When all else fails, MAKE YOUR OWN WAY!!!


http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...9&goto=newpost

Out of interest, are you talking about find gradations of quality here, or fundamental problems with playback on the N800?

My experience is that the latest mplayer is fine on the N800 - with the IMO minor caveats that

- it sometimes hangs / gets confused if you pause playback for a long while (more than a minute)

- it sometimes gets stuck at the start of the playback - can be fixed by pressing the select button a few times.

With the N800's native Media Player, I find that it gets stuck for no apparent reason after 15 minutes or so.

- Neil

It stutters with almost every file (bar the lowest of lowest resolutions). This happens with media player and with Mplayer.

The media player is extremely picky, not only about file types but even about pixel numbers. WTF is that about? A media player that cannot scale???

Movies take an amazing time to start up.

Both media player and Mplayer will randomly hang for no apparent reason.

Neither player has a convenient way of resuming a stopped movie (my PMA has video bookmarking feature, and that's two years old!).

In short: The multimedia part of the device behaves as something that was designed ten years ago.

I don't see this at all. I'm using the --preset=good option of 770-encode.pl; perhaps that's a significantly lower resolution than you are using?

Agreed here. Mplayer is better though.

Agreed here too - both Media Player and MPlayer.

With MPlayer I've never seen a hang completely out of the blue; only immediately after pressing some button. With Media Player I agree that it can hang for no reason.

I hadn't thought of that before, but it's a very good point. Bookmarking would be really useful.

The device(s) are innovative in other ways, though, so as long as it doesn't take ten years for the above problems to be fixed, I personally can live with them for a while.

- Neil

I only use Konttori's Media Converter at the moment, but I get the same stuttering in Mplayer, no matter what (supported) codec I use. Every so many frames, the N800 decides it will not show a couple of them, and then go back to normal business. It's very annoying.

But that's the point: Occasionally I want to push a button. This is a portable device, odds are movies are not going to be watched in one go, but in chunks of available (lost) time. Media players are supposed to be able to withstand the amazing stress of user interference. (that's sarcasm, by the way)

Here is the Cebit YouTube video for the H9.

http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news....html#comments

thaibill

Alternative direct youtube link for the CeBit video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=dT0hK1TKkuA

Incredible - it even has the cheap dinner-plate stand that came with the 770!

The H9 seems incredibly cheap for what it is ($430 USD, 20GB, GPS, 7-inch screen etc. for 200+ pieces) and apparently it's available already, though the company rep didn't sound terribly convincing.

The UI does look very Maemo-like - I hope they "give back" some of their developments but their low-profile to date sugests this isn't likely.

http://www.porient.com/2006dn/index.html

It does seem strange that the Beijing Peace East Technology Porient H9 has only 64MB Flash ROM and 128MB RAM. That's the same memory config found in the 770, yet in every other respect they've maxed out the hardware functionality with a better (faster) Intel (now Marvel?) PXA270 520mhz XScale CPU (although in several respects I'd say this CPU is a generation behind that found in the N800).

Nice big 4000mAh battery though - going to need it with the 7" screen, GPS and 20GB HDD sucking down all the juice.

It's double the weight of the 770/N800, which is hardly suprising considering it has a much larger screen, battery and of course mechanical storage - to think my N800 has almost the same storage capacity as the H9 yet my 16GB of storage on 2x 8GB SDHC cards weighs nothing in comparison to the H9's 20GB HDD!

Will be very interested to see how this device fares - it's not likely to trouble Nokia in the immediate future as I guesstimate the H9 will retail for close to $600+ and is most likely a competitor for Windows-based UMPCs rather than ultra-light tablets. However if the H9 is successful, who is to say Beijing won't consider a reduced size H9 in future?

equally curious is the PORIENT H10, the more-robust 4x4 variant to the H9, running Windows CE.
Check the specs...

Ultra Mobile PC H10
　Features
◆ For outdoor job;
◆ 6.5" High luminance & contrast TFT screen. It can display clearly even in strong sun-light;
◆ Built-in High Sensitivity GPS system;
◆ Water-proof and dustproof outer design;
◆ Super capacity battery makes it possible to work outdoor for 8 hours;
◆ Support blue-tooth, SD socket, USB;
◆ CPU: Intel PXA270C520，OS:Windows CE 5.0，Full screen input by handwriting.

compared to the H9 specs:

Ultra Mobile PC H9
　Features
◆ Integrated with PDA/ PMP/ GPS / Wireless Internet Function in one;
◆ Wireless network connection (GPRS/CDMA/WIFI)，support MSN, built-in WEB Browser;
◆ GPS Navigation;
◆ Multimedia player, Flash player, Photo browsing & editing, Recording & Multimedia file manager;
◆ Mobile office: Name Card management, E-mail on moving, Office browser, PDF browser and so on.
　Technical Specifications
CPU Intel PXA270, 520MHz
O/S Linux
EMS Memory ROM: 64M Byte Nor Flash
RAM: 128M Byte SDRAM
Hard Disk 20G
Display 7" TFT LCD Display with back light.
Interface PCMICA Card,SD Card socket,USB,Earphone Jack,Power socket
Keys Power key, Volume, 5D Navigating Keys, 5 x Shortcut-Keys.
Battery Know-down & Rechargeable Lithium Battery, 4000mAh.
Power DC 5.0V± 10%,2.0A
Audio AC97, Built-in Speaker
GPS Hammerhead IC adopted, from Global Locate
Size 205x120x19 mm
Weight 500g

obtained at these slow-loading pages:
http://www.porient.com/2006dn/h10.html
http://www.porient.com/2006dn/index.html
http://www.porient.com/

on edit: H9 probably doesn't have bluetooth or wifi onboard, from the looks of the specs and the video. Both are probably available via "PCMICA" card, but whether they can run simultaneously (i.e. bluetooth keyboard and wifi internet at once) is a mystery...

dcarter

The H9 does have WiFi (according to the specs) but doesn't have Bluetooth - I guess the manufacturer believes BT is not necessary as GPS/GPRS/CDMA etc are built-in, however this does mean a hardware keyboard is more difficult to connect without a BT dongle of some kind (or maybe USB could be used).

Considering the CPU is ARM and the OS is Linux with fairly obvious inspiration from Maemo, I wonder if Beijing paid Adobe to "port" Flash to this device (which they have already ported for Nokia!) or if Beijing are using an open source variant?

Would also be interesting to see what browser they are using - Opera, NetFront or maybe Minimo? I can't imagine they will have succeeded in getting any "desktop" applications (eg. Firefox) to run on this device given the very limited memory constraints.