N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

I know I'm gonna get flamed for this one, but media playback on the NIT is horrible. I was really hoping that I wouldn't have to wrangle with my media to get them to work on the N800 but, yes, for every file, sure enough I have to re-encode. Kinda pathetic.

I download a lot of videos from video.google in mp4 formatted to play on any ipod. I end up having to re-encode those files in the Nokia Video Converter. Once that's done, they are both grainer than the original and at a much larger filesize.

And divx compatibility, forget about it. Non-existent. Yeah, I've read on her how some people are able to get divx avi's to play smoothly on their NIT's but I haven't found a single "out of the box" encoding setting that allows divx to even play at all. If you have a sure-fire set of params, please reply with them.

And it's not just video...

Can we get a audio player that's as functional as the built in Media player but with the ease of Navigation as Media box? I wish I could just mate these two apps and use the hybrid app alone.

And Canola? Why is everyone so excited over it? You can't even browse files in it. It's a pretty face with not much else there.

Yep, I started a rant.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

Since the N800 is not suitable as a portable media player, why am I successful taking it with me on 7-mi jogs every other day? Why have I listened to infinite numbers of audiobooks on mine? When you say not successful, you are overgeneralizing. It works great playing mp3s and other stuff. I have never been theoretically happy with the idea of playing videos on a small screen anyway. And while I'm jogging I don't usually want to watch a movie. Certainly I've enjoyed watching Textra often enough. And Katie Couric. And I did watch Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, and some Netflix films, and listened to infinite numbers of radio shows and Verdi operas and issues of the audible Economist and Russian lessons.

So, you are saying that none of these things work??

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

I use it daily for watching episodes of Entourage on the bus to school everyday, and it works beautifully. If I don't feel like watching episodes, i listen to music - sounds great, works great.

Mplayer plays my DivX 6.0 encoded Entourage episodes perfectly - and they're at 512x288 - so i dont know wut ur talking about.

it would be nice to be able to just playback ANY divX file at any res tho, i know. i usually encode over night to avoid waiting

for music i think Canola and Kagu are great. Nokia's supplied one is okay, but its navigation is ******ed (i cant just PLAY ALL of a certain artist?).

for Video, mplayer is excellent. Very basic, but gets the job done, and smoothly.

BASICALLY i think it makes a very good portable media player, u just have to install the right apps. and thats not hard at all.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

I know you're not looking for solutions, but since you're purposely muddying the water, I feel it's fair to say: if you install mplayer, you will be able to play avi files. Your "out of the box" requirement doesn't justify the title of your thread, but hey, if you prefer to feel negative, and complain about nothing, it's your prerogative.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

Without having an extreme view, there are certainly valid points on both sides. The N800 works well enough as a media player for most motivated owners, but no question it wasn't designed primarily as a media player, and it's not as convenient to use as a dedicated media player. The software and controls layout could be much better, and the existing apps only go part-way toward achieving that (of course since it's an open platform, feel free to respond "if you're so smart, where's your media player?").

I tend to forgive the minor shortcomings on video playback, because none of my portable video players are ideal from the viewpoint of performance and compatibility. The N800 does ok if you realize that a 400 MHz ARM processor isn't going to keep up with 800x480x30fps video. I'm prepared to re-encode as necessary. Video iPods only do fine because they have smaller screens and many video sources produce iPod-encoded video already.

I think the real strength of the N800 as a media player is the range of options available: a wide variety of video and audio players, built-in FM tuner, WiFi connectivity for internet streaming sources, connection to UPNP servers etc.

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'm not necessarily referring to myself, I come from a a/v background and can make "things work". It's just that as it stands, the N8X0 is not ready for mass consumption.

And in general, with Audio, the problem is no playback but rather with unpolished apps. Sure they will play media, but with lousy navigation and horrendous UI's for the most part.

Canola LOOKS great but has the worst navigation of all the major media apps. Media Box looks and navigates just the way I want it to, but gets stuck/crashes on trying to play .trashes. I've tried Kagu (which I kinda like), Kilikali, MediaBox, Canola, XMMS (or whatever the hell its called (worst ever)) and the nokia media player and I have to say that the Nokia Media player despite having the least features and ridiculous navigation, plays most reliably.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

I have had Mplayer installed on my N800 since the day I got it. And no, it often doesn't recognize the format of my avi's. It doesn't even play mp4's converted in the Nokia Converter without major chopping.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

I can agree with some of that. And to be honest, I'm more playing devil's advocate here. I watch probably a 22 minute show/day and don't necessarily need to have all the bells and whistles, but jeez, it would be nice to not have to jump through hoops to make simple things work.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

It depends on your expectations I guess.

As a music player it isn't bad (The iTunes/WinAmp Media Library -inspired organization is a bloody PITA - I want a nice responsive finger-friendly file browser and playlist damnit!), and it is incredibly good for streaming WM and RealPlayer videos, and shoutcast MP3 streams (Not OGG streams 'tho sadly).

However, coming from using TCPMP on a Clie TH55 and Tapwave Zodiac, I can honestly say that the video playback on the N800 is really bad.
The fact that the video that comes with the N800 jerks is not what I wanted to see!! ;)

It should be *at least* as capable as a Palm T3, or a GP2x which it has a similar hardware to, but for some reason it falls very short; It is about as capable as my TH55, which has a 123MHz CPU and needs a video transform and rotate assist chip for final display!


Part of the crap performance is due to it being Linux, which is notorious for jerking/interrupting high-frametate playback because the scheduler isn't built for scheduling realtime-tasks (If they put in a newer kernel with the CFQ and kernel pre-empting, it will help this part a *lot*.).
The other part is, I suspect, down to the DSP going completely unused for video decoding (Or so I'm told... I don't understand why... something to do with LCD controllers being too slow?!
This is a big pity; When they fixed DSP support for the Media Player on the GP2x, the playback smoothness jumped an order of magnitude! (Still buggy as heck 'tho alas...)
Saay... I wonder if we can nick the GP2x MediaPlayer app? It's supposedly Linux and ARM code... :P


If you don't mind doing a bit of transcoding 'tho, videos are viewable okay on the N800. I use the same transcode profile I use when I want to play stuff on my TH55:
You can tweak the -s size param and the -b bitrate if the resultant vid is too ugly. Don't recommend boosting them too much 'tho because you creep back into jerkville again.
I haven't experimented much (I'm lazy), but I'm sure you could go up to at least -s 480x320 and -b 1024.

Be warned 'tho - The built-in MediaPlayer is infuriatingly picky about what it will and won't play. Like another thread posted, I have two properly encoded AVIs - One is XviD and the other DivX.
Everything I have can play them, and they're obviously properly MPEG4'd because even the Zod's strict DSP can work with them, yet the N800 will play the XviD, but not the DivX!
The funniest thing is when I transcoded it into a DivX again, it worked!

Additionally, the manual (Page 36 of the PDF) says the N8x0 supports a MAXIMUM resolution of CIF/QVGA...

I tend to use MPlayer, which is a bit weak in terms of features like "Controls" and "Options" and "Playlists" and "File Selectors"..., but like TCPMP it works quite well and is a lot less finicky than the built-in one. I'm gonna try VLC later when they sort out the deb, since hopefully then I'll be able to do things like switch subtitles... ;)


You have to remember 'tho, that the N800 is not designed to be a media player - It is an Internet Tablet. Now, admittedly, I think it does a pretty bad job of that too, but like my Palm devices the, ability of the platform to run Other Stuff, gives it a powerful flexibility and lots of potential.
The thing is less than a year old and we're already hacking it six ways to sunday, so I'm sure things will improve.
If they can get full-screen video playing on a 123MHz TH55, I'm sure they'll be able to do it on the N800! (Espescially if they figure out how to leverage the DSP and whatever graphics chip this thing uses!)

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

I would be interested if there is any way to watch in2tv videos from AOL, work 3rd shift as a night watchman and to kill time watch old tv shows on laptop and would love to be able to watch these on my n800 and not have to drag laptop around. I basically have to just be awake over night, is even a little tv their but just nothing on at 3 am LOL. Also have IP network cameras that I need to check from time to time and they are in mp4 format, any sugestions on what viewer that I should install? Thanks, Steve

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]. ;)

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

OK, here's how to transcode a movie to the spec (using mplayer on your linux desktop):
This gives you a .cat format file, which may be played with the undocumented movie-player 'cat' (from an Xterm only, unfortunately).

For audio, at least, you might try mpd & mmpc. Quite robust, and operates on directory structure.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

Thanks for the tips. I liked MMPC, in the same way that I like the built in media player, but it seemed redundant with Media Player that I uninstalled it. I'll give it another shot.

I'll also install MPD, which I never heard of previously.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

mmpc is for controlling playback (typically) on another device.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

Please submit a bug with the detailed information (information about what audio/video codecs were used for these .avi files is most interesting).

MP4 format and H.264/AAC codecs support on ARM is a known limitation of MPlayer (these codecs don't have ARM-specific optimizations in mplayer/ffmpeg yet). MPlayer is best used with MPEG4 ASP (DIVX/XVID) videos at the moment. Other formats and codecs may be also used with mplayer more or less successfully, but some have less optimizations than the others. Some codecs are buggy or disabled. Adding/verifying their support is based on users' feedback.

If you you are not interested in watching DIVX/XVID videos and prefer other formats, mplayer may not suit your needs well. It is hard to please everyone.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

Yeah, it controls mpd on this or another device. Most common use is to control another device. But with mpd installed on the tablet, the 2 are a full-function audio player (and album-art, I guess) solution.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

I'm happy with at least the general video playback on my N800. Yes, it's not 24-bit color, but the screen is bigger and brighter than other comparable players. I wish it could player faster/higher-res files and also had video-out. But, it has relatively nicer stereo speakers and a built-in stand which makes it more like a little-TV set. The size/screen/form-fit/expandability is a pretty nice compromise for pocket video.

As I wrote before regarding audio, I still prefer a physical / tactile wheel over a touch screen anyday. And none of the media software, so far, is as versatile for playback. But the N800's sound w/ good headphones is pretty decent.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

How do I get and install mpd on my N800? I tried the command "apt-get install mpd" from root in my xterm as instructed in their "http://www.musicpd.org" website, but that didn't work. I also tried to install directly to my N800 from their download screen on their website, but Application Manager wasn't able to handle it. I'd welcome other suggestions. I've already installed the mmpc front-end.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

If you don't think the N800 is a good media player for the money, try the Cowon Q5W at twice the price: http://reviews.cnet.com/portable-vid...ml?tag=bubbl_1

Superficially similar, but looks like Cowon got it wrong.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

I'm not aware of an ARM port of mpd, but you might check the Debian ARMEL repos? See below. Honestly, there's not much benefit to running mpd on the tablet locally, the other audio players kind of outstrip it. mmpc is really meant to act as a front end for an mpd running on another computer.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

There's one around somewhere, I know because I'm running it. I'll find it...

edit: Found it, just went to gronmayer.com/it, searched for mpd. Which is really a better place to start than the debian armel stuff... Anyway, add the repo by running this install file.

Honestly, I like it, it's simple and works well. Not sure in what way the other players outstrip it. Can you control $PREFERRED_MUSIC_PLAYER with display off & locked using the hardware keys? If so, it might be nice.

The others have better eye-candy, and play movies as well. Neither of which I care about. When I want to play a video (not all that often), I'd rather open one that handles video. But I'll keep one that works well for audio, for the other 98% of the time.

Regarding the screen-off controls, I had that with mpd & powerlaunch, in OS2007. Still haven't gotten around to powerlaunch since the upgrade...

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

I didn't have an issue installing MPD. It was right there in "installable apps".

I'll have a gander at that an MMPC once I get a free moment.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

Benson: Thanks for pursuing this for me/us. I followed your instructions and got mpd to show up in the Applications Manager as an installable application, but unfortunately when I tried to install it, I got the message that the installation file was corrupted. Any further thoughts? Thanks and regards, Jim

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

This thread is about using the N800 as a PMP, so threads like "i don't really use my N800 for media" serve no purpose. I DO use my N800 for media. A lot. I have played mp4 videos created specifically created for the ipod and it played well. Search for ipod movie torrents. Torrents at thepiratebay.org play well. Divx files at joox.net all play well with mplayer. Files I encode play well, but self encoded files are highly variable. Sure, not all files will play but that is the case for every PMP. Even with a pc you might need to download a codec to play a video.

Mp3's play well for me. I use the default media player now that I don't have a lot of music, but I have used Canola and other media players. They all work well for mp3's and wma as well.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

Well, mine worked fine, and I think that's the repo I used, but let me try uploading a .deb... Let's see if this works.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

Benson: I tried to install from the .deb file, but that came up with a message indicating that six lib files were missing. Did you have any further luck? Thanks, Jim

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

Don't know; what lib files? I'd try searching on http://gronmayer.com/it/ for repos providing them.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

Benson: I went into Red Pill mode and found all six of the missing lib files listed, and was able to install all of them with the exception of one -- libid3tag0 -- which couldn't be installed because it too was identified as a corrupted file. Maybe it's this one which is preventing my overall installation of mpd! Oh, well. Thanks anyway for your help and guidance.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

Surely you're not referring to my post. The point in it was blatantly obvious... and on topic, to boot! ;)

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

i agree that there aren't any really good media players for n800. i wouldn't recommend the n800 if your main use is going to be media playback.

why can't you lock the screen in canola?!?!??!?!? that is so annoying.

Re: N800 not suitable as a portable media player?
 

Ok, I decided to use my N800 as a portable media player tonight. :D

It was kinda by accident: I'm testing the latest build of diablo and was putting the browser up against the sites that usually give it fits-- like amazon.com. First page I hit has a big deal about their new DRM-FREE mp3 service. Whoo-hoo! Let's see how well this works on a tablet!

As a matter of fact, other than some occasional slowness, it worked great! I purchased 3 tunes, downloaded them directly to the tablet (bypassing Amazon's downloadable client app for either Windows or the Mac of course) and began playing. The experience was near flawless. One slight hiccup on one of the songs-- and that was after I copied it to a shared folder on my PC and played it on the tablet from there!

So let's sum up: easy access to media, no translation required, beautiful playback. Yup: great media player. ;)