevc main10p 1080p with absolutely no chance of getting close to issues. I'd be willing to bet that it would work perfectly. If I have time I'll test the sample, but the only thing that I could not manage to play was a 6K clip I found online, but that was a vram issue, not crunch power, so I'm willing to bet with 95% certainty that it'll be perfect for you.

kdb424 said:
I have tested Big Buck Bunny at 4k hevc and done a TON of hevc main10p 1080p with absolutely no chance of getting close to issues. I'd be willing to bet that it would work perfectly. If I have time I'll test the sample, but the only thing that I could not manage to play was a 6K clip I found online, but that was a vram issue, not crunch power, so I'm willing to bet with 95% certainty that it'll be perfect for you.
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My TV can't handle 6K, so that's fine. It would be great if you could test the sample, then I'd truly be sure it can handle everything I could possibly throw at it with my current TV.
Your input so far is greatly appreciated
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

talk

Tested the sample, plays absolutely flawlessly as expected.

kdb424 said:
Tested the sample, plays absolutely flawlessly as expected.
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Well, should you be an undercover employee of NVIDIA then you've certainly earned a bonus!
Ordering one now, thanks!
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Evil Alex said:
Well, should you be an undercover employee of NVIDIA then you've certainly earned a bonus!
Ordering one now, thanks!
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
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https://photos.google.com/share/AF1...?key=WXpuNFg4Ukg1T2drREZxa2tZS0xiN05PTnNNYVRB
Proof in case you didn't believe that I tried it. I don't work for Nvidia, though I do sell them where I work. Not because I'm told to, but they seriously impressed me and that's very hard to do.

I believed you, just ordered one. I've been looking for a good media player and the shield appears to be the only one truly good enough. Competitors say they can play UHD at 60fps, but reviews state that there are noticeable stutters. So that left the shield. Granted, it's more expensive, but I also have compatible NVIDIA cards in my PC and laptop so streaming games makes it worth it for me!
Many thanks!
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

kdb424 said:
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1...?key=WXpuNFg4Ukg1T2drREZxa2tZS0xiN05PTnNNYVRB
Proof in case you didn't believe that I tried it. I don't work for Nvidia, though I do sell them where I work. Not because I'm told to, but they seriously impressed me and that's very hard to do.
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Just noticed the monitor in your photo, it does not appear to be UHD. But I could be wrong, there are UHD monitors of that size. To be honest, I don't know whether downscaling is harder than rendering at full resolution.
Nevertheless, I'm pretty hopeful it'll work out fine. If not, I'll report back before the end of next week. The shield should be delivered by next Thursday. Can't wait!
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Evil Alex said:
Just noticed the monitor in your photo, it does not appear to be UHD. But I could be wrong, there are UHD monitors of that size. To be honest, I don't know whether downscaling is harder than rendering at full resolution.
Nevertheless, I'm pretty hopeful it'll work out fine. If not, I'll report back before the end of next week. The shield should be delivered by next Thursday. Can't wait!
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
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You are absolutely correct. It's a 1080p monitor. It's actually harder on the hardware to downscale as it's rendered at full resolution then it has to downscale after. It's known as supersampling. It's a better alternative to anti-aliasing. When the device plays a file, it plays at native res, then has to post process weather it's up or downscale, but playback is native. I can add post processing to see how far it'll stress if you'd like, but it's still so underutilized at 4k HEVC that it'll handle a lot more. There's native hardware decode for HEVC which is why it works as well as it does. I have played 24mb/s 1080p H.264 Hi10p files on here and it played near perfect. Sometimes it would go over 28mb/s and that's when it hit it's limit on h.264 hi10p, but that's with absolutely NO hardware decode as 10bit wasn't supported by hardware till HEVC (main10 vs hi10p).
Let me know how it goes for you. Glad to see there is someone else that plays some extreme media files other than myself.

Cool, thanks. You don't need to stress test it on my account. I don't have any h.264 hi10p encodes, I believe. And if so, no problem. I'm aiming to encode my entire archive to HEVC anyway
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

I have my Shield TV connected to a Samsung UHD TV (60HU8550). I downloaded yesterday 4 different versions of the Martian. 3 were 4k (3840*1600, 24fps) and one was 1080p (H264) for comparison purposes. Out of the 3 4k ones:
- one H264 around 48Gb
- one H264 around 25Gb
- one H265 around 5Gb
Kodi on the shield TV played all files beautifully. Smooth, no lag, fast loading times, even when jumping through the movie. There was a noticeable difference between the 1080p and the 4K versions, and I am really excited of 4k rips to finally enjoy 4k content on my TV!! And I am also amazed about the H265 compression ratio / quality! I used to download many 1080p H264 movies weighting around 10Gb, and to find 4k ones for only 5Gb is really amazing. I used to have an MX2 linux box dedicated for Kodi, and bought the shield knowing that the MX2 would not decode H265. The Shield TV has been a wonderful experience so far...I would recommended it to anyone.

Thanks, I'm getting even more excited now. H265 can maintain the same quality at roughly a little over half the size. I'm a big fan, though encoding takes quite some time.
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Evil Alex said:
Thanks, I'm getting even more excited now. H265 can maintain the same quality at roughly a little over half the size. I'm a big fan, though encoding takes quite some time.
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
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I wasn't stressing it for you on the hi10p actually. That's my norm when it came to things before HEVC. I watch a lot of anime and colorbanding bugs the CRAP out of me, so I only do 10bit video, so I was thrilled for HEVC getting main10 and hardware decode. That being said, there is a massive drop in file size for the same quality, along with the hardware decode. One thing to watch out for though I found is sometimes HEVC performs worse (visually) depending on the content. I have the anime movie "Garden of Words) using what should be very similar encodes, one h.264 hi10p and one HEVC main10. The main10 doesn't have the same quality in some scenes and has more visual flaws. That's the only one that I have found an issue with, but the rain scenes just destroy HEVC for some reason. It's amazing to have, but I'm glad that h.264 hi10p plays amazingly for those rare occurrences. To quote the team that released that encode "There is a reason for not using HEVC encode: x265 performs very bad on scenes like rain-dropping or snowing, and this movie just have enough of those scenes." Yes, I do legally own the blu-ray of this media, their encode was just better than mine, but I digress.

kdb424 said:
I wasn't stressing it for you on the hi10p actually. That's my norm when it came to things before HEVC. I watch a lot of anime and colorbanding bugs the CRAP out of me, so I only do 10bit video, so I was thrilled for HEVC getting main10 and hardware decode. That being said, there is a massive drop in file size for the same quality, along with the hardware decode. One thing to watch out for though I found is sometimes HEVC performs worse (visually) depending on the content. I have the anime movie "Garden of Words) using what should be very similar encodes, one h.264 hi10p and one HEVC main10. The main10 doesn't have the same quality in some scenes and has more visual flaws. That's the only one that I have found an issue with, but the rain scenes just destroy HEVC for some reason. It's amazing to have, but I'm glad that h.264 hi10p plays amazingly for those rare occurrences. To quote the team that released that encode "There is a reason for not using HEVC encode: x265 performs very bad on scenes like rain-dropping or snowing, and this movie just have enough of those scenes." Yes, I do legally own the blu-ray of this media, their encode was just better than mine, but I digress.
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That is kind of odd, HEVC should be able to at least match AVC/H264, regardless of profile. However, as I encode myself, it is true that the open source HEVC encoder is still relatively new(x265). It's still under heavy development, but still a far cry from how optimised the open source AVC encoder is (x264). This translates to (far) longer encoding times, and fewer available options. Let me give you an example, I have a setting for AVC which I call 'Super Quality'. If I use it to encode a 1080p BluRay movie(90-120 minutes), that'll take around 8 hours. Since HEVC and AVC use similar command-line switches, I've also got a 'Super Quality' setting for HEVC that's virtually identical. If I use the HEVC 'Super Quality' setting to encode an episode of a given show(40-50 minutes), that takes around 24 hours! The system I use has an i7 which runs at 4Ghz, so it's not my system lacking power. So, for now, if you want the best control over your encode, as well as good speed, AVC is still the way to go.
I imagine rain scenes are hard because the HEVC encoding library can't handle them properly yet(or requires disproportionate amount of time), but that should change. It's probably a macro-block issue. If you watch a lot of anime(I don't, though I do have quite a bit of it) you'll love the more modern profiles HEVC has. It has profiles that support more than 10bits colours, for instance.

Evil Alex said:
That is kind of odd, HEVC should be able to at least match AVC/H264, regardless of profile. However, as I encode myself, it is true that the open source HEVC encoder is still relatively new(x265). It's still under heavy development, but still a far cry from how optimised the open source AVC encoder is (x264). This translates to (far) longer encoding times, and fewer available options. Let me give you an example, I have a setting for AVC which I call 'Super Quality'. If I use it to encode a 1080p BluRay movie(90-120 minutes), that'll take around 8 hours. Since HEVC and AVC use similar command-line switches, I've also got a 'Super Quality' setting for HEVC that's virtually identical. If I use the HEVC 'Super Quality' setting to encode an episode of a given show(40-50 minutes), that takes around 24 hours! The system I use has an i7 which runs at 4Ghz, so it's not my system lacking power. So, for now, if you want the best control over your encode, as well as good speed, AVC is still the way to go.
I imagine rain scenes are hard because the HEVC encoding library can't handle them properly yet(or requires disproportionate amount of time), but that should change. It's probably a macro-block issue. If you watch a lot of anime(I don't, though I do have quite a bit of it) you'll love the more modern profiles HEVC has. It has profiles that support more than 10bits colours, for instance.
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Completely agree. Most have switched to HEVC, and I am also, just wanted to let you know that there are some limitations to HEVC, and from my research you are most likely right on the nail. The macro-block code is in need of looking at when it comes to rain and whatnot, but even if that's the only downside, it excels massively and has hardware support. I've encoded an a 4.7GHz 8 core intel, all 16 threads, and I know how insane the encode times are. Well worth the time for archival purposes though, just have to do test encodes when I'm unsure if it's the right tool for the right job. When it's not, dang does it require some massive performance to play back hi10p files. Eh, tradeoffs

Evil Alex said:
I found a sample vid online. It's on this page and this is a direct link to the vid. It's demo vid for an UHD TV. If anyone could test this on a Shield connected to a UHD TV that supports 60fps, and report the results back here, I'd be very grateful! Basically, if this plays smoothly, I can throw practically any 'normal' HEVC/H265 vid at it.
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The sample played back perfectly on the shield to my sony xbr55x850b (4k TV).
I went through several chinese 4k boxes and the fire TV 2 before eventually forking out the extra cash for the Shield TV. It was the only box that could play everything I threw at it.

Hey guys, I'm checking in with my experience so far.
It's splendid! I've had the Shield for close to a week now, and it has been able to play everything so far. This challenges me to find its limits, and I'll report back should I have found them!
Thanks to all who were willing to help me before, you've helped me made a good purchase.

good choice!