My movie experiences applied for N9, is that MPEG-4 is just great, but H.264 High Profile is laggy ... without caring in what folder they are: avi, mp4, mkv ...

I believe that H.264 High Profile lagginess will be fixed in PR 1.2 ...

Not only that but transcoding a low bitrate video into a high bitrate one is pretty much pointless since the data has already been lost. The only good thing about transcoding to a lower resolution is the fact that you may be able to save battery life.

Yes, if you use the more advanced compression features of MPEG4 or H.264, you can certainly get better results at a given bitrate than if you don't use those features. However, HD resolution video requires just a whole lot more data than SD resolution does; if you compare two videos using the same compression techniques, you'll need to have a much, much higher bitrate to get the same quality in the HD video as in the SD video. There's just so much more data to compress!

The advantages of, say, H.264 High Profile techniques over H.264 Baseline ones cannot by themselves make up for the sheer difference in quantity of bits between HD and SD data.

TLDR - N9 plays YouTube videos on 480i only and thus the quality looks bad ?

I'd say i did read (adn i did) but the debates distracted me.. was there a fix for this out yet or not? I saw mention of 1.2 but I can't remember seeing anything in the 1.2 thread about video playback.

edit: forgive my pickiness, but upon finally getting a smartphone i would be a bit sadface if I couldn't reference a youtube video to my girlfriend or friends, look it up and show it to them w/out it looking horrible

EDIT 2! First, how bad does the 480i look on the N9? Second, I agree with Jakiman that having to convert stuff to playback properly on the phone is a bummer.. why put up with an extra step? Sure it's possible, but unless i'm storing up a bunch of stuff to watch on a long stretch I wouldn't ever do it...even for a logn trip I can see myself just doing something else (read a book) than putting up with it...

Long story short, N9 video processing power is about average for modern smartphones. It does not match the high-end power you'll find on the current iPhone or top-of-the-line Android phones. And so, it does not play HD video very well (if at all).

If you need your phone to play video at the same speed and quality as a 40 inch HDTV does, you need to pick one specialized for that task. (So far, the HTC top-of-the-line phone, called "Rezound" in Verzion's lineup, is the only one that has a native 720p screen resolution, and so is the first one I'd actually consider decent for playing real HD video.)

Exactly as bad as 480i looks anywhere else. The N9 has absolutely no trouble with 480i video.

Remember, you're asking your phone to become a high-definition television set. The hardware needed to do that (and do it well) has only become widely available in the last year or so. The N9 just doesn't have the latest bleeding-edge GPU silicon...

And the N8 has?

btw, 3630 can and should play 720P easily, so it's not the hardware.

lg optimus black can do that easily, and please check its specs, its same with n9, extremely same, cmiiw

The N9 GPU is the SGX530, a decent general-purpose graphics processor, similar to that used in the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 (and, of course, the same as used in the N900). As with those phones, it is just capable of handling 720p (using H.264 baseline profile). (The N900 does apparently need to be overclocked to manage it.)

The N8 uses the Broadcom BCM2727 GPU, a graphics processor specifically designed for running 720p video (in H.264 high profile).

So yes, the N8's video hardware is (in this case) more powerful than the N9's video hardware.

I assume you are not counting ones with Samsung's Pentile matrix AMOLED HD screen such as the Nexus/Note? But I would personally rather Nexus or Note's AMOLED any day than the smaller and non-AMOLED Rezound's S-LCD screen. Once you get used to AMOLED, it's hard to go back to an LCD.

I guess Nokia not making their own powerful SoC's became an issue. e.g. Samsung Galaxy S released in mid 2010 could play up to 1080p high profile H264 videos and is more powerful than N9 using OMAP 3630 which was released 15-16 months after. Heck, DSP and GPU wise, 2010's Samsung Hummingbird SoC is still better than 2012 releasing Lumia 800/900 afaik. (Not entirely Nokia's fault as they had no other choice to run WP7 with)

For hardware fanatics, new Android phones with Quad core or dual core A15 etc released this year will be the one to get. (Such as Galaxy S3) Well, iPhone5 should use a similar SoC also. But in terms of "video playback" capability, SGS2 or Galaxy Note is already near-perfect so no need to wait unless you plan to play 2K or 4K videos on SGS3.

To answer original_z's questions, 480i youtube videos looks just fine on N9's display. If good quality source was used, it looks mighty fine on the N9's display. But it definitely doesn't look as crisp / detailed as a native 480p video file due to Youtube's high compression.

Seriously speaking, as much as I am a fan of N9, I can't recommend the N9 if you really want unhindered video playback capability and performance. If video playback is VERY important to you like it is for me due to long daily train commutes, get something which can play everything such as SGS2/Note etc. (even the SGS2 has a better quality screen and size than N9)

PR1.2 won't create miracles. It's a hardware limitation of the OMAP 3630 SoC used in the N9 not being able to play 720p+ high profile H264 videos. The best PR1.2 can bring is proper 720p main profile H264 support which is currently a little broken in PR1.0/1.1.

N9 is awesome in many ways. But video playback isn't one of them. I'm really hoping Nokia will take at least one more swing at making a more powerful version of the N8 or N9. But I'm not sure if that will happen anytime soon....

I carry both of these phones. They compliment each other well. I use the N8 for photo and videos and the N9 for everything else.