Content Upgrades From Mazingo

[Brad Adrian]

<a href="http://www.mazingo.net/pc/index.php">http://www.mazingo.net/pc/index.php</a><br /><br />Mazingo has announced a few changes to their Mobile Entertainment Network, their service for downloading and viewing movie and television content on your Pocket PC. The changes include:<br /><br />• A new $6.95 "one-day" pass. Download all the content you want over a 24-hour period.<br />• Download times are estimated and displayed during the sync process.<br />• Availability of discussion forums for people to discuss the service and ask questions<br />• Launch of Digital Video Package with more reliable and better video content.<br />• Launch of "Extra" & "Celebrity Justice" in the television and news category.<br /><br />I've always wanted to try this service out, if not just to see if the video quality is very decent. If anybody out there uses this, I'd be interested to know what types of shows you download and whether you feel there's sufficient variety.

[Trokair]

I was one of the "Early Subscribers" and get their Premium Content for free, and I can safely say the following things.

1) Their content selection is much, much better than anything AvantGo can offer.

2) As far as I can tell, there's no limit to how much you can download at once (compared to AvantGo's 2MB limit).

3) Their Digital Video Package is well worth it, with a variety of old movies, clips, and trailers to pick from.

I switched from AvantGo awhile ago and have never looked back since. :D

-Kyle

[anthonymoody]

Hi Kyle,

A few questions:
1) were you intentionally comparing apples to oranges to highlight the difference or is Avantgo capable of providing video streams? I just switched from Palm (where I used avantgo) which definitely couldnt do that! (at least to my knowledge) Can it for PPC?

2) what is the size of the video streams in MB/minute of footage? and, is it a standard file format or custom?

thanks!
TM

[ntractv]

I was one of the "Early Subscribers" and get their Premium Content for free, and I can safely say the following things.

1) Their content selection is much, much better than anything AvantGo can offer.

2) As far as I can tell, there's no limit to how much you can download at once (compared to AvantGo's 2MB limit).

3) Their Digital Video Package is well worth it, with a variety of old movies, clips, and trailers to pick from.

I switched from AvantGo awhile ago and have never looked back since. :D

-Kyle

I'm assuming you still get the premium content for free, but, with what you are getting, is it worth paying for. Also, are you running this from a storage card. I would assume the file sizes are huge and I would be kinda of leary of placing that much content on my device's RAM

[denivan]

Just like anthonymoody I'm interested in what kind of video file format is used and what the quality is like. I remember downloading a long time ago a free movie channel from Mazingo and in my opinion it was very poor quality, not comparable to other sources I've used for watching video on my pocketpc. I'm interested in learning if quality has improved or not.

So, I'm willing to pay premium $$, but only for premium content ;-)

[Trokair]

Hiya everyone.

Anthony:

I suppose I was using the old "apples and oranges" comparison there. :P What I'm trying to get at is that Mazingo offers everything AvantGo does and more.

The videos themselves don't stream, they're directly downloaded to the Pocket PC, a Storage Card, or (the best option) a Reader if you have one. As an example, a 3 minute Weather Channel forcast takes up about 1MB.

ntractv:

Yes, I still get it. As for if it's worth it for what you get, I suppose that's all a matter of opinion.

On file sizes: Yeah, they're pretty big. I'm using a 340MB MicroDrive to hold some stuff now. The thing here is that once you're done watching something, get it off of your synced videos list.

denivan:

They use MPEGs. The Digital Video Package comes bundled with PocketTV.

As for quality, it's acceptable. It's about as good as you can get it without having massive file sizes.

-Kyle

[Paragon]

Sometimes I feel like I always sound negative. If I do I'm sorry, but here I have to be.

The video content on Mazingo is largely the same as it has always been. The movies are all the same. They never cycle in anything new. It takes a donkey's age to sync. Even when using a card reader. Every once in a while I load this app back on my PPC and give it a go to see if it's worth it. Everytime I do I end up taking it off to make room for stuff I need.

I must admit my opinion is probably a bit tainted. I has some real problems caused indirectly by this app, and got absolutely deplorable customer support. The problem I had was it would take about a 1 1/2 minutes to open an Excel, or Word form when I had any Mazingo content on my storage card. When I contacted them about it they said "It's not our fault, it's an OS problem sorry. We have no plans to find a fix to this issue. We suggest you remove your storage card when you want to use Excel, or Word". I began hearing similar problems from many others so I decided to take all my woodworking knowledge I have and find a solution to this problem. It was also pointed out to me that people on their forum were asking for a fix to this problem, and were being ignored. They wouldn't even post that Mazingo could indirectly cause this problem, so many of their customers fumbled along with this problem with no idea that it was Mazingo that was causing it.

Well NON computer geek Dave found the fix, a very simple one (I guess that's why I was able to find it. :-) ) If you had an "ignore_my_docs file on you card, and you removed it the problem was solved. It took me several evenings playing around to find this problem, when Mazingo could have found this fix in minutes if they had only tried.

I couldn't believe how thankful some people were to hear of this fix. I think one guy even threw in a marrige proposal. :-)

So, every once in a while I take an opportunity like this to bad mouth them for the total lack of care they showed their customers.

Dave

[someppcuser]

I have to agree on the bad things.
They take way too much time to fix problems. Right now the MazingoDVP software is of beta quality. The transition from the old program to the new one was a nightmare and some things are still not resolved. Even worse, you need to have two programs installed on your desktop to also get the free text services.
I have mentioned elsewhere in this forum that the program was not capable of syncing, it just erased everything instead. So when you know that it takes 50 minutes to download my content (no movies and to a card reader), I think that that way of doing things is just a waste of bandwidth and time.
About content, some programs do cycle everyday (news, extra, etc.), but the music videos or the movies don't change. Oh..and it's US centric...Forget about the weather in Europe or things like that.

But there are some good things too. I think the quality of the videos is great. Frame rate is important to me and the mpegs are fluid. The resizing of cartoons works well most of the time.

We need a better software and more content.

The $7 for 24hours is a good idea, that way more people can experiment.

[Unreal32]

I definitely agree that the synching versus replacing files thing is a pain, and probably adds a LOT to the download time. Plus, I have occasionally had synch errors where I couldn't access any of my DVP files through Mazingo, even though they obviously downloaded... which meant the double frustration of having them download and not being able to access them, *and* having them take up all that useable space on my storage card.

I do like the weather channel updates, since I travel a lot and can choose multiple domestic cities, and having Extra and USA Today videos available is good too. Also, the daily "radio-show" type updates are great... sometimes more than an hour long!

However, it would be nice to get everything I want as far as digital content in one place. I currently use Mazingo, AvantGo (although I haven't yet bought into the 8 meg upgrade) and that new program called World Off-Line, which is pretty cool except it requires a manual synch and often doesn't get 50% or more of my links. I would ditch AvantGo and World Off-Line completely if Mazingo offered true synching and faster downloads... as it stands right now, I can't afford the time most days to synch my Mazingo content daily, which means any time-sensitive content needs to be in AvantGo, which synchs fast and reliably.

(On the other hand, if AvantGo offered a DVP like Mazingo does, and allowed a default install to the storage card, and got rid of the stupid size limit, I would drop everything and go solely to AvantGo, too!)

[Marcel_Proust]

Mazingo as far as I know does not let you sync the web pages of your choice.
It is also buggy as some people have noted and the sync process is awkward. It does offer some features that are promising.
Avantgo is very reliable in syncing. You can generally sync your favourite web pages. You can pay a small fee to sync up to 8 mb. To sync content to a storage card, you have to tweak the registry. Why they haven't been able to include this in the program is baffling.
Sunnysoft World off Line and Handstory, are promising, but I don't find them ready for prime time yet. They need further versions.

[gregh]

ref the problem that was created by"you had an "ignore_my_docs file on you card"

That has absolutely NOTHING to do with Mazingo, and is a 'feature' of the PPC OS.

Regards,

Greg

[Wiggin]

I do like the weather channel updates, since I travel a lot and can choose multiple domestic cities, and having Extra and USA Today videos available is good too.
If you are interested in getting updated weather info for 60+ cities around the world, and want it via quick downloading, consider a small app called WorldMate. You can find it Here (http://www.mobimate.com).
Information comes from the Weather Channel, and the app also offers:
- Global clock (with map)
- Currency conversion
- Unit conversion
- Phone Area codes (global)

I too would like to let go of AvantGo (never did like the 2MB limit, even though there is an easy workaround... it's a principle issue), but I like the fact that my iPaq can synch up all of the AvantGo info in ~30 seconds (via a Broadband connection and USB synch). I usually just connect my PPC to synch data ...while I'm standing there :D ... so fast is key.
Tried using Mazingo a while ago... didn't impress me on speed and content... perhaps it's time for another go? I can't tell from this Thread if synch time for textual content is better/equal/worse than AvantGo. Feedback?

[Santa Fe]

It is very much a beta program. I've found it to interfer with other programs too much to use it. And the time it takes to download some of the content could be spent reviewing it on a PC. I'm hopefull that it improves enough to be worth something when I get a wireless PDA.

The Excel/Word problem is a major one to me.

[Marcel_Proust]

I do like the weather channel updates, since I travel a lot and can choose multiple domestic cities, and having Extra and USA Today videos available is good too.
If you are interested in getting updated weather info for 60+ cities around the world, and want it via quick downloading, consider a small app called WorldMate. You can find it Here (http://www.mobimate.com).
Information comes from the Weather Channel, and the app also offers:
- Global clock (with map)
- Currency conversion
- Unit conversion
- Phone Area codes (global)

I too would like to let go of AvantGo (never did like the 2MB limit, even though there is an easy workaround... it's a principle issue), but I like the fact that my iPaq can synch up all of the AvantGo info in ~30 seconds (via a Broadband connection and USB synch). I usually just connect my PPC to synch data ...while I'm standing there :D ... so fast is key.
Tried using Mazingo a while ago... didn't impress me on speed and content... perhaps it's time for another go? I can't tell from this Thread if synch time for textual content is better/equal/worse than AvantGo. Feedback?


in my experience with a broadband connection sync time is significantly better than mazingo and using activesync directly is a plus. maybe new version is better?
worldmate is a good program but of course you can get the channels for free on avantgo and other places.
does anyone know of a program that will put the forecast on the today screen. now that would be cool.

[Paragon]

ref the problem that was created by"you had an "ignore_my_docs file on you card"

That has absolutely NOTHING to do with Mazingo, and is a 'feature' of the PPC OS.

Regards,

Greg

Ummm.....&lt;clears throat> :) UH, gregh, I believe I mentioned a couple of times at least that the problem was indirectly caused by Mazingo, and WAS caused by the OS. Since I had other large video files on my card and they were not causing any problems. Since none of the 75 apps installed on my device, and card were causing any of these problems, it then became a Mazingo issue for me.

Yellow is the best colour there is! No other colour can compare to yellow! :)

Dave

[gregh]

Hi Dave,

maybe I'm being a bit thick here, but I thought that the OS creates that file, so I fail to understand what Mazingo has to do with it at all?? I have a my documents folder on my storage card, so maybe that's why I've not seen it?

cheers.

Greg

[Paragon]

Hi Dave,

maybe I'm being a bit thick here, but I thought that the OS creates that file, so I fail to understand what Mazingo has to do with it at all?? I have a my documents folder on my storage card, so maybe that's why I've not seen it?

cheers.

Greg

Greg you are right, the OS does create that file. IF you don't have a my documents folder on your storage card it puts that file there ( I think so the OS won't spend the rest of it's life looking for one.

I can only try to explain this as a laymen. The way Mazingo handles it's files they are seen as the same as any files from Excel, Word, Code Wallet and several others that store their files in my documents. For anyone with the ignore_my_docs folder Excel, and the others will look through every Mazingo file when opening, which could take forever. Removing ther ignore_my_docs file stops that from happening.

My beef was that it was a very simple thing that many of Mazingo's customers were having problems with. They were aware of it, and very pointedly said they had no plans to find a fix for this problem. Leaving many of their customers out in the cold.

Dave

[gregh]

cheers Dave, understand now :)

Greg

[Paragon]

Cool 8)

Dave

[gateway]

Well as many of you know MPEG1 is a freaking bloated codec and im not sure why people use it still and its even worse if you have a PPC with limited amount of memory storage. I have been doing some video compression tests over the last few years due to a project I have coming out soon and found that there are really good quality codecs out there that can reproduce amazing results. IM not sure why people sync mpegs to their pda's its just a waste of your time and space.

I cant really comment on what im doing but lets just say there is going to be an alternative to mazingo and avantgo soon :)

Gateway