PocketTV, Now with VGA Support for iPAQ hx4700

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pockettv.com' target='_blank'>http://www.pockettv.com</a><br /><br /></div>The PocketTV team writes in with the following news:<br /><br />We have released PocketTV Classic 0.15.8 (freeware) with much improved VGA support for the new iPaq hx4700.<br /><br />This latest version of PocketTV can play VGA-resolution (640x480) MPEG video at full framerate (24 fps) in Fullscreen on the hx4700.<br /><br />There is no need to pre-rotate the video files at encoding. PocketTV takes advantage of the ATI Imageon 3200-series video accelerator present in the hx4700 (and in the Toshiba e800/e805).<br /><br />Sounds very cool. :D If someone tries it out and has more results, post 'em here! The PocketTV folks have some VGA demo files <a href="http://www.pockettv.com/mpg/vga">here</a>.

[jpjehu]

I'm not quite sure what the exact improvements are because the previous version worked great for me. I watched 'equilibrium' encoded at 320*240 and it played it full screen and very smooth. I'm watching it now and it seems to be a bit better, but it was great - IMO - before.

[jpjehu]

ps - the link to the vga files isn't working for me...

[jpjehu]

pps - I hope they do the same for the intel 2700g because I'm returning the 4700 due to the touchpad - it makes any minor game-playing impossible.

[Janak Parekh]

ps - the link to the vga files isn't working for me...
Sorry about that! Fixed.

--janak

[jpjehu]

yea - i tried the two biggest files and they didn't work phenomenally, but I don't know what they would have looked like before. They played, but seemed a bit choppy. They obviously have better resolution than the files I've played encoded at QVGA, but only slighty more fine. At least they're making strides to optimize the ATI chip as much as they can!

[humayunl]

Sorry if I'm going to be slightly off topic here... but not quit maybe..

I have ben using pocket tv for a while and i love it. but lately i have been hearing about pocket MVP and beta player. Also free players which play WMA and divx etc. encoded video.

I cant play those formats on pocket tv and i cant play MPEGs (which play on pocket tv) on those players.

Are there codecs for WMA, DivX, etc for pocket tv? if i could i'd like to have just one video player for all formats. Which is the best player?

[The PocketTV Team]

I'm not quite sure what the exact improvements are because the previous version worked great for me. I watched 'equilibrium' encoded at 320*240 and it played it full screen and very smooth. I'm watching it now and it seems to be a bit better, but it was great - IMO - before.
The previous version of PocketTV could not play VGA-resolution files unless they were "pre-rotated", a complicated process that renders the file un-usable on the desktop.

The new version does not require VGA files to be pre-rotated, and it makes hi-res video smoother, more fluid, less jerky than earlier versions.

Details of those improvements are listed in the PocketTV Release Notes (http://www.pockettv.com/release-notes.html).

There is still a known problem with the cursor disapearing (when the hx4700 touch pad is set to cursor mode). This problem is under inverstigation, and it appears related to some negative interation between the HP cursor driver and the application, which both are taking advantage of some features of the ATI hardware. Apparently HP engineers never tested the unit using applications that use ATI overlay surfaces...

[The PocketTV Team]

Sorry if I'm going to be slightly off topic here... but not quit maybe..

I have ben using pocket tv for a while and i love it. but lately i have been hearing about pocket MVP and beta player. Also free players which play WMA and divx etc. encoded video.

I cant play those formats on pocket tv and i cant play MPEGs (which play on pocket tv) on those players.

Are there codecs for WMA, DivX, etc for pocket tv? if i could i'd like to have just one video player for all formats. Which is the best player?
That's correct, Betaplayer can play DivX, and various audio formats including MP3, and it is interfaced with the microsoft WMV codec, so it can play WMV files. The latest version of Betaplayer can also play MPEG and with very good performances.

PocketMVP is a dead project, it is not maintained anymore and does not work well on Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition, the OS used in all new Pocket PCs.

But I don't know if the MPEG codec used in Betaplayer is as resilient and capable of playing 100% of the MPEG files floating on the internet. PocketTV uses a codec that has been tested and validated on a very large number of files.

PocketTV Classic and Betaplayer are both free, so you should get both and use the one you like best for playing your MPEG.

[The PocketTV Team]

> yea - i tried the two biggest files and they didn't work phenomenally
> but I don't know what they would have looked like before. They
> played, but seemed a bit choppy. They obviously have better
> resolution than the files I've played encoded at QVGA, but only slighty
> more fine.

The VGA-resolution files that we tried on the hx4700, including the test files from www.pockettv.com/mpg/vga , all work very well and played totally smoothly on the unit that we tried today.

You must make sure that the CPU speed is set to the maximum. If the CPU is scaled down to a lower speed or set to power-save mode, it is likely that the performances will not be as good.

VGA-resolution files have 4 times higer resolution (in terms of number of pixels), compared to QVGA.

[paris]

Good work, althought i prefer beta player since it will do dvix,xvid and lots of other formats and in addition its like 10-20% faster on my HX4700.

[The PocketTV Team]

Good work, althought i prefer beta player since it will do dvix,xvid and lots of other formats and in addition its like 10-20% faster on my HX4700.
Betaplayer is nice, you should use it if you like it better.

Yes, Betaplayer is a bit faster than PocketTV because it contains ASM optimizations. PocketTV does not use ASM, because they are harder to maintain in the long run, and they are more processor specific (e.g. Xscale PXA-255 optimizations may not work with the Samsung S3C 2440 processor used in the iPaq rx3000 series).

We have only tried Betaplayer on a few MPEG-1 streams. I don't know if it can play all the MPEG-1 files that you can download from the net. PocketTV is known to be very vell tested, and it is extremely rare to find an MPEG file that it cannot play.

PocketTV also has some cool features not available in the Betaplayer, like capturing an image and sending it by email (if your device is connected), and more interesting, streaming (e.g. through a WiFi connection, from an http server). Betaplayer does not support streaming at all.

In any case, both are freeware, and Betaplayer is an excellent software, an order of magnitude better than PocketMVP.

[rjcrossett]

I get an error message when I try to run PocketTV on my hx4705 - 'PocketTV' is not a valid Pocket PC application.

I got this with older version and now with this new version.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[Darius Wey]

I get an error message when I try to run PocketTV on my hx4705 - 'PocketTV' is not a valid Pocket PC application.

I got this with older version and now with this new version.

Any ideas? Thanks.

I suspect you may have downloaded the file for the wrong platform. Try heading here (http://www.handango.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?productType=2&optionId=1_2_2&platformId=2&osId=128&siteId=1&productId=10565&sectionId=0&catalog=30) and get your hands on the version they have hosted there.

[DerekTheGeek]

Thanks to everyone on The PocketTV Team. PocketTV has always been one of the first applications I have put on all my Pocket PC devices. The fact that you release it for free is pretty amazing.

Thanks for all your hard work!

- Derek :D

[jasondearyou]

so is this suppose to help make up for a substandard, over price ppc? By getting other people to make it better, HP start with the basics, and that's the foundation, the device itself. No excuses.

[Dermot81]

so is this suppose to help make up for a substandard, over price ppc? By getting other people to make it better, HP start with the basics, and that's the foundation, the device itself. No excuses.

Didn't realize it was substandard, please enlighten us! :)

[rjcrossett]

I get an error message when I try to run PocketTV on my hx4705 - 'PocketTV' is not a valid Pocket PC application.

I got this with older version and now with this new version.

Any ideas? Thanks.

I suspect you may have downloaded the file for the wrong platform. Try heading here (http://www.handango.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?productType=2&optionId=1_2_2&platformId=2&osId=128&siteId=1&productId=10565§ionId=0&catalog=30) and get your hands on the version they have hosted there.

I had the correct platform. There must be a conflict with something else. BetaPlayer works fine.

[Darius Wey]

I had the correct platform. There must be a conflict with something else. BetaPlayer works fine.

Have you tried contacting the PocketTV team? Perhaps they know of this issue. Alternatively, they should post in this thread from time to time. ;)

Just as a heads-up, PocketTV has just been updated to 0.15.9. You can download the updated version from Handango. (http://www.handango.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?productType=2&optionId=1_2_2&jid=F7E713B11C68BC743CD3XB514X6B8483&platformId=2&siteId=1&osId=128&productId=10565&sectionId=0&catalog=30&txtSearch=pockettv) Despite it saying version 0.15.8, it decided to give me 0.15.9...so it's all good. :D