DivX Mobile Player 0.90 Released for Windows Mobile

[Rocco Augusto]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://labs.divx.com/MobileCommunity' target='_blank'>http://labs.divx.com/MobileCommunity</a><br /><br /></div><em>&quot;DivX Mobile Player 0.90 makes installation easier through signed packages, improves battery life with better power management, supports alternate screen orientations for the Motorola Q and Windows Mobile phones, and is now localized for Spanish and Portuguese. Windows Mobile 2003+ and Symbian OS 9+ downloads are available from the DivX Mobile Community homepage. Please note that you need to subscribe to the DivX Mobile Community group to access these downloads. Subscription is open and free.&quot;<br /><br /></em><img border="0" alt="" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com//zt/auto/1209942357.usr8.gif" /><br /><br />I spent a few minutes playing around with this today and I have to say, I'm pretty impressed. The previous version of the DivX Mobile Player that we reported on was pretty buggy, slow, and severally distorted your screen layout on landscape devices such as the Motorola Q and the Samsung Blackjack upon exiting the application. From what I saw in the brief bit I time I spent playing with version 0.90, all of the problems have seemed to have disappeared and video playback on my Samsung Blackjack was speedy and showed no signs of lag what-so-ever. I have only had time to play around with the included demo videos but I will attempt to play some of my own DivX videos later tonight to see how far along this application has really come. For those curious to give this application a test drive you can download copies of both the Windows Mobile Professional and Standard version <a href="http://labs.divx.com/MobileCommunity">here</a>.

[Menneisyys]

I’ve quickly tested it on several real-world (high-resolution; mostly 576- and 640-wide) DivX- and XviD-encoded videos. It delivered acceptable results on both the two Windows Mobile handsets (HP iPAQ 210 and HTC Universal running Ranyu’s 7.6 of WM6.1) and Symbian (Nokia N95 with firmware version v21) when playing back most DivX videos. There were rarely dropped frames (albeit the playback wasn’t as smooth as under CorePlayer).

Playing back my XviD-encoded test video, however, was painfully stuttering under Windows Mobile and a little stuttering under Symbian. (I REALLY recommend THIS (http://www.winmobiletech.com/052008iPAQ210/xvid.avi) video; pay special attention to the camera moving in the second sketch with the office dialog). The same videos played back flawlessly under the latest versions (1.2.3 for WinMo and 1.2.0 for Symbian) of CorePlayer.

It isn’t able to play back standard ASP videos created in Nero Recode (after renaming them to .AVI’s so that the player finds them); it complains about being incompatible. (The same videos, of course, play back OK under CorePlayer, as has also been explained in my H.264 Bible.) Of course it won’t play back the much more advanced AVC (H.264) videos either.

All in all, you may want to give it a try if you prefer free stuff – but don’t forget: CorePlayer is still much better, more compatible and more efficient. The only drawback of the latter is not being free.

[Carty]

I better stick to the FREE TCPMP.. Way better than CorePlayer due to availability of some codecs that aint distributed via CorePlayer for licensing issues. In my Athena, TCPMP plays better than Core though both run the same framework.

Regards,
Carty..

[Menneisyys]

I better stick to the FREE TCPMP.. Way better than CorePlayer due to availability of some codecs that aint distributed via CorePlayer for licensing issues. In my Athena, TCPMP plays better than Core though both run the same framework.

Regards,
Carty..

Note that, however, there are a lot of formats (most importantly, H.264 / AVC) that are played back better on CP than on TCPMP. Also, it has much better hardware support (Kaiser; PXA310 etc.), should you have a phone based on a newer, more advanced architecture.