[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Ever wanted to play your RMVB videos without converting them? Now, you’re taken a little bit closer to the solution – a RVMB plug-in has just been released for Windows Media Player Mobile, which makes it possible to play RMVB videos on Windows Mobile devices.

No, don’t think everything is OK now. The plug-in, while it’s indeed compatible with RMVB videos, won’t play back the currently available, high(er)-res videos without severe slowdowns. As it’s only “old” RM videos that are, generally, encoded at low (say, QVGA at max) resolutions and RMVB files are, generally, encoded with the width of at least 576 pixels, you will encounter very choppy (2…5 fps even on the fastest devices) playback. Therefore, you might want to forget playing back this format entirely and transcode them into either MPEG-4 Part 2 (DivX / XviD) or, if your handset is powerful enough, MPEG-4 Part 10 (H.264 / AVC) for seamless playback in either TCPMP or CorePlayer. Please see THIS for more info on these target formats and THIS for more info on RMVB-compliant transcoder tools.

Furthermore, it only runs on devices using the Intel Xscale PXA-27x CPU’s. This itself rules out most of current models based on other CPU’s like the TI OMAP (I’ve tested the plug-in on my HTC Wizard; it exits at once upon activation), Qualcomm 7200 (HTC Kaiser, Touch Dual etc.) or Samsung (Trinity etc.). That is, you can only run it on some scarce or somewhat outdated models like the HTC Athena (x7500), the HTC Universal, the Dell Axim x50/x51 series, the previous-generation HP iPAQ’s etc.

Note that it isn’t even compatible with the previous, PXA generations (25x, 26x). I’ve tested the plug-in on my PXA-255-based HP iPAQ 2210; after activation, it started to endlessly buffer. I, however, don’t know how it behaves on the latest-and-greatest, Marvel PXA-3x0 Xscale generation.

Should you still want to watch them on your handset but would still like to stay compatible with the earlier .RM videos and sound files, you’ll want to (re)install the official Windows Mobile RealAudio player (available for download HERE as a convenient – you won’t encounter install problems – CAB file) after installing this title. This is because the plug-in also associates itself with these file extensions. There isn’t much point in its doing so because it’s not able to play back any non-RMVB file. If you don’t want to reinstall, you can just restore the .RM and .RAM file extension associations by importing THIS Registry import file I’ve created for your convenience.

Nevertheless, should you still want to give it a try, it’s available HERE for download.

I’ve tested the plug-in with several publicly available test movies and sound files, all available in the official Mplayer test sample archive. In the following compatibility chart, I list my compatibility test results with the plug-in run on two (!) devices (the Dell Axim x51v running the official A12 WM5 AKU2.3 ROM and the HTC Universal running WM6). In addition, I’ve also tested the original RealOne player running on the x51v, the RealOne player coming with the Nokia N95 and, finally, RealAlternative running on desktop Windows. As it has turned out, the latter is pretty much compatible with everything I’ve thrown it at – this means you will want to stick to it, should you want to avoid installing RealOne’s bloatware on your desktop Windows computer.

(If you want to follow the clickable links, see THIS).