yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] jgermuga:
I think chainfire is spot on with his scenario, however, I am not so sure it is wise to just fill this out. Sure it may just be a stall tactic, but I hope they don't use it to come back and say, "In order to get decent video playback, you must use..." or "Out of our customer base, only a small percentage of people are experiencing the problem... yada, yada... and it is only fair to our all of our customers that we work on higher priority issues"

I also take issue with HTC asking for this info when it is quite clear that they know about the problem. It's not like this site is a secret to HTC. I am sure they know quite well what is going on and have plenty of people who they PAY TO TEST. Why should we be testing the product for free. I have spent 10's of hours trying different codecs and encoding rates and now I am supposed to hand over all this data for them to do anything about it? This just makes me even madder.

If anything, they should have tested this during the development process with multiple codecs and multiple encode rates. So not only should they already know about this, they aught to include it as part of the specs of the product. This would make it quite clear for any potential purchaser EXACTLY what it can and can not do concerning video playback. Likewise, It would be nice to have some reference point for games.

Take a look at the spec on the chipset for the site...

"Advanced 2D/3D graphics support with up to 4 million 3D triangles per second, and 133 million 3D textured pixels per second fill rate

Q3Dimension™ rendering engine with OpenGL® ES-compliant 3D graphics

Dedicated hardware accelerating the entire 3D rendering process

High-performance video player powers broadcast video, streaming video- and audio-on-demand plus video messaging at 30 fps VGA

Video Codecs: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264, Windows Media and RealNetworks

Audio Codecs: AMR-NB, AMR-WB/+, AAC, aacPlus and Enhanced aacPlus, Windows Media and RealNetworks

Qcamera software with 30 fps VGA viewfinder resolution "

I have definitely tried H.263 with as low as 300kb and 15fps, and it still will not render more than 1 frame per second. They is no way any engineer worth his(or her) salt can look at these specs and not realize there is something DRASTICALLY wrong.

There is definitely a big white elephant standing in the moddle of the room and no one want to fess up that they see it.

I think this is just a ruse! I have written commercial software for large corporations and a user base of thousands. Make no mistake, there is NO WAY this product shipped without extensive testing. It is much more likely they knew of the issues and someone made a risk/return based decision that it would be more costly to fix than ship as is. This happens all the time. If no one complains, their bet pays off. Don't let this bet pay off for them. They made a poor decision and the sooner they fess up and fix it the better. This veil of "we need to understand your problems" is way too thin for me and I find it patronizing.
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] mackaby007:
What a load of cobblers! Do HTC think idiots buy their devices??

Absolutely beautifully put! You and Chainfire are right on the money. Let's hope not too many of our fellow members get sucked in by this crap.

If this were a legal battle already, would this be a satisfactory offer of a deal? I think not.

Were not expecting money here. Just bloody drivers for the hardware in our devices. If LG and others can do it, why can't HTC? If they are incapable, employ someone else to do the job for them and employ their services from now on or stop advertising their products capabilities when they obviously have no desire or idea how to get it to work.

At the very least, HTC and Qualcomm should release the tech details so we can find someone to make our own drivers.

IMHO, I would not encourage the filling in of e-mail forms etc, because they are more than aware of the issues raised.

It's simple, all they have to do is check their advertising and compare it to Qualcomm's spec sheet of the MSM7200. Then see far away they are from achieving their hyped up device.

Yes their approach to our complaints is definitely patronizing.
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] Chainfire:
A page has been added to HTCClassAction.org giving some tips and pointers on the replying or sending information to HTC. Hope this helps :)
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] mackaby007:
Just read it. Great work mate..you deserve a medal for your efforts and commitment.
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] Straputsky:
When I read the email of HTC I wondered why people are so enthusiastic. As far as I know the devices lack some drivers. HTC should already know this. This is not a bug created by a specific software under specific circumstances. So they don't need the details they are asking for. I think it's more to keep people quiet so they can still sell their devices until they have solved the problem or invented the next generation. Maybe it's only a trick to focus the attention on HTC support instead of creating negativ publicity to the world.

I already send them an email some time ago and until now I don't get a response. I think all the emails send now will meet my email where HTC storages it: In the wastebasket.
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] private69:
For All

Hello,

Look an another article for Plaint of HTC driver.

http://www.theinquirer.fr/2008/01/1...s_graphiques_de_mobiles_htc.html#comment-9498

Please post your Comment at the end of the page of this web site !!!

Found it on google.news

Private69.

@++++
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] undac:
Great stuff, let's hope they put it on their english site as well.
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] Shadow7789:
Of course you don't simply forget to release a video driver. However, does it really matter if we are being "played" by HTC? Is it not going to eventually result in us having better devices. Sure, we can complain about the past, and complain about HTC's product development decisions. But I ask, does that really matter anymore?

I have my Tilt, and while it might not have been a perfect product at release, let's face it, at the end of all of this, I will probably have a better device. My device will be more useful than it was when I got it. Frankly, I don't care what their original motives were. I am getting a better product and that is all that matters.

And, I want to believe that we are getting a complete fix, not just a partial fix. Afterall, its not like they are going to patch WMP or other video players to work. They will have to enable some kind of device functionality, and I am sure it won't be as simple as just turning on the video decoders. On the contrary, it will probably require turning on ALL of the features locked away inside of our devices.
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] Chainfire:
Well I can tell you there IS actually a video decoder present on the device that seems to use HWA. I've actually been trying to get it to work, but so far no luck. It's there, but not a single program out there seems to use it (I think this is what the CoreCodec guys have gotten to work). What the performance of that is, I don't know, as I don't know exactly what it does. Does it only help with the decoding, or also with putting it on screen? etc.
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] undac:
Judging by what betaBoy of CorePlayer has stated I can't really understand what they've done:

First he said the fix only enabled proper DirectDraw/HW Overlay support.

Then he said the fix only applies to MPEG4.

Now that makes no sense in a "traditional" evoirment.

DirectDraw/Overlay acceleration is usually codec independent.

To me this can mean one of three things:

1. BetaBoy is confused and it's either one or the other: ie either they enabled DD/Overlay HW support or they enabled HW acceleration of MPEG4 decode.

2. They enabled HW acceleration of MPEG4 which automagically makes DD/Overlay work properly as well as long as the HW decode is in effect.

3. BetaBoy was just unclear and they have actually enabled both HW decode AND DirectDraw/Overlay support.
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] Chainfire:
I have a suspicion it works like this: that driver (which is indeed only for MPEG-4 based video, and I believe only "simple profile" at that, not AVC) uses hardware assisted decoding of the actual stream, and creates a hardware overlay (which is what DirectDraw/3D also does, ultimately) to display it. It might just 'bypass' DirectDraw altogether to do this. Won't know until I get it to work though, or the CoreCodec guys finally release it (I won't be buying, though).

EDIT: Btw, this driver mucks with QTV, and QTV (I think) only supports MPEG-4.
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] undac:
I think you will be dissapointed if that is what you expect.

There's several drivers (though the OGL/D3D drivers can swap out each other making them in essence one and the same if needed, though it of course would be prefered with two seperate drivers).

One for Open GL ES, one for DirectDraw, one for GAPI, one for GDI/DDI, one for Direct3D Mobile.

Also, enabling support for hardware accelerated decoding/encoding of video is probably not as easy as on the desktop Windows envoirment (ie just make sure you use DXVA) I'm afraid.

You probably have to hook into some other dll and actually program a path specifically for this functionality in each and every app. (I can't say that I'm sure about this it's just a hunch based on me poking around various devices and reading the information available from qualcomm).
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] undac:
As for what codecs it can use Qualcomm removed the webpage with the specs but it's H.264 simple profile (MPEG4 part 10), MPEG4 part 2, H.263, RealVideo (probably only up to rv30 or rv40) and WMV at the very least.

So it should cover almost all commonly used formats except MPEG and MPEG2.

(PocketTV supports MPEG1/2, even at fair bitrates, perfectly though, even on the Kaiser. It doesn't use any hardware acceleration though so I have no idea how this magic is done. :))
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] Chainfire:
I'm quite sure you'll find only the MPEG-4 parts of RealVideo and WMV are supported.. Though most are that now :)
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] Shadow7789:
I mean, no one really understands where the problem lies with the Kaiser, but I have a strong hunch that the problem is more DirectDraw related than anything else. I mean, sure it takes power to decode MPEG4 video, but in my experience with mobile devices, there has never been problems with non-Hardware accelerated video decoding, at least at the low resolutions people have been reporting problems with.

To be honest, we will have to see what BetaBoy puts out when he releases his software, but to be honest, I think it is being hyped a lot more than it will probably deserve. He certainly didn't activate any previoiusly inactive hardware. There aren't many coders outside of hardware manufactures with the skillset to write the kind of drivers required to do that. And I couldn't begin to imagine why the same functionality wouldn't work in Windows Media Player. I am fairly certain the default media player would use all the resources that were enabled at ship time.
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] Chainfire:
I beg to differ. Having spent over a 100 hours hacking with the Kaiser's and LG KS20's drivers (and having been a professional software developer for over ten years - even though I only went mobile a few months ago) I know

exactly

where the problem lies. And that is that the drawing operations are not accellerated. DirectDraw is only ONE PART of these drawing operations. Though yes, it is one of the aspects generally used for displaying decoded video (in TCPMP for example, you can also select GDI or raw framebuffer, but many video players use DirectDraw).

Did anyone say it required hardware accellerated decoding? No! Nevertheless the hardware does seem to provide it (encoding as well, btw), if all is activated and supported by drivers, I may even be possible to play 720 or 1080p without recoding.

Again, this is where you are possibly wrong. I think it's even fairly likely they have gotten the QTV driver to work, as that's really the only way I can see to make happen what they claim. And the QTV driver DOES talk directly to the hardware (exactly what for, is still unclear) - so yes, he may certainly be using hardware on the Kaiser that is not used by any other program right now.

Are we talking about the same Windows Media Player? :D
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] omikr0n:
I would suggest you reply to them with something like this:

My original question wasn't regarding IF there was any bug regarding video playback on Tilt as I KNOW there is. My question was regarding HTC doing something to fix this, i.e. releasing ANY hardware-accelerated graphic-related drivers at all in the near future.
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] Shadow7789:
That isn't a bad idea though. The more channels we persue, the more likely the chance of a fix. Furthermore, considering the level of talk about the nature of the fix here, I would suggest that everyone contacts HTC, trys to find out if there is a fix in the works, and if possible try to learn the nature of it.

But we have to be hopeful people, don't forget, the vocal minority often has more power than the quiet majority. Just look at the United States.
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] jon_k:
Chainfire is not speaking for his health. It seems exactly like what they're doing.

The term they coined for this type of PR is "damage control." You screw up and you handhold customers or stall them so as to let their tempers dwindle.

They failed, for whatever reason, to code accelerated drivers. Plain and simple.

Maybe they didn't have expertise on staff familiar with OpenGL or other engines. so they used the stock rendering provided by Windows?

Maybe they thought it was not worth the time, they were stuck on a deadline to start their production run, so they produced the phone as-is with no time to spare on drivers?

Whatever the reason is, it's unlikely they just 'forgot'.

They paid more for the graphics-accelerated capable video chip then if they got a generic video chip -- and yet didn't include drivers.

Do you know anyone who purchased a GeForce 8800GTS for $339 and then never installed the drivers? Would you pay $400 for a graphics card -- and not install the drivers to obtain 3d acceleration?

That would be a total waste of money, and defeat the purpose of buying the expensive video card -- if you were stuck to Windows default software rendering drivers. What would be the point?
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] jon_k:
Anyways, if HTC is not willing to code their own drivers, due to lack of technical skill, expertise, concern, or resources -- then they need to open source the appropriate parts of their code so DEVELOPERS ELSEWHERE (like XDA) can develop the appropriate drivers.

Seriously, if they cannot do it, we can here -- if they give us the source publicly.
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] undac:
That will never happen. The code belongs to ATi and ATi does not currently grant anyone access to their source code.

ATi probably can't even if they would like to since their code in turn involves things THEY have licensed.

So do not hold your breath for that one.

Best chance of the community being able to provide a driver is if a similar enough device is released from which we could "rip" the drivers. So far that hasn't appeared to be an easy task.
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] jon_k:
Yes, and I'm sure they also utilitize modified drivers from Microsoft -- in which they had to license the source code from Microsoft.

We all know they'd never be allowed to open source that type of code, under any circumstance. They probably had to sign NDA's with Microsoft.

We have cross-licensing agreements out of the wazoo for the creation of this device. Open sourced code for XDA-developers to chew on will never happen, and it will be impossible to develop.

The work involved in reverse engineering is monumental. I like the idea of the new Android project, hopefully that will be available for the Tilt -- as we've hit an end to our ability to go further with Windows Mobile.

I love the platform but with closed source model we are so dependent on big corporations to give us what we need. Maybe you can tell I'm a Linux user by now. But as you can see the closed source world is already limiting what we can do with our phones.

Untrue. There are developers with that experience -- but since HTC does not openly share source code with external developers -- how can you re-code their crappy drivers without reverse engineering the crappy drivers first?

Companies pay millions to have reverse engineering done on competitors products. It takes entire teams of people to accomplish. You can never expect some programmer on these forums to have the resources, time, and skill to reverse engineer code.

However, with the open specifications of the chipset published, and the existing video code published, it would be very possible for a developer here to have enough 'skill' to code the drivers.

With the source code licensing problems, our yellow brick road comes to an abrupt end. HTC will not fix our problem for us, and they cannot pass the code on for us to fix.

My next phone surely won't be from them. I'll get a phone that supports the Android OS.
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] Yannn:
I've send that ...

"As many people on hearth, I have let my trust to HTC when I have baugth KAISER HTC pocketPC Phone, and as everybody that have do the same, i'am Offended about the poor video and camera quality... more that when I know that HTC put on the mondial market a incompleted product and make the promotion for it !!!

Now what are you going to do for us ?

Are you on the way to finish your work,to get back our trust ? make a driver ? the best way or claim a denial to the press ???"

sorry for my poor english,i'am french...

At this time non response ...
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] awdbeast:
What I was told...

I've talked to two different representatives at htc technical support in the last week & they both confirmed that there will be a new R.O.M. released soon (in the next 1 - 2 months) that will address many of the "known issues." With each rep I pressed for more details on two points:

- video playback issues

- Bluetooth, most specifically performance / compatibility with stereo headphones with L.E.D. type readouts.

Both reps sounded positive about the video playback issues being addressed, but not so much on the Bluetooth issues...
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] ceevee369:
if not yet, they will soon. believe me

:)Some HOT news to share from Taiwan guys.

I was able to get in touch with Jonathan Gardner (see Google) and it only took a few hours to get this on the CNET Asia Blog with his help. Thanks jonathan!

Spread the word. (and to be continued as this will create even bigger word of mouth)

Some content from the article ;

Do HTC phones actually suck?

HTC, the flavor of the month from Taipei, may be pissing some people off. While the company continues to build cred for handhelds (Dopod) and handsets (big in the U.S. in particular), I was just alerted to the fact that the emperor may actually be partly naked:

"Welcome to HTCClassAction.org. This site is intended to spread awareness about the issues with recent HTC Smartphones

and PocketPCs, and gather information for a possible class action lawsuit against HTC. That class action lawsuit will

be a last resort and is still far off, hopefully we can raise awareness and publicity high enough to convince HTC to

solve these issues without a lawsuit. It has however now been over six months since the first affected device was

released, and as of yet, HTC has done nothing."

While we need to wait for more evidence, this is a bit troubling.

Read more at

http://asia.cnet.com/blogs/theroc/post.htm?id=63001857

Best,

Jonathan
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] cr2:
You must be new here 8)

Android linux kernel is developed for MSM7200A, which has some hardware differences compared to MSM7200 and MSM7500. And if you'd look at their

current source tree, there is

no free video driver.

The control registers are provided in the obfuscated form, and there is direct raw access to framebuffer SRAM/SDRAM, which you can also do with wince ;)
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] ceevee369:
A new article on CNET Asia

http://asia.cnet.com/crave/2008/01/18/tytn-ii-slower-than-two-year-old-dopod-818-pro-/

This follows an earlier created new blog (see earlier post) and has been linked by John Chan, editor handheld section on CNET ASIA on CAVE.

Spread the word.

(HTC, you better wake up now that a professional site has contacted you)
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] Phred75:
I have a few insiders in the industry that have recently shed light on a lot of the driver problems we are all seeing. I was more intrerested in the Direct3D driver issues as those are the ones that are the most serious for me as a game developer.

Source #1 - ATI Mobile graphics division - He is pretty high up there and is privy to all sorts of neat info. They provide the graphic chips used in a lot of the Qualcomm chipsets... the problem is that because Qualcomm were so tight assed about sharing code or letting outsiders in, it meant that rather than ATI people writing the graphics drivers to interface with Qualcomm chipsets, Qualcomm instead got the specs and tried to write the drivers themselves. Nuff Said.

Source #2 - WM5 developer at Qualcomm - Qualcomm has gotten a cubic ass load of flak for having great hardware with very ****ty driver support so now things are changing and they have gone back to ATI asking for full support in order to make better drivers. My ATI source confirms this. Qualcomm dude also told me that HTC has a pretty nasty habit of releasing phones before they are ready to be released. They are more interested in being first on the block rather than being BEST on the block. So phones like the HTC touch have really nice specs on paper but because they were rushed out the door, the performance is shiza.

So things are changing.. just..kinda slowly.

As for as Direct3D goes, the Motorola Q9 and HTC Apache both have good support. The Q9 is the best so far though. You can tell they spent a great deal of time on their drivers! All features are implemented and work well at very high framerates! Like I can get high polygon objects with multi-texturing and specular highlights working in the 100+ fps range!
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] max621:
I hope you must be aware of the fact that HTC already posted a BLUETOOTH update on their HTC Support site..

And that solved my bluetooth problem..
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] internetadam4657:
well what do our chances look like of having some official drivers written since all 3 companies are aware of the issue? :)

it sounds like we may have to be looking towards ATI to write them but if we need to litigate to get them, i'm thinking we'll still have to go after HTC because its their device which in turn they'll need to go to qualcomm then they will need to go to ATI so things aren't sounding too good
[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] fb.knight:
doing my part

so far i emailed htc tech support today

posted on the cnet asia page

called att

and read up on everything i could i really hope we can get a fix for this i really thing that cnet getting involed is a big step.