I believe I experienced more stuttering from Disc channels too. Hey, if you dl, they all look terrific, I guess it is server problem?


bun

One more channel, Discovery News,

http://www.discovery.com/radio/xml/news_video.xml.

It also mp4/streams, about 75% of the time. You can watch the non-stream ones by dl.

One more too,
http://www.microbeworld.org/look/MicrobeWorldVideo.aspx.

also mp4, streams.

so far, 5 CBS and 2 Disc channels and 1 disease channel; NBC, ABC, CNN are not working. National Geographic, 99% dl, maybe occasional a couple of file able to stream.

enjoy

Well, for this 8 channels, I guess an 8 hrs drive down to Miami is not too painful, ...., anymore
bun

Nice work, bunanson, clarifing the mysteries of Video Center - thanks a lot.
VC is really very promising application and is working in principle. But certain limitations and instabilities are confusing and very irritating, so irritating that is looks stupid from Nokia's side to send out beta-versions for end-user-area.

In the discussion about VC (or similar multimedia applications with video) a very important aspect - bitrates - has been forgotten. Playing video directly from the memory card gives absolute limits for the operation: Nokia 770 roughly 400 kbit/s and N800 about 800 kbit/s (small variations depanding on format and player). If NIT's player receives data at the higher bitrate, the player cannot work properly which can be seen as frequent bufferings. A smart player e.g. drops frames, but not too much as we can see with Flash videos.

When the data comes in from an outside source - streaming, NIT has more work to do and the bitrate-limit goes down which can be seen from that streaming case is often badly chopped but downloaded file plays with a superb quality.

Then - of course - the outside gateway (cable broad-bands or mobile connections, not WiFi normally) has always a certain (max) bitrate which can affect - if low - badly already before NIT's capabilities.

But, we have no info about bitrates transmitted from the VC service providers. Some (confusing) info about formats can be seen only. Look at Shoutcast Interner-Radio link-service, they give clear formats and bitrates too, so the users can avoid e.g. high bitrate radiostations if he has slow Internet connection.

So, let's hope that Nokia clears out quickly the working VC services and NITs' actual video capabilities because VC is a good canditate for s.c. killer application.

I don't know if you guys are fans of video games, but I tried to get some podcasts from G4TV to work with the n800 like this site

http://www.g4tv.com/podcasts/index.html

It adds the service correctly and even shows the thumbnail of "Attack of the Show" but for some reason, media player doesn't respond, not even a incompatible format error. Even when I download it, it doesn't respond, and when I try to use mplayer, it just chops up really badly. Any ideas?

Good analysis, Maerra. I was thinking in the direction, as a result, the Disc channels stuttering, likely from the server, as the MMC is the limiting factor. So if one sets the media file storage as the internal memory that would make it smoother. However, if the transcoding of the Disc file is not right, then even using internal memory would have little difference. Well, CBS has done just right! Any how, I am very impressive with the video quality of both channel, as I recall, transcoding from TVersity is not as good quality, you can really see pixels.


bun

Crap! "File format not supported" is really a catch-all error statement. Do not read it more than telling you it is not working. Periord. I streamed some shows nicely last night, midnight, and now, 9am in the morning, it gave that error statement, I can still dl and watch it though. I repeat, the error statement just means it does not work and do not read more than that.


bun

It would be really nice if these worked with mplayer. IMO it has much more efficient playback then the built in player. Is it truely the .mp4 (rather then .avi) container that's keeping it from mplayer from playing CBS ?

I am afraid so. Mplayer plays .mp4 usually send the 770 to the twilight zone. On a lucky day, press the escape button, it comes back, o/w, you have to reboot. Streaming works similar, has to be mplayer streams .avi and media player streams for the rest. In fact, media player has a progress bar, one can fastforward, while mplayer does not.


bun

If I add stuff like the chaosradio Video Center crashes if I hit the download button. Are other people having this issue too?

Do all the channels crash CV? Or one particular one? Have you been able to go to the website and find out what media format they use, .avi or .mp4, or even .mp3?



Edit: There is some problem with the website. I tried to add service to chaos.TV, it got the 770 hanged for a long time and I almost have to reboot to get out. Maybe you will have to write to the site admin about the links problem.





bun