Thread: Video playback epic fail: My N8 plays 1080p My N9 couldn't even play 720p
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snowparang is offline snowparang
2011-12-07 , 01:40
Posts: 40 | Thanked: 12 times | Joined on Dec 2011
#100
Originally Posted by Copernicus View Post
For the "tl;dr" crowd, I'll just give a summary of the problem, rather than force them to read the whole thread.

No, the N9 does not play HD resolution video very well, if at all. Those phones which do play HD resolution video are using specialized hardware specifically designed to deal with HD data.

However, please note that the N8 has a screen resolution of 640 x 360 pixels. You may be able to play HD resolution videos on the thing, but you sure as heck ain't going to be seeing the higher resolution.

Almost no phone exists that has a native HD resolution screen. (I have been informed that the HTC Rezound has a full 720p screen, so there are some phones that do...) Most phones that can display HD video are simply "throwing away" the extra bits of resolution in order to fit the video onto the screen.

You can, of course, reduce the resolution of a video yourself, using a wide variety of tools. (And these tools will almost always produce a higher quality result than a phone trying to do the same thing in real time.) Many of the posts above in this thread describe how to do this.
Tks for the reply. I did go through the whole thread though my lack of technical knowhow on mobile processors and GPU etc may not allow me to appreciate everything here. I do understand that I am not looking at 720p but a smaller resolution when I watch videos on a screen of a phone. However, I also do know that the actual quality of the video is better than the one I'm seeing on the phone's screen and thus I am satisfied.

But here's my take (and I assume other 'common users') on the issue....

The N8 is a phone released in Oct 2010. It has a 680 Mhz CPU. It runs on the 'legacy' Symbian OS. As of right now, the telcos in my country has stopped selling it.

1 year later, the N9 is released. It has a 1 Ghz CPU (similiar or even faster than iPhone 4 as I recall). It carries the tagline 'fluidity'. I think as a consumer, it would not be unreasonable to assume that the N9 have the same if not better media capabilities than the N8. For example, the N9's photo gallery is definitely much faster than the N8.

Sure, we can re-encode ('recode'?) the videos to ensure smooth playback on the N9. But aren't we losing details and getting a more compressed video? In other words, we COMPROMISE. Maybe readers may wonder why am I so hardup over the videos, I can just store them on my pc and watch them there. Yes, true, but for me when I transit between phones, I bring over ALL my photos and videos (my N8 has all the photos and videos from my N95). It is a very interesting 'blog', as it captures all my happy and most treasured memories, on a device that I bring along everywhere I go and it will continue to capture the memories in years to come.

Will update on what's the bitrate/resolution of the '720p' video taken by the N9 camera and how much difference is that compared to the N8.

I really do hope this is just a software optimisation issue and not really a hardware limitation.