Re: Best Handheld for playing back high res/bitrate videos?
 

@attila77: 1080p x264 mkv files are already REALLY good on 50" 1080p screens.. and the sources aren't going any higher resolution anytime soon. I think it's safe to say this standard will be here for another 3-5 years. Plenty enough time for mobile hardware to catch up.

I'm not sure battery technology will be good enough to make it practical to use this on the move within the same time frame though.

Re: Best Handheld for playing back high res/bitrate videos?
 

This is mine main reason for this thread also. I have 1-2 Terabytes of Anime in x264 codec 1080P and 720P. I don't want to have bother converting all of them to specific format required for playback. Not mention it take awhile to transcode them to the proper format and you need to find the proper tools to do so.

One of my main concern is hardware acceleration specifically for x264 encoded video. I read and seen hardware acceleration for H264 doesn't work for x264 out of box:

http://www.xpmediacentre.com.au/comm...tion-dxva.html
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/archi.../t-852481.html

I personally have a Nvida card on PC with PureHD but it doesn't do anything for off loading the x264 work (played back with cccp). My CPU does all the processing. Trying to off load x264 might take a lot of hacking and in fact I haven't heard of anyone getting it to work yet. :mad: Luckily I have fast enough CPU for this!

I want to make sure the PMP/MID/handheld in question actually support x264 1080P decoding specifically. If anyone has info about a demonstration of x264 (x264 specifically not H264) 1080P being played back on handheld please let me know! Thanks.

Note, I also do think 1080P will max resolution for alteast 3-5 years.

Re: Best Handheld for playing back high res/bitrate videos?
 

That's an excellent example of the how 1080p is a 1080p. The spec sheet claims 720p MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 HD decode Main profile at 30 fps, 8mbps bitstream (which is actually not that much among HD profiles). In the same spec sheet you'll see that the 1080p is for the TV encoder.

So be careful about that 1080p sticker, it is abused to extremes by the marketing departments.

1080p is just the resolution. There's a bit more behind the story.

Re: Best Handheld for playing back high res/bitrate videos?
 

(offtopic)
Hardware decoding of x264 (it's an encoder) encoded AVC/H.264 (the standard) video stream inside a matroska (mkv) container works fine with e.g. Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (Windows, both ATI and NV) or by installing latest CoreAVC software decoder, which uses NV's CUDA-technology. With that you can use any DirectShow-cabable media player. Lots of useful discussion in e.g. doom9 forums.

Hardware-decoded video playback on Linux is AFAIK best with e.g. XBMC. It uses VDPAU-technology for the GPU offloading.

I have 0 knowledge on Macs/OS X, but it should be possible as well, at least on Snow Leopard (OpenCL). Anyway on intel macs you can always dual-boot to Windows ;)
(/offtopic)

I doubt Nokia will support matroska container in out-of-the-box sw for _any_ of it's new hardware. Inside a mp4 or avi, 800x480p playback with a reasonable bitrate (let's say <5 Mbps) at film fps is probably quite nice on any OMAP3 device.

Re: Best Handheld for playing back high res/bitrate videos?
 

If you think about it, the habit of just moving the high quality files to your mobile device and play them, even tough we might not take full advatage of the quality of the encoding, is what already happens with audio files... Only audio is smaller, demands less processing and it is more difficult to say if your files' quality are exagerated or not... So usually we just move them without thinking. Will it be the same with video in the future? (or right now?)

Re: Best Handheld for playing back high res/bitrate videos?
 

Personally, after looking around at different options, I really doubt this will be the case. 1920 x 1080 resolution with High bitrate will piratically bring any handheld to it knees. Note to mention there ton of different video format (x264, xvid, etc) + containers (mkv, mp4, avi, etc) it will be hard find support for it all. One of reason I hardly watch videos on handheld is because it isn't as easy as much copying any video file on it them.

Re: Best Handheld for playing back high res/bitrate videos?
 

I just tried out the Media Player Classic - Home Cinema you mentioned with x264 videos. The CPU usage is still high.

I looked at around doom9 forums and I see a lot of problems with x264 decoding using hardware acceleration. For example see this thread:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=132924

Note I didn't spend much time on this since I really don't need it on my PC. I got a fast CPU for very reason I don't trust any hardware acceleration to work easily out there :D Too bad handheld don't have fast CPUs, though ....

Re: Best Handheld for playing back high res/bitrate videos?
 

Take a look at the Viliv S5. I can verify that it plays 720p just fine but personally have not tried 1080p. Over at pocketables, people are claiming 1080p with no problem. Other than that, it is an awesome umpc, and very capable. Only problem is that it runs windows xp and no linux support at this time, although people are busy hacking.

Re: Best Handheld for playing back high res/bitrate videos?
 

Get a Archos 5 IMT. I also had a N800 (prior to the unit being stolen) and was also grossly disgusted with the video playback performance. I recently picked up a Archos 5 120 Gig IMT and the video playback is impressive. Check it out. BTW... I'm writing this on my Archos!