yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] sub69:
Re: again sub69

For "Dodgeball" I have the XVid 1.0 codec at 500kbps, and the audio track uses the LameMP3 codec at 32kbps (can't remember exactly what I used on this video, but I usually use 16000Hz stereo).

It's one of a few 640x480 films that I've converted using pretty much identical settings (Although I occasionally use DivX 5 - build 8 for the extra options). I normally do a bit of filtering on colour, sharpness, etc to get it just right, but yes it's stutter free, 25fps, and while it's not technically DVD quality, it would pass as such on the little screen.

As I stated in another thread, I can recreate the stuttering problem if I use much bigger files, but they really have to be un-necessarily large...1200kbps Video, and 192kbps MP3, for instance.

Don't suppose the stuttering that you get could be explained by using older and slower SD cards? (Can't see why it should, but I'm at a loss to understand why others are having problems and I'm not)

...just the thoughts of this "noob" ;-)
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] nabil2000:
communication is the problem

I think the main problem is communication... Usually if there is a problem, feedback needs to be implemented so that workaround on issues be resolved... however there is a very bad habit among the "big cats" such as MS who eventually address problems but without any feedback...

i-mate are also pretty bad because they take a very long time between hearing about a problem raised by customers, then acknowledging, then proposing solutions...

for video streaming i was thinking we here have a pda, which is also a mobile phone...

for mobile phones normally the video streaming format is 3gp... for pda's h263/h264 but newer ones accommodate divx,xvid and mpeg4 because of market demands...

now we have a hybrid pda/mobile, i wish HTC will be more precise and specific when they hand out the specs on their devices, this is where the problem is!

this is what created the usb hosting issue and now the video playing issue...

if in the specs they said device cannot play mpeg4/divx/xvid videos, or device does not cater for usb hosting i will not have bought it...

but they leave it open... i find their marketing strategy ambiguous to say the least, and when u add the lack of feedback...

now the pda2k plays xvid/mepeg4 video streams, but its not in the specs, why?
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] nabil2000:
sub69,

can u kindly provide me the links to get the codecs u use for jasjar and the media player...

u might have found a workaround, this is what i am expecting when i communicate in boards...

thanx in advance
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] sub69:
Things like that aren't in the specs because they're not "out of the box" features. I still have my old P800 somewhere, which is perfectly capable of video recording now that I have the software, but it was never shipped with "video recorder" as a feature.

As far as I see it, the spec sheet is accurate, and there are other things you can make the JasJar do on top of the 'advertised features'?

(Hope this doesn't count as continued hijacking, btw :|)
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] sub69:
I can't remember exactly where the codecs came from, but I'm 99.9% sure it's from one of these two...

Ace Mega Codecs Pack... http://www.free-codecs.com/download/ACE_Mega_CoDecS_Pack.htm

K-Lite Codec Pack... http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Codec_Pack.htm

I too am a bit of a movie buff, and over the years I've downloaded so many tools it's hard to keep track.

Hope this helps...

Edit: Oh, and I use TCPMP (but that's probably obvious!?)
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] nabil2000:
installing on pocketpc

dude i am a n00b as far as windows ce is concerned, how do u install them on a pocketpc?
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] nabil2000:
data rates

the xvid vids i have been trying to play have the following data rates:

for video: 1000 kbps

for mp3 audio: 104 kbps

i was hoping a 520 MHz processor could handle that...
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] sub69:
Oh, sorry. Crossed wires. Those links are the codecs I use for encoding, I just use TCPMP for playing :oops:

I haven't come across codecs to install on a PPC as such. Good point though, may be worth looking. (Unfortunately, I've got a pile of work to do at the moment....I'll have a surf around tonight though)

Sorry, looks like I may well be no help after all?!
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] nabil2000:
miscommunication

u use ur own rips...

i am resequencing at the rates u suggested, i will check if there is no stuttering...

its just annoying, i wanted to be able to play vids i can watch on pc directly on jasjar without any mods...

this is what i meant by next gen pda, as the compact divx players they now sell...

;)
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] sub69:
Re: data rates

Yep, I've always done my own DVD to Mobile conversions. DVD Decrypter and VirtualDub are probably my favourite pieces of software!

I'm always trying to get the filesize down as low as possible without it affecting the quality. Started out with my P800 due to it's 128Mb card limit back in the day, now it's just so that I can get more on my SD!

On a VGA screen I find that the sort of bitrate you're using for video is a bit excessive. (Just my opinion, of course!)

Hope you get better results!
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] nabil2000:
advance

Yeah, I also use virtualdub, but I wished with the jasjar to only code once for pc and pda...

we will see how this unfolds, but u see that this was miscommunication...

i hope u do agree with me that if the palm are offering 4 GB storage to their customers, why not i-mate/htc? My strongest issue was usb hosting/ + storage, as I said i have enough video playing devices around, including a pocket divx player that plays my pc divx files flawlessly :)
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] sub69:
Well, loads of storage would be nice, but I guess most people wouldn't use it? Have you seen the stats on how much of the average iPod is full, for instance?

People generally buy the storage they need, but I'm sure in the future all devices will come with gigs and gigs of storage space. In the meantime, SD is doing a pretty good job.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] nabil2000:
extras

The competition decides... people always want more than they need...

btw i tried ur settings, the vid plays now nicely, but after 5 mins, i get pixelation, i need to fool around more with the tcpmp controls...

i am not impressed by the sound volume and quality though :(

but i am a tough customer... and it it us tough customers that force the competitive edge in companies...

u know the french saying: "the customer is never happy, but always right"

anyways, i want a pda that works like a pc, that's me... :P

greetings dude
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] trendystyle:
The fact is that I have an Achos 4100, it has 100GB, and it's 80GB full, between music and pics, that are steadily there, and movies, that once i see them, I delete them.

To have a real multimedia device, 4 gb, would be great, by the way, soon we'll have SD cards, not as fast as an hd, bur will be enough.

At Cebit, last year, I saw 32GB SD card( also you had a Pcmcia adaptor, that could store 4 of those SD card, for a total of 128 GB!!!), so soon, we'll have enough storage, if the Jasjar, will be fixed, we'll have the real ultimate device!
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] mniko:
How about carrying this Video encoding issue in some new thread instead of discussing it in here?...

If there is any MOD monitoring this thread, they can move all those video coding discussions in to some new one and leave this one just to discuss about the problems.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] mackaby007:
Move this discussion please

Be happy to continue this discussion here:

http://xdaforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=29774

In response to....
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] nabil2000:
last bit

I tested the jasjar further by watching a video meant for pocketpc's, and i am still not happy, as after half an hour or so of playback, there is heavy granularity (pixelation), also the sound is not great, the highest u can get is about one third of the highest volume u get on an i-pod minus the quality...

I move on... :arrow:
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] hdubli:
Hi Guys,

Use Advance X-Video COnvertor...Cool videos on JASJAR...atleast I am satisifed, plating these videos on TCPMP..
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] nabil2000:
sound quality

this does not solve the sound quality and volume though...
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] mackaby007:
Sounds great! But at what resolution are they converted? 640x480 or 320x240?
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] quiltfish:
while it's true that the universal may have less ram than some other phones on the market, there are some of us who see this as their first step into the world of the PDA and for a first step, it certainly looks like a good one.

I am one of these poor people who's closest experience with a pda is my ngage qd running s60 *shudder*, nokia even have the nerve to call it a smart phone... you want slow, try using one of these things. Considering I can get the XDA for free on an O2 contract i'm thinking it can't be all bad... anything has to be better than this piece of c**p i'm using now, so when you are all argueing over the amount of ram your Univarsal should have, and how slow it runs, spare a though for all us poor fools using nokias.

And to think i nearly bought a 7710 *cowers from the impending flame*
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] nabil2000:
nokia

nokia make good mobile phones, they made a very bad strategic move by buying the symbian o/s off psion... i bought nokia communicator 9500 because i used to be a psion user and nostalgia for it tricked me, but when i saw how badly it performed i sent it back and bought the jasjar instead...

while the psion had its days (the days of windows 3.1 which are well over), its no comparison now to windows mobile, we want to move forward...

i am curious what the effect would be to make a pda based on linux?

i bought the jasjar as a pda, not a mobile phone, this is why i am a bit harsh towards i-mate/htc...
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] quiltfish:
to be honest, a scaled down version of linux should run with the specs of the phone, although it may have to boot from a flash card. the problem i see is making the OS compatable with the telephone features of the universal, getting a pda would be relatively easy but making the calls... i see that being the sticking point.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] hdubli:
Once can fully customose..or one can also useXilisoft convertor...If not at least one can use Smart Movei Convertor....
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] nabil2000:
gripes and moans from other forum

I think this is a good list of complaints (since this thread is about complaints): from mauriceatkinson, club i-mate member:

I could not verify his list of gripes, 'coz I do not use the jasjar as a mobile phone (have my dedicated nokia 6230i for that)

:quote:

-

well spent £700 on this device to find out it needed a rom update and even after that the number of things wrong are unacceptable.

Why does bluetooth keep switching itself off?

why do I often receive "unable to answer call" when pressing answer button/key?

why does skype not load up - even after shutting down all running apps

Soft reset should never be an option but still it is needed - too many times

the device is painfully slow to use - don't want instant (well I do) response but consistant and reliable is a must

why does the telephone loudspeaker turn itself off mid conversation when you enter your calendar app? Humans can do more than one thing at a time.

video cam does not work with msn messenger

No rss application bundled

why can the telephony profile not use my calendar and only ring when free - smartphone 2003 does this perfectly well.

Hopefully this will be due to my incompetence - any ideas (apart from using the jasjar as a door stop) welcome

Cheers

-

:unquote:
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] sub69:
Complaining about not having a bundle this, that or the other is completely unreasonable. You have to draw a line somewhere. And half the world is moaning about there being too much software, as it is.

And as far as I know, i-mate/HTC didn't write MSN Messenger, so it's a bit difficult to blame them for lack of video cam support i that piee of software.

Haven't had any of the other probs yet, but they would indeed be pretty annoying if they surfaced.

I'll have to try and get into the spirit of this thread by compiling a huge long list of things that are wrong with my device...will post back later.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] gavinfabl:
My Exec is perfect, no problems, no crashes yet, no soft resets yet, pefect ,

Gavin suddenly wakes up from dream.... :-)
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] sub69:
You managed to get the Exec?

Congratulations! O2 aren't the liars that some others suggested, then!

Any idea where to get O2 ROM upgrades? A workmate (who's not yet a member here) just ordered the Exec and asked me if I could find out for him.

And do you actually have all the problems listed here or is your Exec pretty stable? As this is his first PPC I think I'll be 'holding his hand' for a bit to get him going, so the more stable the better, to give him a good impression!
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] mackaby007:
Fabulous, you guys got the Exec! :D Definately congrats are in order.

Any chance of letting us have the ROM details?
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] greatestkelvin:
Why does everyone go crazy about insufficient ram? Do you think the engineers at HTC, O2, imate, Qtek do not know that 128MB RAM is the ideal to run this device. The reasons why its not built with 128 MB RAM is because by building a perfect machine who is going to buy their subsequent PDAs or phones? The engineers and phone companies needs a job as well and they need food to bring home to their families this is what you call Japanese marketing strategies. 2 months later when they launch JASJAR V2, it will come with 128MB RAM. By doing so you guys can then buy again. Unless you have a better idea to make consumers buy twice, we will all listen to you. We all need to milk the cow.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] Riceburner:
why??

(genuine question - I have a Blue Angel and am considering upgrading to a Universal).
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] dreamtheater39:
its not in anyway imo ;) go and buy one...and start feeling good about it :)

see whats important to you....if it is -

1. full fledged keyboard for lots of data entry

2. vga screen for screen space real estate

3. 3g

4. gaining gadget mana

then go ahead and buy it, and u wont be disappointed ;)

S
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] sub69:
It's not a step backwards, that's just a wild exaggeration.

Whilst I sympathise with anyone who experiences problems, the majority of people around here work through these problems and find a solution.

There are a few frustrated people who just make sweeping generalisations that have little or no basis in fact....Such as "it is a step back in engineering"

The Universal is a significant improvement over the Himalaya and Blue Angel. FACT. End of!
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] cr2:
I have written about a step backwards in ENGINEERING. Hima and BA have an accelerated GPU and twice the RAM,

and were ahead of their time.

The VGA LCD on universal is great, no question.

But its speed is disappointing.

And there is no excuse for not providing an USB host.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] sub69:
They needed twice the RAM for storage - not necessary any more.

Accelerated GPU? Wow!? Do tell me...what could the Blue Angel do that the Universal can't as a result of this?

Speed is a hotly debated topic on here, which just goes to show that it's a very subjective factor. Personally I'm not disappointed - my Uni is now as quick as my BA ever was, having upgraded all of my WM2003SE software to WM5.

(I'm also of the opinion that people expect far too much from a 520Mhz cpu, having been spoilt by the speed of 3Ghz desktop CPU's, but that's an entirely different matter!)

As for the USB host, that would have been nice, but hey - you can't have everything, and I didn't think this was available on any PPC yet? (I'm probably wrong about this though). I'm assuming that the decision was made to leave this out for a reason, probably power related?
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] belfast-biker:
Do you have a faulty SD card or something? Mine works briliantly.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] whydidnt:
Why isn't it needed anymore? Are our programs suddenly smaller. The BA provoded 40+ MB more storage space than the Uni. Both have SD slots for additional storage.

Play fullsceen DIVx movies without skipping frames. Anyone who has watched the Uni painfully redraw the screen when switching between portrait and lanscape would wish for a GPU.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect as much speed as previous generation devices, however.

Actually both the FS Loox 720 and Asus 730 both provide USB host capability. I'm not aware of any phone editions with it though. The frustrating thing is the funcionality is already provided by the CPU, it just needs to be turned on and some minor electrical changes made to enable it. I don't believe it would impact battery life unless used.

The Universal is a great device. I just don't believe we should overlook it's shortcomings though, since they all seem relatively easy to address. As with most of these gadgets we love, it's very easy to think what might have been.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] sub69:
RAM was used for storage before, and it isn't now, therefore less RAM is needed now. Even when I simultaneously run as many large programs as I own, the Universal copes extremely well, so why on earth do you need more RAM? (This thread is going round in circles!)

It can play fullscreen movies without skipping frames, you just need to encode them correctly. And it even works in VGA with 4 times as many pixels to cope with.

As I say, mine is as fast as any of my old PPC phones, now that I've removed the 'old' software.

Thought I was probably wrong about USB hosting on other PPC's, but (and again, correct me if I'm wrong) didn't the Himalaya, Blue Angel, Magician, etc, etc have CPU's capable of USB hosting too? And USB Hosting was missed off all of them as well... I may be giving HTC too much credit here, but I'm assuming that there was a valid reason for not adding this function, much like there's a reason for hiding the GPS panel...
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] cr2:
just because microsoft did it this way, doesn't mean it should be this way.

Pixmap cache and filesystem cache on non-ms

operating systems capable of managing RAM properly.

I buy computers based on hardware merits, not

by looking at how sleazy are the icons.

magician - yes, others - no. Magician is the

minimal cheapskate device, no need to mention

it here, it is in another hardware class.

yeah. greed.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] belfast-biker:
I buy computers based on the software I want to use, and then look at the hardware that software requires. The sleaziness of theicons you're dreaming about is irrelevant.

Only geeks buy computers based on hardware merits. :lol:
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] cr2:
that's why we already have Linux running on

blueangel, and soon on the universal :lol:
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] belfast-biker:
Ah, linux... got me out of a hole a few times when XP went bad, glad I have Ubuntu on the other drive at those times... :)
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] whydidnt:
Your post was about storage RAM not execution RAM, though we have less of both. How is this NOT a step backwards. Just because you haven't run out of RAM doesn't mean it's not possible. I have multiple times.

In my opinion I shouldn't have to re-encode my movies just to play them on this device. They play fine on my VGA iPaq. You can say encode them differently, but I say that if I have to do that the device is subpar. Would you accept a desktop PC that is unable to decode a standard DVD? No, then why should we accept something similar on the most expensive Pocket PC ever produced?

It may seem that way (and that's all that matters I guess), but come on, you mean to tell me you have some special version of the Universal that runs faster than the rest? It's been widely reported that the QVGA PPC phones with WM2003SE are much faster in nearly every function.

Like I said earlier, I still think the Universal is a great device. I just wonder what might have been had they not cut a couple of corners. I don't believe in justifying my purchase by overlooking obvious faults, especially when I spend more than $1,000 for a PDA. :wink:
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] dreamtheater39:
No doubt that the universal was packed with lesser RAM....the guys at HTC sure deserve a kick up their rear for this :evil:

@sub69

For a device such as this, convergence is important. For most people, they love playing games on their pdas (like meeee!). If you want to port games which were made in the late 90s, all of them needed roughly 20-30 megs of RAM. Again, thats not too much to ask to be honest. That makes porting so much harder, that you need to rework the memory usage, and all of that...its only more painful now.

If you're talking about using this device for at least another year, things are not going to remain the same. Applications will always continue to grow larger, more power hungry and better. If NOT, its because of idiots like HTC & MS for saying 64megs is enough, and release a device with a limitation holding back possible advancements on the software side.

I still think its a very stupid thing that MS or HTC or whoever responsible has done this. Whether it was done to preserve battery life, or just prove a point that "WM5 is different" or just to give them a second wind chance of releasing an update to the universal down the line with more RAM, I think its plain stupidity and I'll always curse the phucks who did this! :)

My 2 cents ;)

Cheers!

San
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] belfast-biker:
I'm currently using the scumm engine without issue, and hope to try the other emulators soon too. Can you indicate which games use 30mb, so that I can avoid them? Cheers.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] dreamtheater39:
a silly brick blasting game on a vga needs ~10megs RAM! Take a look at this for example -

http://www.isotope244.com/games/ab/ackys-xp-breakout.html

So you can imagine if you want to port games such as command and conquer, mortal kombat, age of empires etc.

We can still live with the handicap though :S

btw, I wrote a mail to ppctechs.com and checked if they can upgrade/ are working on it/ status of a ram upgrade for the universal.

They replied telling that nothing is available as yet (like i didnt know) and they have been trying to upgrade with no luck as yet and doubt the possibility of upgrading the universal. :(

San
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] belfast-biker:
So, are you ASSUMING these other games use more memory than the Jasjar provides based on the brick blaster above, or have you tried them and found that they need more RAM?