[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] mackaby007:
? Video Playback format: H.263, MPEG4, & WMV

? 5~8 fps @ VGA decoding for H.263 & MPEG4

? Min. 30 fps @ QVGA decoding for H.263 & MPEG4

? Combined Bit Rate: 64Kbps (playback)

? Video scaling up to full VGA display

This info was taken directly from the Service manual Mike Channon so kindly provided us with. Thanks again.

However, if this info is anything to go buy, we are in serious trouble. Can anyone see something between the lines that I'm missing here?

Apparently WMP supports the Imageon Hardware, right? But at what fps for VGA encoded vids? 5 ~ 8 fps?

Are they nuts!! Or am I?? No wonder the Athena can't handle VGA vids. :( thus re-emphasizing the absolute need for the hardware decoder (Imageon), to help or even better, take over the processing/decoding of the vids.

This is not good news!

Combined bit rate of 64 kbps!! OK that does it, they are nuts! :) Should have trusted my instincts from the beginning. If a device can only record with a limited bitrate and resolution for video, that's indicative of its decoding abilities too.

Like I said QVGA resolution of 320x240 or even slightly higher @ 480x320 will return satisfactory results, but anything above that will strain the Athena's resources.

And yes, whilst using TCPMP or even WMP10 are able to cope with more than what the service manual states, it doesn't look like it's supposed to.

Lastly, I think encoding AMR Audio and MPEG4 H.263 (ASP - NOT H.264 AVC) might yield better performance in higher resolution videos, as this is supposedly supported by the Imageon hardware decoder.

I'm seriously NOT impressed. Its about time that HTC the world leaders in PPC manufacturing started thinking about making devices with a dedicated 3D/Video accelerator to completely alleviate the strain of the main CPU when it comes to 3D Graphics rendering (whether for TomTom or Games) or Video playback.

The soon to be released HTC Kaiser is a step in the right direction with its Qualcomm 7200 dual-processor (one for phone and one exclusively for applications), but it's still not good enough.

The o2 Flame had the right idea with its Nvidia 3D Mobile CPU and 520 MHz CPU, but apparently it doesn't work as well as expected.

The Dell x51v still outperforms the Athena by an embarrassingly large margin for video playback and their 2700 3D processor still outperforms every other PDA ever made!! If only they had a Phone application to boot, I'd have one of them.

I get it now, the Athena and these new devices coming out every five minutes are very good, but being an all-in-one solution was never the goal of the manufacturers now was it?

It's always been about the money and always will be.

I'd love to get a group of developers, programers and hardware gurus together (with specialist knowledge) and improve on the Athena, because I think it is the best base model PPC to take things to another level, but even if I had the cash....the likes of HTC would bury us in a second and release something that would blow our efforts so far out of the water before we could manufacture the prototype.LoL

At least it would kick start these greedy companies to start giving us end users what is already available, but combine it into one device...as opposed to giving us snippets of new technology one device after another.

Just my 2 cents worth.