Re: The noBounds Project
 

sjgadsby: Sounds cool :)

qole: After a closer examination of the video, I see what you mean. I still stand by the general transfer method of using mpeg2/4 (probably using the IVA to encode it, as it's supposed to be able to do this).

I saw at least 3 options on the GUI they showed - Compressed AV (which I guess would be mpeg2/4 compression, or perhaps does direct output - like the video), OpenGL (as you say, there are fewer objects on the N8x0, but yes, what hw does OpenGL for the display?) and X-proxy (the drawing and photo apps).

My fault, I should have looked harder.

Re: The noBounds Project
 

Maybe they have an external usb box (with a CPU and GPU) that communicates with the tablet using a method similar to what I'm talking about (the dual-display X-Forwarding-like method), renders the display, and then encodes the rendered output into mpeg4 for sending to a mpeg-capable display. Then everyone's happy :D It just means there's some serious GPU horsepower in this box.

Re: The noBounds Project
 

There's speculation that noBounds was a hoax. Anyone know if this is true? Was noBounds a ruse? Or, a response by frustrated employees at Bochum to the potential the ITT's had, but they couldn't talk about and Nokia wouldn't support? Does the capability actually exist to have video out on the n8XX? Would anyone at the Maemo Summit have answers to these questions?

(Just wanted to say this is the first reply I've posted. I really like my n800! Thanks to everyone who has made this thing as usable as it is! And thanks Reggie, for the original post on this topic)

Re: The noBounds Project
 

Well, since they've been planning to have tablets rigged with video out at the Maemo Summit, for doing big-screen presentations, I'd say the capability actually exists to have video out; this may or may not be the same as noBounds. When people get back, I'm sure they'll be posting all over, and that will be covered. (They seem to be busy enough right now to reduce coverage from the levels I'd like, anyway, but I wouldn't be surprised if we hear about those displays this afternoon.)

Community-side, with no real funding, we've had some success with SIS USB-VGA adapters; you can run an X server and display apps, but the framerate is poor, largely because we're doing a fairly lame dump of framebuffer data; we can't put our own software, speaking whatever seems good, on the other end like noBounds is said to do.

I think "hoax" is rather strong, as the specific allegation made there was that the remote end was running Windows XP, and even the generalized allegation there was merely that it was "smoke and mirrors", which is essentially the point of noBounds. While that XP-based system is obviously not practical (because of license expense, if nothing else), using a different OS than the final product means that it's a POC, not that it's a hoax.

Re: The noBounds Project
 

Busy, yes, but "reduce", "coverage", and "levels" are also good words. So is "WiFi".

And Nokia's developers have had even better success. Qole's the one to ask about this topic.

Re: The noBounds Project
 

Well, they had something at the Summit, it wasn't noBounds, it was closer to Graham Cobb's USB2VGA proof-of-concept. It was better than Cobbs' version, in that it could clone the tablet screen fairly accurately, but it still had a fairly crappy frame rate.

I think I was the only one to actually use the system. I had to install my stuff onto a Nokia-provided tablet. That went pretty smoothly. To make it work, we had to connect the tablet to the USB2VGA device, then run "sudo modprobe sisusbvga" (or something like that). Up popped the tablet screen on the projector! Not bad. But most of the animations in my presentation showed on the tablet screen, but not on the projected screen. Wouldn't be any good for watching video or playing arcade games.

I got Graham Cobb and the Nokia guy together, and they talked a bit; supposedly the Nokia IT guys are trying to get official permission to release their video out hacks, which include some kind of kernel patches. Pester these guys if you want it.

Re: The noBounds Project
 

I would be extremely interested if I could somehow run my presentations (just slides) directly from my N800 instead of using the laptop. It would be even better if I could just connect a (tiny) device to the projector and do the rest via wi-fi (then I could move around a bit too). Was that what the nobounds project was up to?

Re: The noBounds Project
 

There's a channel I can use to make this request; I've just been waiting for the right moment. :D

No guarantees though. I'm just one tiny voice...

Re: The noBounds Project
 

The guys in question look like the same secret-squirrel project you couldn't tell us about; nice that they have a public site, even if it's not the same content as you guys have in your in-house bundle. (And if it is the same content, and you're able to confirm it, that'd be cool too; but I'm left to speculate that at least the video-out might be freely circulating inside Nokia as part of the bundle...)

It's actually rather unsurprising that they're using the same SIS chipset, since Diablo strangely included the kernel module. And that incantation sounds much like what I did with the USB2VGA2 adapter, back when I was playing with it. I was gonna get back on that one of these days (like later this week or early next, I hoped), but maybe I'll put it off for awhile in hopes of their release... there's always plenty of projects to work on.

Re: The noBounds Project
 

When thinking about it, it should work and is doable only on kernel side. When display device is slow (like VNC over network or this adapter) the trick is to not to update whole display periodically but send only changes in smallest possible rectangles when they are actually drawn. Problem with this in general is to find out where on the screen something changed. Good news is that we already have this problem solved because of external videochip in our tablets. It already works like this so this kernel hack can just hook into omap framebuffer update commands and send same rectangles sent to Epson chip over USB too. Or better just record rectangle coordinates and send relevant rectangle data asynchronously with some clever skipping/merging when it becomes too fast. I hope they will make the source public. If not, this is possible to reimplement as opensource (with enough time and motivation).