Does it Play Media Well
 

I really want to buy the n810 but I'm afraid the video quality is lackluster. Can it play video nearly as well as the Archos 605, because I own that device and find the video spectacular on it. If not a 605 can it play as good as an ipod touch. My main concern is decent quality for video since it seems to have everything else. I'm planning to buy this thing in the summer when I get a job :D. I'm also wondering if it would be hard to install apps. I've done it for my ipod touch when it got hacked and I also used linux for a little while other then that I have no prior knowledge. So please help me out. Should I stick with my Archos which is a Media player first then a portable browser, or go with the N810 and hope it's media capabilities are better. By the way the Archos is awesome it's just that some of the things the N810 offers seem amazing.

Thanks,
Abztrakt

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

No, video's will have to be re-encoded to play well on the n810. It will only accept rather low bitrate files and is very picky about the resolution. If you are encoding straight from DVD or other HQ source it can be made to look good, but will probably fall short of your Archos in terms of flexability.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

So video quality is bad. Can it play divx avi mpeg 4 well at least? Can it take 640x480 or 720x480 res ? Or is it even lower. If it can I'm ready to jump on it.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

No. You will find that the best you can go at 30fps will be QVGA or 480x270 video, and if you want a bit higher resolution you need to go down to 15fps. It's also not compatible with psp/iPod-encoded non-drm h.264 video.

It really requires an XViD re-encoding at QVGA or wide-QVGA resolution at 30fps or 24fps for best results. Sure there are some other profiles/codecs supported, but that's your best chance for both compatibility and not driving your CPU too hot while decoding and hence wasting too much battery life.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

Damn, I was really hoping for decent video. Seems the Archos is a better device for me.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

Would there be any possible hack in the future that could change this? I've seen some amazing things on here and I was hoping it could happen for this situation. Please I really want to like this device.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

No, it's a physical limitation of the CPU->Display connection.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

Well thx anyway. I'm prolly still going to buy it or do you think I should wait and hope Nokia gets something else out for the N series>?

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

Abztrakt, maybe I have low expectations, but I really like watching video on my N800. I've watched whole feature-length movies on airplane rides and enjoyed them, which surprised me initially. I re-encode the DVD's at 400x240 at about 30fps, and the Tablet shows them full-screen (800x480) by means of "pixel-doubling". Nontheless, it seems quite sharp to me. I find even action scenes look quite good. It's a shame you can't see one in real life to decide.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

Your the best, that is an answer I was praying for :D. If at all possible could you upload me a youtube video of the quality plix. Onli if possible. Rate your n800 out of 10 :D . Is there a difference between the two?

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

Hmm. Can't really upload a youtube since that would degrade the quality of what you get to see. (It would be like auditioning my stereo over the telephone.) It's much better than youtube ever is. If youtube is your standard, you're really going to be pleased! What I use it for is DVD's I'd watch at home. If you want to see what it's like, I guess you could find DVD Shrink (freeware) and rip a DVD at the specs I said, and then play it back on your computer at 2X size.

You mean the N800 vs N810? No difference in screen. Use the google link on this forum's home page and find threads on the differences.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

Look, if you are looking for a multimedia device that does lots of formats and does it well, definitely go for the Archos. Review here:
http://www.osnews.com/story/18948/Th...sed_Archos_604
If you are looking for an internet tablet with SOME multimedia support, go for the N8x0.
If you are looking for a good music player and an ok h.264 player and a so-so internet experience (albeit with third party application support on the way), go for the iPod Touch.
If you are looking for a gaming device with an ok h.264 player, good screen and some basic internet, go for the Sony PSP.

Nothing more to add here, I've tried all four products (own them all) and that's my conclusion. Depends on your needs, what you need the most. No device does everything perfectly.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

I have a N810 (N800 should be the same) And I can play ANY unconverted video with mplayer. On some videos it will lag for a few seconds but that is all. I Have played full Dvix DVD rips. It played them perfectly. No special conversion. I assume with the conversion that it would take out the few seconds of lag I get on some videos but I don't bother.

As I type this I am watching The Matrix Reloaded, XVID Codec, 593 kbps, 560 x 240, mad audio codec, 128kbps audio. But it has played better than that.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

Oh, and one more. The N8x0 devices have 16bit screens, while the Archos/PSP/iPod/iPhone have 32bit screens. The difference in quality exists, and I was painfully made aware of it the other night, when I was designing a theme for the N800/N810. All the gradients looked terrible because the screen didn't have enough colors to display everything. So basically, if the reason you buy a gadget is very visual (e.g. watching video), definitely go for a device with a good screen.

I still use my N8x0 devices for internet tasks when I am away, but each to its own, so I use each of my gadgets to do the thing it was designed for only.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

um, for the record, most psp/ipod vids work fine
and truth be told it'll play most vids i have in mplayer
if you want a real answer you'll have to tell us what kind of vids you'd be watching

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

>and truth be told it'll play most vids i have in mplayer

Mplayer might play them, but its interface sucks. The main player does not support psp/ipod videos. None of the QVGA videos I tried (encoded by different encoders no less), was working. I have sent to Thoughtfix a number of videos that are supposed to work according to Nokia's support codec list, and they don't.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

No, no you can't (there isn't any mobile media device that'll play full HD). 560px horizontal stuff is not HD ("full HD"/1080p is 1920px horizontal).

There's really no such thing as a 32bit screen. You mean 24bit.

What's to suck? It's a list of videos on the device that you double-tap to watch, and a text-box to enter a URL or filepath into. Realistically, most people would only spend about 1% of the time in the interface, and good, fast video playback is a lot more important than the stupid interface.

Besides, have you tried Mediabox?

Anyway, here's the straight dope: MPEG4/MP3 encoded avi files in the 400x240 (fit whatever dimension hits the limit first—320x240 for 4:3 stuff) pixel range at about 800-1500Kbps will play fine 100% of the time with mplayer. If you don't mind transcoding your stuff, then that's all you really need to know.

Personally, I have had a lot of success with stuff up into high 500-pixel horizontal range (I've even had some success with low 600-pixel horizontal stuff at 2.39:1) at about 700-1300Kbps (which is what most of the stuff you get from the "internet" is encoded in). It plays with just a hint of framedrop in high-action scenes. As some people find any framedrop unacceptable, you'll have to decide yourself if this is worth it.

h.264 can play, but only well at lower bitrates and resolutions (just as well, because the codec is particularly good at those sizes and bitrates). mplayer does not currently have good support for h.264, so you'd want to use Media player for that.

Again, personally, I find that the other features of the NITs greatly outweight any video issues for me. If you're looking for a strict media player, then this isn't really the device for you, but if you're looking to do just about anything (and everything) else, then the N810 is where it's at.

Now, one thing you might consider is a wait-and-see approach, as none of the mobile devices mentioned are particularly fresh at the moment, and updates should be forthcoming within the next 6 months or so. Nokia's next generation tablet (presumably the N900) will (almost certainly, as there's no hard evidence to support this yet) not have the video bandwidth and horsepower issues of the current generation tablets.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

Well, you obviously aren't watching the matrix reloaded if you are writing a post (without getting into why anyone would voluntarily choose to watch the matrix reloaded!)

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

Is this seriously meant to be anything but trollish?

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

Well then I'm using the wrong mplayer since mine seems to only play approximately 1/3 of the videos that I tried.

I would never recommend it as a media player over an archos and I'm positive that it will not play everything the archos does.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

The Itablets aren't the kind of media players that will play anything you throw at it; some will even argue that they're not media players at all (of course, they're conveniently ignoring the fact that Nokia put sample media files on it, which is a huge clue-by-four). The N8X0 series even have a nasty video display problem (that some call a design bug), preventing them from using the screen's full resolution in video playback.

Still, if you manage to set up a good video conversion routine (batch jobs that run at night), and reconcile yourself with the video limitations and occasional stutter, the media player function is nice enough for an add-on in a pocketable computer.

As to audio playback, I'm using my N800 with Kilikali as my only portable music player (again, 320 kbps MP3 files will stutter occasionally, but I rarely encode for over 128 KBPS anyway). Kilikali is nice, because it does what it has to: play music and nothing else; no fancy graphics, no "kewl" UI, no use of the screen other than for selecting the music; it just plays music...

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

Partially meant to be a joke (about the matrix) and partly a disbelief that someone can watch a film on a device and write a post at the same time.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

I was hoping I wouldn't have to convert. I like to watch full movies but I like the internet alot too. The archos does both very well except for the internet since it seems a little slower. Maybe I'm just looking for a new device because it's just new. I don't wanna limit myself because a video is encoded in a certain way. That would just make the whole experience a whole lotworse. Thanks for all your help, more feedback would be helpful about the N9xx. When do you think it might be released, any chance it'll come in the summer or anything near there. Thanks once again.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

It sounds like you have the best thing for playing videos - maybe it is just 'new shiney thing' lust?

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

Heh, probably posting from computer while watching vid on N8x0? Just a guess, though I'd do things the other way round, as my computer has a bigger monitor...

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

In terms of the versatility, quality, and stability of video playback, my un-nuanced ranking of the following devices:

1) Archos 605Wifi
2) Zune (2nd Gen, 80gb)
3) iPod Touch
4) Sony Mylo Com-2
5) Nokia N810

I own all of these devices (I'm a wifi-gadget obsessive). This is a rough estimation with subjective reasoning rooted entirely in unmeasured anecdotal observation. In my very humble opinion, the Archos destroys all of the competition.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

I have a Cowon A2.
I bought a 770 to replace this when it was broken, and it just couldn't compare - much nicer to watch video on a Cowon or Archos.
However, video is VERY watchable on a 770 or N8x0 IMHO. With Nokia, watching movies is fine, the screen is big. I laugh at people watching viedo on a tiny ipod now.

So it does work well for watching video, but if thats a main function, a PMP like archos does it a lot better. One great feature of a PMP is you can zoom in and increase the picture that way (when cropping a little doesn't matter).
[I know you can do zoom on N8x0 too, but not easily).

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

I've been recently converting video podcasts and other things, having enabled ogg support in the media player and I'm really impressed. I can use ffmpeg or ffmpeg2theora to do the conversion and the videos work quite well.

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

I have Archos 605 Wifi(80G w/DRV & mini-dock) and N800.

As many have suggested already, 605's strenght is in PMP(but the device is basically lock-up and the chance of any 3rd party hack is close to nill(unless you want to stay with the old firmware where there was a hack available). As for N8xx, PMP functions are not as polished; but it is not that bad(or un-watchable) and it is capable of doing a lot of other task well.

As far as media quality, it comes down to what is your definition of 'well'. If at all possible, you can try to get a hold on a demo N8x0 and test drive it with a few clips from your collection of video/music. This will give you some idea. Alternative, there are two video conversion program specifically for converting video to play well on N80x(one is from Nokia and the other is from someone else, please do a search in here and you can find it), You can use these tools to convert some of your clip and try to play it on your 605(yes, I do mean 605 here), this will help you to decide whether the visual quality loss of the coverted clip is acceptable for your usage or not.

good luck,

Re: Does it Play Media Well
 

here are some of the links:

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/mediaconverter

http://xoomer.alice.it/sepaolo/n800vc/

I used the converter in the 2nd link.

good luck