Notices

I'm still quite unsure about the illegality of downloading TV shows from sites like EZTV. One could argue that removing the commercial blocks is naughty, but then why not outlaw going to the bathroom during a commercial break?

And if it's a matter of me catching shows months or years before they come to European networks (if at all), why then are visitors to the USA not banned from watching tv over there?

hey, I don't make the laws or enforce the laws... ;-)

did u see above, where I decoded the mencoder option line regarding constant bitrate audio?

Latest results. I transcoded the same file with Konttori's MediaConverter, setting Xvid as the codec. The file played jerkily from almost the beginning in mplayer, increasingly dropping frames and soundfragments as it went along.

The same file, transcoded with PocketDivXEncoder and the same settings (or so I thought, see below) played without any major flaws at all (there is a very slight, extremely short stutter every three minutes or so, but this has been the case with the tablets from the beginning; it used to be much, much worse).

This is the file information mplayer on the tablet gives:
For the MediaConverter file:
video codec: xvid
bitrate: 499 kbps
res: 400x224
audio codec: mad
bitrate: 32 kbps
samples: 48000 hz 2 ch

For the PocketDivXEncoder file:
video codec: xvid
bitrate: 483 kbps
res: 400x224
audio codec: mad
bitrate: 96 kbps
samples: 48000 hz 2 ch

They look remarkably similar, save two problems:

• Both MediaConverter and PDE claimed they had the audio bitrate set at 128 kbps, while mplayer reports them at 32 and 96 kbps respectively;
• the video bitrates were supposed to be 512 kbps according to the transcoders, but again mplayer shows a difference.

I don't know whether this discrepancy is mplayer's "fault" or that the transcoders are off, but it is telling that the file with the lowest audio bitrate is also the one causing playback troubles.

Okay, I'm trying to research this video playback problem with Media Player, Videocenter, Canola, mplayer and mYTube. In all of these I get stuttering in the video playback about every 5 seconds or so.

I have the latest Diablo on my N800 with two 8 GB, Class 6 SDHC cards.

Is the stuttering being cause by other software?

Other items which I have loaded which might be suspect:

advanced-backlight
large-statusbar-clock
load-applet
maemo-control
omweather

Anyone have any ideas?

I'm sorry, but personally I don't really care anymore. After the last "upgrade" f*ckup, I've decided to not invest any energy in Nokia's tablets anymore. Enough is enough. I'll keep using my crippled tablet as an ebook reader until I get my Pandora (hopefully in september), after which my N800 will become a paperweight.

The Pandora will come with the VLC player and has a (compared to the Nokias) infinitely more powerful graphics subsystem, capable of playing non-transcoded DivX and Xvid files.

I would have loved to keep the N800, but a tablet without decent HWR was a hassle to begin with. Add to that the ongoing video playback limitations and the persistent problems with system upgrades and that's me finally gone. The Pandora will be different enough that I won't have to keep comparing it to the Nokias and it has the bonus of being (to me at least) a spiritual successor to the Psion Series 3a, the pocketable computer I loved most of all (yes, even more so than the Newton!).

Well, it's not any of these.

Nevertheless I'd like to see such comparison when you lay your hands on one.

In the previous OS revision on my N800, the video playback was pretty much always smooth. It just seems like it gets the "hiccups" under Diablo. I've looked at the process listing to see if there's anything that starts demanding CPU cycles on about the same interval as the stutters, but haven't seen any suspects.

I tend to agree with Karel Jansens (post#25) that the N8x0 should be a rock-solid media-player without any special "tweaking" required if they want consumers to purchase them.

My Nokia 9300 does video quite well, though it supports only DivX codec and is a 150 MHz device.

Your Nokia has 3x smaller screen And i doubt you watch video on 640x200?

Responding to the question by Bundyo, yes I do watch video on my Nokia 9300. With Smart Video Converter, by Lazy Cat Games, I can keep about 6 hrs of video at 256 kbps (15 fps) with stereo audio (22050 Hz) on my 1 GB MMC card.

Normal video is displayed at 400x200, but I can convert a 16:9 aspect ratio widescreen video from DVD and see it in widescreen on my display without noticable distortion.

I have converted both normal and PAL video with it. It's great to carry on flights with you.