Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

Install the Mplayer,then you will play more media files.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

I'm back to using my creative as far as portable media goes.... People can trick them selves and and get defensive all they want. YES it can play mp3's and YES if you convert all your videos to a low res format it will play just fine. BIG DEAL so does my cell phone.

I'm not saying It's a bad device at all. Thanks to penguinbait it can finally read my 900+ page manuals in pdf format in kpdf. But, as far as a video player it plain sucks. My 3 year old Creative out does it in every way.

Cashless please rethink the way you use this device before it is to late to return it. it CAN play movies you just got to work a little at it. But thats not all it does.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

It's funny how much subjectivity is involved here (not to mention the extreme generalizing).

I don't use my N800 as a media player, typically, but when I have the results for me have ranged from poor-to-great. That's what makes these "it sucks" comments so ridiculous IMO. The experience isn't black and white.

A buddy of mine easily converted the movie Ice Age and it ran almost flawlessly on his N800. On the other hand, I've played some videos that were horrible. Bottom line folks: YMMV. And the fault doesn't lie 100% with the device.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

Thanks for not reading m posts.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

It's also funny how much bias exists on this board. You're partially agreeing with me here. "A buddy of (yours)"?!... Wow! The fact that you can't say that you've ran a full length movie flawlessly on your own tablet speaks volumes. And once again, conversion is mentioned. I can convert videos to play on my blackberry, but who wants to convert/transcode?

Here's a simple synopsis of the things that SUCK about the NIT's media capabilities or rather lack thereof:

1. Nearly every video must be converted to some mysterious unofficial spec that Nokia never once has made public.

2. Navigation is horrible for most apps. I'm not basing this on iTunes/WinAmp navigation as someone suggested. I don't have iTunes nor WinAmp installed on ANY of my computers. I use VLC for all media. M3U's (which I rarely use) and just plain old directory structure are the best options for any one with as much media as someone like myself.

3. Many of these apps are not very robust at all. Prime example, Canola (Did someone say heresy?). Canola wants to be your iTunes for Maemo. I think I could go on a major rant on why Canola needs a major revamp, but since it's still a beta, all is forgiven.

I could go on, but you guys have yet to counter anything so far other than, "you're so negative", "install mplayer", "works good for me and a buddy of mine, what's your problem?"...

That said, I don't want anyone to think that I don't like my tablet. In fact, I love it. I just wish that it would play nice with my media.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

Thanks for the advice and yeah, I'm well aware of it's other capabilities. I use Sdict, pidgin, skype, the maemo wordpress client, vagalume (which I can't get enough of), transmission (gotta get my movies from somewhere), greasemonkey and a gang of scripts for it, FBR reader, Evince and once I get my GPS receiver I'll extend my tablet's use even further.

That said, I love my tablet. But as far as media playback, it sucks.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

"I'm not saying that they don't work. They do work, but not well enough. Encoding/re-encoding video is over the heads of 90% of the media consuming market."

I didn't encode or re-encode for any of the uses I listed.

For the other question about watching in2tv videos, I don't know anything about them, but using applications such as ORB you can stream stuff from a Windows computer (or there are apps you can use on non-windows computers) on to your N8xx. For example, I streamed stuff from my computer in Agoura Hills, CA, and listened and watched them in a library in Henderson, Nevada. One of them was a movie that I didn't do anything with regard to encoding.

It worked very easily. In fact, I had forgotten I had a movie on my home Windows computer until I was browsing my files from my N800, and suddenly found myself watching an old movie called Out of the Past. Another time I was doing something similar and was suddenly watching that Helen Mirren classic tv drama, Prime Suspect.

And another thing: There seems to be a misunderstanding of what "media" is. When someone says "as far as media playback goes, it sucks," what is that supposed to mean? When you use Rhapsody to play songs, the song quality sucks? I had no problems like that.

I think that you unconsciously think that "media" means "visual media". It doesn't. When you say that "media playback sucks", you are saying that playing mp3 songs sucks, for example. That just isn't true.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

as for canola (really canola2), version available has just small subset of features, more will come (like it was said somewhere in these forums).

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

OK, I'll say it: I've played several dozen full-length movies and TV shows flawlessly on my tablet. Both pre-encoded and transcoded on-the-fly from all sorts of source material.

There are specs published on their website, but let me give you the magic bullet (as Nokia is mildly pessimistic): MPEG4 video at 30fps or less around 1000Kbps, at a resolution no greater than 400x240 (fit whichever dimension hits the edge first depending on aspect ratio) with MP3 audio—perfect playback, every time.

This is probably the most subjective point of your post, so I'm not going to address it further than to say that I don't have any trouble here and a lot of other people have no trouble here, but, to each his own. There are a lot of options available, though, each catering to a different sort of desire for media playback and organization. I don't know if you've been through them all, but doing so might give you something you like.

Er, well, it is beta in every sense of the word, so bashing it for being beta is both stupid and immature—needless, unconstructive negativity doesn't help anybody. If you have some good ideas about what could be done to improve Canola (beyond things like, "make it stable"), then put them in writing (try to keep it civil) and submit them to the developers. They're all highly visible and very interested in user feedback about how to improve their product, so give 'em a buzz.

The issue I take with many of the posts of this sort is that rants don't usually get anybody anywhere. If you have something constructive to contribute, then do so, but ranting and whining just generates a lot of ill-will and general unpleasantness.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

I can't answer your last question offhand, but you might wanna chill there a bit, bunkie. I wasn't attacking you, just pointing out the obvious. Stick around here a bit and see if you don't also get tired of the hyperbolic ranting-- one way or the other (yes, Virginia, that includes people needlessly gushing over the device, too).

When I say "buddy of mine" you can't possibly know this from the statement, but the guy was a Nokia process technician who sat in the cube behind me at our old factory. Guy had ZERO knowledge of Linux, had JUST received an N800 prototype from me with zero training, and had some familiarity with video codecs. Within ONE day of owning the N800 (which was running a pre-release OS in January 2007) he had Ice Age and other movies running perfectly.

For the record, you seem to have missed where I said I don't typically use the N800 as a media player, ergo I don't have much experience with full-length movies on it-- hence the reference to someone who did.

Now, I don't say that to excuse the overall video situation of the tablet, just to point out the possibilities. Some of the angry ranting provides the impression that this or that "sucks" or is either impossible or so difficult as to be impractical for everyone. Problem with absolute positions like those, they don't translate well in a general sense-- yet that's exactly how they're typically presented: "I have this problem, so everyone must. And the [insert item in question] therefore sucks".

Now if you don't see yourself in the above, fine. As I said, YMMV... and that includes observations.

As to bias, I have one toward the tablets, to be sure. My job once depended on the success of the N800. But I'm a professional, and can easily be objective about its pros and cons. Wanting something to succeed means not lying about or hiding its correctable flaws.

Now go have yourself a [insert relaxing drink of choice]. ;)