Thoughts about OS 2008

[MstPrgmr]

Well for those of you who managed to flash it what are your thoughts? Here are a few things I noticed after playing with it for an hour.

- Youtube works well, as stated it would
- Rhapsody works very well. Sometimes you have to start a track again to see the cover and information though
- Rhapsody home applet is very cool. I can play, pause/resume, skip from home screen
- Xterm from fresh install is nice
- Very thumb ready. Menu's are thumb size whether you use stylus or thumb. Some might want smaller menu's especially when adding lots of programs though
- Built in email applet still doesn't work with Gmail IMAP! It shows the headers, but you cannot retrieve the messages. I guess some things will never change.
- You cannot rearrange home screen applets. Puzzling...
- Looks pretty cool.
- loading bar from startup is light blue instead of dark blue.

[Reggie]

- You cannot rearrange home screen applets. Puzzling...


You can drag applets anywhere anytime.

[unique311]

I was able to drag the applets around.
weird it doesn't work for you.
well actually no its not.
its not meant for the device its being used on.
so everyone might get different results.

[MstPrgmr]

Oh, correction. Applets can be moved by dragging it anytime. I was looking for the old OS 2007 style rearrangement and couldn't find it. It works great. Dragging is much better.

[nden]

- Built in email applet still doesn't work with Gmail IMAP! It shows the headers, but you cannot retrieve the messages. I guess some things will never change.

hi,

I just flashed my N800 to OS2008.

There is a way to retrieve the messages and attachment.

Go to your ADVANCED settings for email. Check out Incoming tabs > Retrieve > choose "Messages and attachments"

Hope this help.

[MstPrgmr]

I've tried that and it didn't work. Are you using Gmail IMAP? Gmail IMAP causes the built in mail applet to lock up in OS 2007 and it seems to be no different in OS 2008. I have not heard any gmail imap success stories for any OS

[jaros]

I have just flashed new 2008OS. It,s great and much faster. But sip calls doesn't work properly. Has anybody tried sip calls ?

[anidel]

Gmail IMAP is the culprit here.
Sometimes it as issues.

I was just speaking about it with a friend in the US while we were both trying the mail application with Gmail IMAP and we had the very same issues that disappears at almost the same *time*.

[cybergypsy]

I have just flashed new 2008OS. It,s great and much faster. But sip calls doesn't work properly. Has anybody tried sip calls ?

I have setup my Asterisk server and SIPGate accounts , both work fine for me.

Haven't tried my SIPPhone / GizmoProject account yet though.

[jhoff80]

I like how you can now use any SIP server for internet calling, but I haven't figured out how to get it to work with my Gizmo/SIPphone account either without using the native Gizmo app (I'd much prefer just a normal SIP client for it.)

Gmail's IMAP implementation is horrible from what I've seen, most clients have issues with it.

I just hope more programs are ported to OS2008 quickly, because there's been a bunch I couldn't use yet.

[nden]

I've tried that and it didn't work. Are you using Gmail IMAP? Gmail IMAP causes the built in mail applet to lock up in OS 2007 and it seems to be no different in OS 2008. I have not heard any gmail imap success stories for any OS

No. I don't use Gmail. It may be a problem with Gmail. So I don't know :(

[zerojay]

I like how you can now use any SIP server for internet calling, but I haven't figured out how to get it to work with my Gizmo/SIPphone account either without using the native Gizmo app (I'd much prefer just a normal SIP client for it.)

Gmail's IMAP implementation is horrible from what I've seen, most clients have issues with it.

I just hope more programs are ported to OS2008 quickly, because there's been a bunch I couldn't use yet.

The information for that is on the RTCOMM site.

[Moonshine]

- Very thumb ready. Menu's are thumb size whether you use stylus or thumb. Some might want smaller menu's especially when adding lots of programs though.

Is this for real? no more smart size switching??? ug...:eek:

[barry99705]

I've tried that and it didn't work. Are you using Gmail IMAP? Gmail IMAP causes the built in mail applet to lock up in OS 2007 and it seems to be no different in OS 2008. I have not heard any gmail imap success stories for any OS

Works just fine for me.

Is this for real? no more smart size switching??? ug...:eek:

I've not found a setting for it yet, but yea, they take up most of the screen. Haven't figured out how to get root access yet either, so I haven't been able to hack my text settings smaller yet either.

[technut]

Haven't figured out how to get root access yet either, so I haven't been able to hack my text settings smaller yet either.

SEARCH! It's probably already been answered. (http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?p=94274#post94274)Use "becomeroot" (originally for Nokia 770 but works on OS2007 and OS2008.
http://eko.one.pl/index.php?page=Nokia770_software#becomeroot

You can add the repository for becomeroot with a single-click install from here:
http://gronmayer.com/n800/repos/dl.php?id=10
Then just find becomeroot in App Manager and install it.

[VCi15]

any new bluetooth profiles... a2dp?

[Moonshine]

any new bluetooth profiles... a2dp?

I think this info was already released. BT Headset profile is in there. A2DP is also "there" but not enabled, and apps would have to know to make use if it. IIRC.

[Moonshine]

Menu's are thumb size whether you use stylus or thumb.

Well I guess this will be my first mission to get changed. Waaaay to many apps to be scrolling through at thumb sizes all the time. :rolleyes:

[luca]

Gmail's IMAP implementation is horrible from what I've seen, most clients have issues with it.

Neither thunderbird (on a windows and on a linux pc) not claws (on the tablet) seem to have a problem with it.

[jhoff80]

Neither thunderbird (on a windows and on a linux pc) not claws (on the tablet) seem to have a problem with it.

Sorry, most of my experience is with Palm OS clients so I guess I just assumed it would be the same on the PC. Chatteremail, Snapperemail, and Versamail all have varying issues with it.

For one, Chatter can download messages, but doesn't show attachments properly. (I actually use Chatter so much that I don't use any PC email client, so that's why I didn't realize about Thunderbird working.)

[TA-t3]

- Very thumb ready. Menu's are thumb size whether you use stylus or thumb. Some might want smaller menu's especially when adding lots of programs though

Boy the bugzilla is going to get hammered with that one! And I'll be one of the hammerers.. hopefully they'll fix that (make it smart again, as in the previous releases) in the time before it's officially released.

[jhoff80]

Also, I tried using a bluetooth headset. It paired fine, and said that audio was being routed to the headset, but I only heard silence from Gizmo and from the built in SIP client.

[johsua]

Has anyone been able get TVersity UPnP shares to work with the 2008 OS? I assumed they would just show up either in the media player or the file manager, but they are not.

edit: it shows up now... not sure what was going on there.

[lardman]

I think the whole OS2008 is a bit laggy.

The screen locking and unlocking functions seem to take quite a while to be recognised (>1s). Pressing the application menu or (even worse) the bookmarks menu often takes a number of seconds to appear.

This has all the signs of overagressive cpu throttling (I did quite a lot of experimentation with cpufreq on the Zaurus). Obviously this is needed to produce good battery life with the extra processor speed, but I think a different and more complex scheme probably ought to be used (i.e. not ondemand, which I assume is in use atm, perhaps use a complex user-space scheme with the userspace governor)

Anyone else noticed this lag?

[namtastic]

I haven't noticed any lag, but I *have* noticed that Media Player still does not sort songs by ID3 properly. It will parse Artist, Album and Title just fine but when it lists Albums, it's in some unknown order, possibly by modification date. These files have full metadata, completely tagged in iTunes and the track info fields are read perfectly when loaded onto my S60 phone. If they want to be taken seriously as a media player, well, ID3 support is something they should be aceing by now. Just dissapointing, is all.

[whouweling]

I think the new os is great, its much faster, especially the menu's!

Also i find a lot of smaller improvements which make the tablet a lot more usefull:
- Media player loads playlists a lot faster (sometimes os2007 hangs > 10 seconds opening a playlist)
- Scrolling RSS feed applet is very nice
- Scrolling in the RSS reader works way better, makes it very pretty to read feeds
- Notification of new email / incoming messages by LED
- Application manager now shows which feeds are faulty and enables you to edit them on the fly!

The only thing I'm not so sure about is the browser, sometimes its faster than Opera, sometimes slower. (And it locked up a few times.)

Also booting from SD seems to result in slower application startup, instead of faster as it was in os2007.

I think the "normal" n800/n810 user will be very happy when it's officially released to the generic public, it makes the tablet really useful.

[MstPrgmr]

I think the new os is great, its much faster, especially the menu's!

Also i find a lot of smaller improvements which make the tablet a lot more usefull:
- Media player loads playlists a lot faster (sometimes os2007 hangs > 10 seconds opening a playlist)
- Scrolling RSS feed applet is very nice
- Scrolling in the RSS reader works way better, makes it very pretty to read feeds
- Notification of new email / incoming messages by LED
- Application manager now shows which feeds are faulty and enables you to edit them on the fly!

The only thing I'm not so sure about is the browser, sometimes its faster than Opera, sometimes slower. (And it locked up a few times.)

Also booting from SD seems to result in slower application startup, instead of faster as it was in os2007.

I think the "normal" n800/n810 user will be very happy when it's officially released to the generic public, it makes the tablet really useful.


Watch out for the scrolling RSS, it's a CPU hog. Try doing something like playing songs in Rhapsody while the scrolling RSS is enabled and you will see what I mean.

[lardman]

That may be my problem too then. I'll try turning it off and see if my lags disappear.

[Milhouse]

The new scrolling RSS applet seems to be a bit of a disaster IMHO

I can only get 5 articles at most to show in the home page applet which is a horribly small number of items compared to the old version, and typically I can only see 3 articles if I add another applet below or above the RSS applet
the manual scrolling is a bit of a pig - the applet seems to have a scrollbar but of course dragging the thumbtrack drags the whole applet! Perhaps paging through articles with the up/down arrows would be a better method than scrolling one item at a time as the latter is quite tedious
the auto-scrolling is a CPU hog
there's a lot of wasted space around the refresh/up/down buttons


On the plus side, the main RSS applet has been improved and at least two major bugs are fixed:

page dragging is now a lot more reliable (bug #1091 (https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1091))
unread but still valid RSS articles are no longer auto-deleted with each automatic refresh (bug #953 (https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=953))


What Nokia gives with the one hand, it takes with the other! :)

[MstPrgmr]

I take back what I said about Rhapsody working well. At first it was great, now I can't view the tracks under a specific artist in my library. I get "Content not available." Also, the cover and track information is blank more often, and you must manually replay the track (sometimes several times) it order for it to show. I only care, because you cannot add a track to your library without the song information showing.



Uninstalling and reinstalling didn't help either. Too bad, Rhapsody was pretty cool for the 24-48 hours after immediate install when it actually worked.

[benmhall]

I installed it on my N800 yesterday after finally getting the OS clone to SD working. (Thanks for the instructions everyone!)

I like the OS. A bit faster (when disabling the scrolling RSS) the web browser mostly works better, though I did have a crash or two. The UI is much improved for finger navigation. They also finally made the lock function usable without a stylus. It was about time, thanks.

Overall, a great improvement. But....

I went back to OS 2007 this evening. Why? I've spent a lot of time customizing and installing apps. I use GPE and MediaStreamer almost every time I use my N800. I also use Gnumeric, the FM radio, and several other apps on a regular basis. None of them have been ported yet. Moreover, they shouldn't have to be.

Now that ITOS2008/the N810 are here, I hope Nokia has put down the framework that will stop us users from having to reflash and start over again everytime there's a new release. It's utter nonsense. This is Debian. You don't need to do this with Debian. Every other Debian-based device I've used, and I've used a lot, don't require this. We should be able to apt-get dist-upgrade to the new OS and there should be no excuses about this. The first two devices/three OSs were a good time to experiment, now they need to buckle down and work things like this and backwards compatibility out. I shouldn't lose gnumeric/GPE just because of the new OS. Nokia shouldn't be so quick to lose the goodwill of OSS developers by forcing them to start over again with each release. Users and developers alike have lost a lot of time and patience with this behaviour. I'd also hazard to guess that it's scared off a few potential commercial developers.

Okay, sorry for the rant. I think it needed to be said, though.

[GeneralAntilles]

I take back what I said about Rhapsody working well. At first it was great, now I can't view the tracks under a specific artist in my library. I get "Content not available." Also, the cover and track information is blank more often, and you must manually replay the track (sometimes several times) it order for it to show. I only care, because you cannot add a track to your library without the song information showing.


Yeah, similar problems. I can only get any content to show when browsing under all tracks in My Library.

[GeneralAntilles]

Moreover, they shouldn't have to be.


OS2008 introduced some major API breaks (for the better, as we're now up to date upstream which will make porting much, much easier), so of course OS2007 apps have to be ported. :rolleyes:

[omegaone37]

My only thoughts are that when OS2008 is finally released that we will be able to flash our N800's using Andrew Fleggs GUI flasher instead of Flasher-2.0.macosx. I tried flashing the bootlegged OS2008 using Fleggs flasher... didn't work. The tried Nokia's recommended method using Flasher-2.0.macosx and after 2 hours of flashing the kernel it went no further saying an error occurred.

BTW... the 770Flasher flashes the OS's in under 2 minutes on my system from start to finish. And thats for the 770's and the N800's... all OS's to date (other than OS2008).

Hopefully Andrew will come to our rescue and create another outstanding GUI flasher for us Mac users.

Regard,

Omegaone37

[merovingian]

My one and BIG gripe is that the web browser crashes on almost every site, crap, in my book. I can't even come here via my N800, the web browser will crash once i type it in.
Yes, it's unfinished, but i shudder to think .
On the plus side, my WiFi works a million times better. Previously, i couldn't even locate my router in my house, i had to first tether to my phone via BT and then change connection. If i walked outside the house, forget it, once i stepped a few feet away, WiFi blindness !!

I'll keep OS 2008 on it a few while longer. Truth be told, i don't even use the N800 for anything meaningful, my Treo 700Wx does a whole lot more and better.

[sachin007]

My one and BIG gripe is that the web browser crashes on almost every site, crap, in my book. I can't even come here via my N800, the web browser will crash once i type it in.
Yes, it's unfinished, but i shudder to think .
On the plus side, my WiFi works a million times better. Previously, i couldn't even locate my router in my house, i had to first tether to my phone via BT and then change connection. If i walked outside the house, forget it, once i stepped a few feet away, WiFi blindness !!

I'll keep OS 2008 on it a few while longer. Truth be told, i don't even use the N800 for anything meaningful, my Treo 700Wx does a whole lot more and better.

Did you do a backup restore after upgrading to the new os? my browser is very secure and someone else actually said that even hus browser crashed frequently because he restored from backup. but when he again flashed the new os this time without backing up he said that it was quite stable.
hope this helps

[GeneralAntilles]

My only thoughts are that when OS2008 is finally released that we will be able to flash our N800's using Andrew Fleggs GUI flasher instead of Flasher-2.0.macosx. I tried flashing the bootlegged OS2008 using Fleggs flasher... didn't work. The tried Nokia's recommended method using Flasher-2.0.macosx and after 2 hours of flashing the kernel it went no further saying an error occurred.


Yes, it almost certainly will. The only reason we had to flash with the console flasher with OS2008 is because it's the N810 firmware image. ;)

[omegaone37]

Thanks General...

Regards,

Omega

[iball]

Also, I tried using a bluetooth headset. It paired fine, and said that audio was being routed to the headset, but I only heard silence from Gizmo and from the built in SIP client.

Same here. And I'm trying to use a Nokia BT headset with it! WTF?

[Tuxedosteve]

Did you do a backup restore after upgrading to the new os? my browser is very secure and someone else actually said that even hus browser crashed frequently because he restored from backup. but when he again flashed the new os this time without backing up he said that it was quite stable.
hope this helps

That was me and yes when I flashed without doing a backup file restore I've only had one or two browser crashes since.

[benmhall]

OS2008 introduced some major API breaks (for the better, as we're now up to date upstream which will make porting much, much easier), so of course OS2007 apps have to be ported. :rolleyes:

I'm sorry, this doesn't wash. It's great that they've introduced new APIs, even better that upstream GTK etc is being tracked now. However, this shouldn't have come at the expense of the old APIs. When MS, Apple or even Debian/other Linux distros upgrade to new libraries, they keep old ones around as well so that everything doesn't break. I typically have wxGTK libraries of about three or four versions on my systems for different apps that haven't been brought up to current.

I realize that there are extra constraints with this being an embedded platform. I also think it's acceptable to have this sort of breakage for brand-new platforms in brand-new categories. However, as the platform matures, as is surely the case with ITOS 2008, this sort of behaviour becomes less and less tolerable. I hope this is the last time that Nokia intentionally breaks compatibility. Otherwise, I fear they risk alienating 3rd party developers for the platform. Just look at all of the OSS apps that only work on specific versions of ITOS for examples of this already. Jpilot and Abiword to name two. What did this buy us? Lost apps and lost developers.

Apple, Sun, Microsoft, Red Hat, Canonical, all of them keep old versions of libraries around to prevent just this sort of thing from happening. Sure, deprecate old APIs/libraries, but at least keep them around for a release or two. Can you imagine how popular Java would be if each new release of the JDK broke _ALL_ non-trivial apps compiled against the previous version?

[whouweling]

Watch out for the scrolling RSS, it's a CPU hog. Try doing something like playing songs in Rhapsody while the scrolling RSS is enabled and you will see what I mean.

Hmm, i have the idea the scrolling stops as soon as you put another app on top of the "desktop". (Watch the cpu applet!)

Maybe switching from the desktop to an app slows it down a bit, before the rss reader regonizes it isn't on top any more?

[TA-t3]

As soon as I get (the official) OS2008 I definitely intend to pack up my old OS2007 runtime libraries and install them somewhere in OS2008. As benmhall said, that's supposed to work. I'm just hoping that there's no such silliness as forgetting to update the shared library major number in those upgraded OS2008 versions (that would be terribly incompetent if so). And even if they didn't, I'll put the libs somewhere out of /lib /usr/lib and try my old applications with a runtime wrapper.

[shacky4]

For those of us who are either thinking about installing 08 or have decided to wait for the official release, how about a few screen shots so we can see what it looks like?

[zerojay]

Here's my slightly customized OS2008 homescreen.

http://www.postimage.org/aV1FuAzS.jpg (http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV1FuAzS)

[technut]

For those of us who are either thinking about installing 08 or have decided to wait for the official release, how about a few screen shots so we can see what it looks like?Reggie posted a 16 minute video walkthrough.
http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?p=95094#post95094

[shacky4]

Thanks! Not too awfully different. I look forward to seeing and hearing more about 08. More pics would be great. I will probably wait for the official release, (unless they take too long.)

[shacky4]

Reggie posted a 16 minute video walkthrough.
http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?p=95094#post95094

Cool. I'm watching it now. Thanks.

[Texrat]

I'm sorry, this doesn't wash. It's great that they've introduced new APIs, even better that upstream GTK etc is being tracked now. However, this shouldn't have come at the expense of the old APIs. When MS, Apple or even Debian/other Linux distros upgrade to new libraries, they keep old ones around as well so that everything doesn't break. I typically have wxGTK libraries of about three or four versions on my systems for different apps that haven't been brought up to current.

I realize that there are extra constraints with this being an embedded platform. I also think it's acceptable to have this sort of breakage for brand-new platforms in brand-new categories. However, as the platform matures, as is surely the case with ITOS 2008, this sort of behaviour becomes less and less tolerable. I hope this is the last time that Nokia intentionally breaks compatibility. Otherwise, I fear they risk alienating 3rd party developers for the platform. Just look at all of the OSS apps that only work on specific versions of ITOS for examples of this already. Jpilot and Abiword to name two. What did this buy us? Lost apps and lost developers.

Apple, Sun, Microsoft, Red Hat, Canonical, all of them keep old versions of libraries around to prevent just this sort of thing from happening. Sure, deprecate old APIs/libraries, but at least keep them around for a release or two. Can you imagine how popular Java would be if each new release of the JDK broke _ALL_ non-trivial apps compiled against the previous version?

With any platform you pick your poison. I hope that maemo does NOT follow the Microsoft example and burden the OS with a lot of backward compatibility-- that comes at the expense of speed, and in an area that the tablets can't well tolerate, room (onboard memory).

I understand that you suggest keeping certain legacy libs available for a followup release or two, but in Microsoft's example those legacy libs hang on indefinitely. Remember "DLL Hell"? I don't want to see the tablets replicate that nightmare.

There may be a good middle ground here, but if I had to pick my poison, I'd pick breaking ties with legacy apps and pray that the developer incentives (like the big tablet discounts 500 people will enjoy) will help bring broken apps forward.

The end result, of course, should be that the API breaks come with reasonable benefits, and I don't just mean eye candy. I believe they will.

[JeffElkins]

I have to say that the media player is a huge disappointment. I'm used to being able to copy video from my media server to an sd card in my treo 700p w/o re-encoding or jumping through any special hoops. TCPMP plays whatever I throw at it.

Now the N800 runs a OMAP2420 microprocessor at 400 MHz. The Treo runs a Intel XScale at 312 MHz. Is the XScale that much more powerful than the OMAP2420?

The N800/OS2008 has yet to play any of my personal videos. Luckily, I didn't buy it for that, but I'm surprised as heck that it does such a poor job.

[lardman]

The N800/OS2008 has yet to play any of my personal videos. Luckily, I didn't buy it for that, but I'm surprised as heck that it does such a poor job.

What's the issue with these videos? Unsupported formats or poor images/sound?

TCPMP was an add-on, perhaps you should try mplayer (and wait until Serge gets his N810 so he can optimise for that hardware, etc.)

[Jupex]

I have used the new sleek os for allmost a week now. First of all I am somewhat impressed about 2008. Secondly ... it's not ready for prime time yet. Too many software missing, skype being the most important one. Install it now? Nah ... I'd wait for a month or 2 or untill skype etc. are ready to install. I am thinking of going back to os 2007.

Second gripe is about the video issues. I know it supports many formats. Currently I can watch video ment for iPod without any hickups. It just looks plain bad. The video itself is ment to be seen from iPod screen. Wich is far smaller than N800 video, so it's pixelorated. And nobody seems to know wich settings to use, to get the video right.

[TA-t3]

TCPMP is a pretty amazing application. It plays anything, no worries about reformatting even. And on (at this stage) old Palm hardware, at that..

[lardman]

TCPMP is a pretty amazing application. It plays anything, no worries about reformatting even. And on (at this stage) old Palm hardware, at that..

Oh yes, I'm not knocking its abilities, it's just that it doesn't come installed as standard, nor does mplayer, and mplayer is better than the built-in video player afaik.

It would be interesting to know how TCPMP is so fast on your old Palm hardware (cpu speed? HW video accel?). There is source for TCPMP before it became Core Player (what ever happened to the promised open source Betaplayer?), might be worth a look to see if there are any improvements/optimisations for mplayer.

[fanoush]

It would be interesting to know how TCPMP is so fast on your old Palm hardware (cpu speed? HW video accel?). There is source for TCPMP before it became Core Player (what ever happened to the promised open source Betaplayer?), might be worth a look to see if there are any improvements/optimisations for mplayer.
AFAIK there is no video acceleration for PXA or OMAP based palms in TCPMP. There is one for Zodiac. The speed is partly due to optimizations (there is optional ffmpeg plugin which is called 'slow and bloated') and mainly because screen for palms has much lower resolution (320x320 or 320x480) so there is less pixel data to draw. Also palmos is simple so there is low/zero system overhead (flat memory, code runs in kernel mode, direct access to framebuffer, almost no context switches). I guess mplayer can now do better on 770 with same resolution than on palms. TCPMP source is here (http://picard.exceed.hu/tcpmp/)

[rhouge]

Anyone tested the WMV format on the native player? I am really hoping that with this video format supported I will be able to use Canola and Orb (are these working on OS08 yet?) to view my shared (windows) media center videos and recorded TV without having to process them through media converter. Possibly even the "Live TV" that is available with Orb.

Thoughts on this approach?

[kyyla]

One random wmv worked.

[zerojay]

Anyone tested the WMV format on the native player? I am really hoping that with this video format supported I will be able to use Canola and Orb (are these working on OS08 yet?) to view my shared (windows) media center videos and recorded TV without having to process them through media converter. Possibly even the "Live TV" that is available with Orb.

Thoughts on this approach?

It's going to depend on your resolution.

[JeffElkins]

TCPMP is a pretty amazing application. It plays anything, no worries about reformatting even. And on (at this stage) old Palm hardware, at that..

Exactly. My videos (1.5 terabytes so far) are a mixture of xVid/DivX and H.264. I watch them on everything from a media server on a 60" LCD HDTV down to the Treo 700P. I'm a video snob, and they are very high quality.

I have tried mplayer (use it all the time on the desktop), in fact I just compiled it according to Serg's instructions yesterday and the N800 choked on a bog-normal avi cartoon I downloaded somewhere:

************************************************
**** Your system is too SLOW to play this! ****
************************************************

Possible reasons, problems, workarounds:
- Most common: broken/buggy _audio_ driver
- Try -ao sdl or use the OSS emulation of ALSA.
- Experiment with different values for -autosync, 30 is a good start.
- Slow video output
- Try a different -vo driver (-vo help for a list) or try -framedrop!
- Slow CPU
- Don't try to play a big DVD/DivX on a slow CPU! Try some of the lavdopts,
e.g. -vfm ffmpeg -lavdopts lowres=1:fast:skiploopfilter=all.
- Broken file
- Try various combinations of -nobps -ni -forceidx -mc 0.
- Slow media (NFS/SMB mounts, DVD, VCD etc)
- Try -cache 8192.
- Are you using -cache to play a non-interleaved AVI file?
- Try -nocache.
Read DOCS/HTML/en/video.html for tuning/speedup tips.
If none of this helps you, read DOCS/HTML/en/bugreports.html.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not tossing my N800, I didn't buy it for video, but the claims made for video and the 400mhz clock were a bit overstated to say the least.

And no, I'm not at all interested in re-encoding video especially for the N800.

[lardman]

Have you tried things like -framedrop as it suggests?

[JeffElkins]

Sure, Lardman. I believe I tried every possible parameter.

Now the N800 runs a OMAP2420 microprocessor at 400 MHz. The Treo runs a Intel XScale at 312 MHz. Is the XScale that much more powerful than the OMAP2420?

Quoting myself above, but this question has not been answered. Anyone know? It just really puzzles me that the Treo is so much better for this on task than the NIT. I knew going in that the N800 was crappy for video, but it's a fact that it was said that OS2008 would be the cure for these problems. Not here.

Like I said, I love me some N800, but I'd sure like to hear technical reasons for it's poor performance vs the Treo.

[konttori]

Yeah, wit properly configured mplayer, video playback should be really good for all converted videos. But, if you are planning to try to play non-converted videos that are of even slightly high resolution , then it won't be able to make it.

also, it might be that the xscale has far more optimized codecs. It does have quite a lot of media acceleration instructions in the chipset.

[vabgeo]

Sure, Lardman. I believe I tried every possible parameter.


Like I said, I love me some N800, but I'd sure like to hear technical reasons for it's poor performance vs the Treo.

The Treo 650 has a 320x320 resolution while N800 runs at 800x480. Wouldn't this be one reason for Treo to display faster videos?

[lardman]

Sure, Lardman. I believe I tried every possible parameter.

I only ask as TCPMP probably does it all behind the scenes without telling you.

The Treo 650 has a 320x320 resolution while N800 runs at 800x480. Wouldn't this be one reason for Treo to display faster videos?

I would have thought this will make some difference, but if the native resolution of the video is larger than this, surely the decoding will still take a similar time as it can't be shrunk until this has been at least partially done.

Quoting myself above, but this question has not been answered. Anyone know? It just really puzzles me that the Treo is so much better for this on task than the NIT. I knew going in that the N800 was crappy for video, but it's a fact that it was said that OS2008 would be the cure for these problems. Not here.

Like I said, I love me some N800, but I'd sure like to hear technical reasons for it's poor performance vs the Treo.

Me too; I'd like to know whether it really performs better due to the code/hardware accel, or if it's just down to the screen resolution.

I don't know how one would go about testing this though, can TCPMP output any benchmark information about how fast it's processing videos?

[JeffElkins]

I don't know how one would go about testing this though, can TCPMP output any benchmark information about how fast it's processing videos?

Lessee...

For Disney's Alice in Wonderland TCPMP reports:
624x480
FPS: 24.33
DivX/xVid format

Plays perfectly.

[GeneralAntilles]

Lessee...

For Disney's Alice in Wonderland TCPMP reports:
624x480
FPS: 24.33
DivX/xVid format

Plays perfectly.

Just get mediaserv setup on a machine that can transcode in realtime or better. :\ It works perfectly every time and looks good to boot!

[lardman]

Just get mediaserv setup on a machine that can transcode in realtime or better. :\ It works perfectly every time and looks good to boot!

Yes, that's what to do it you just want it to work, but I'd like to know why it doesn't work (or whether it's do do with the smaller screen resolution).

Are there any films available for download that play for you on TCPMP but not N800 (as then I can look at them too).?

[TA-t3]

With mplayer I seem to be getting good results if I run it with -nosound, but with sound on the same files can stall completely..

EDIT: I should qualify that, as this is an OS2008 thread: The above is with OS2007, and may not be relevant.

[Jupex]

I tried to convert with sQuint. The output works like a charm. Looks like crap thou. Any ideas on how to increase the bitrate?

[JeffElkins]

Yes, that's what to do it you just want it to work, but I'd like to know why it doesn't work (or whether it's do do with the smaller screen resolution).

Are there any films available for download that play for you on TCPMP but not N800 (as then I can look at them too).?

Here's an animation: http://www.elkins.org/toad.avi

It's only 32Mb. I'll leave it up for a day or so. The site is hosted by godaddy so be warned: throughput is crappy.

[mobiledivide]

I've been downloading iPod/psp formatted video from google and it works much better now, it used to not work at all.

[Moonshine]

I think the Media Player still can can only decode videos where horizontal and vertical dimensions are multiples of 16. I'm guessing that's why it's telling you that toad.avi is not a playable format. That aside, even if it tried to play it, 720x360 @25fps (~6.5 megapixels/sec) would be too much for the N8xx hardware also. :( Mplayer would likely do better but I doubt you'd be happy with that file as is do to hardware limitations.

Re-encoding to a smaller version works fine. Here is a quick example, 21MB 480x272 @25fps:

http://www.netfocal.com/toad-new.html

[Serge]

I would have thought this will make some difference, but if the native resolution of the video is larger than this, surely the decoding will still take a similar time as it can't be shrunk until this has been at least partially done.
It is possible to decode video at half resolution using some simplified calculations, but decoding artefacts are unavoidable. This low resolution decoding is enabled by '-lavdopts lowres=1' option in mplayer (also suggested as one of the methods to improve performance in 'Your system is too SLOW to play this!' warning).

I don't know if this trick is used in TCPMP by default for high resolution movies. Maybe it is better tuned there (both for performance and image quality) than ffmpeg's low resolution decoding mode. After all, ffmpeg primarily targets desktop systems and this low resolution mode is unlikely to get much attention.

I'd like to know whether it really performs better due to the code/hardware accel, or if it's just down to the screen resolution.
Probably both (but I don't have any precise information to say that for certain). XScale has been longer around, Intel invested in developing some highly optimized functions including those needed for multimedia decoding (IPP library). XScale supports SIMD instructions which operate on 64-bit registers (adaptation of MMX extension for ARM core) while ARMv6 SIMD only uses 32-bit operands. ARM also tries to catch up: http://www.arm.com/news/18441.html

[lardman]

I thought we also have SIMD instructions, the edsp stuff? No idea whether it's used by GCC though. Are there other OpenMAX libraries for things like MPEG decoding?

[Rebski]

Moonshine
Re-encoding to a smaller version works fine.
what software did you use to re-encode? i tried the new Nokia Internet Tablet Video Converter but it choked.

[Moonshine]

Moonshine

what software did you use to re-encode? i tried the new Nokia Internet Tablet Video Converter but it choked.

That file was done with Xilisoft's Video Converter:

http://www.xilisoft.com/video-converter.html

I also installed the Nokia Internet Tablet Video Converter. (On a Vista machine even :) ) It seemed to convert his clip just fine for me. Made a 19MB MP4 file:

http://www.netfocal.com/toad-new.mp4

From what I've seen on a couple clips the nokia app actually does a pretty nice job :)

[Rebski]

From what I've seen on a couple clips the nokia app actually does a pretty nice job

That is good to hear because my experience (on Vista also) has been less than encouraging, shall we say.

I shall try it out again.

[Serge]

Well, it already got offtopic here, but I'll try to reply to this question.

I thought we also have SIMD instructions, the edsp stuff?
ARM9E core used in Nokia 770 supports 'enhanced dsp extension', that's a set of instructions capable of performing fast single cycle 16-bit*16-bit and 16-bit*32-bit multiplications and some other instructions. This is enough for many multimedia compression algorithms which do not need full 32-bit*32-bit multiplication (it is a lot slower).

ARM11 core used in Nokia N800 supports SIMD instructions which treat 32-bit registers as pairs of 16-bit values (or four 8-bit values). SIMD instructions allow to perform two 16-bit multiplications in a single cycle.

SIMD instructions from XScale use twice wider operands (64-bit) and can process more data in a single cycle. New NEON SIMD instructions from Cortex cores (OMAP3) are even wider according to documentation (128-bit): http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/NEON.html

No idea whether it's used by GCC though.
Yes, they can be used somewhat (edsp stuff). For example the following code:

#include <inttypes.h>

int32_t testmul1(int16_t a, int16_t b)
{
return (int32_t)a * b;
}
int32_t testmul2(int32_t a, int32_t b)
{
return (int32_t)(a >> 16) * (b >> 16);
}
int32_t testmul3(int32_t c, int32_t a, int32_t b)
{
return (int32_t)(a >> 16) * (b >> 16) + c;
}
int32_t testmul4(int32_t a, int16_t b)
{
return (a * b) >> 16;
}

compiles into

00000000 <testmul1>:
0: e1600180 smulbb r0, r0, r1
4: e12fff1e bx lr

00000008 <testmul2>:
8: e16000e1 smultt r0, r1, r0
c: e12fff1e bx lr

00000010 <testmul3>:
10: e16301e2 smultt r3, r2, r1
14: e0832000 add r2, r3, r0
18: e1a00002 mov r0, r2
1c: e12fff1e bx lr

00000020 <testmul4>:
20: e1a02801 mov r2, r1, lsl #16
24: e1a01842 mov r1, r2, asr #16
28: e0000091 mul r0, r1, r0
2c: e1a00840 mov r0, r0, asr #16
30: e12fff1e bx lr


So gcc was able to insert proper instructions only in two first test cases. 'testmul3' should have used a single multiply&accumulate instruction (SMLATT), but failed and generated a much slower code. 'testmul4' should have also used a single 16-bit*32-bit multiply instruction (SMLAWB), but that's a more complicated case and we can't blame it here.

So the compiler (gcc 3.4.4) is not very clever and will lose to hand optimized assembly, especially on a bit more complicated pieces of code.

Are there other OpenMAX libraries for things like MPEG decoding?
That news from ARM promised that they have plans to release more stuff (including MPEG decoding) a bit later.


edit: having a second look, testmul4 example is incorrect here (intermediate result overflows before shift), but anyway, I wasn't able to change this code to make compiler use optimal instruction.

[Serge]

Here's an animation: http://www.elkins.org/toad.avi

It's only 32Mb. I'll leave it up for a day or so. The site is hosted by godaddy so be warned: throughput is crappy.
MPlayer on N800 (tested with OS2008) plays this video very good except for a few short scenes where it needs to drop some frames.

OS2008 package for mplayer is available in extras devel repository, check this thread for more details
http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?p=98115

[lardman]

Good work Serge and thanks for the details of the edsp/SIMD instructions above.

Simon

[JeffElkins]

MPlayer on N800 (tested with OS2008) plays this video very good except for a few short scenes where it needs to drop some frames.

OS2008 package for mplayer is available in extras devel repository, check this thread for more details
http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?p=98115

Mplayer processed my little 32Mb avi cartoon w/o problems or re-encoding. It looked great!

Unfortunately, large xvid / H.264 files ( I tried an episode of star trek and an episode of deadwood) still fail. I don't think it's an mplayer issue...

BTW, when I attempted to add the repository to the hildon*.list deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras-devel/ chinook free nonfree apt-get update choked. Did I format it wrong?

[Mara]

BTW, when I attempted to add the repository to the hildon*.list deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras-devel/ chinook free nonfree apt-get update choked. Did I format it wrong?

Yes... it is non-free

[JeffElkins]

Thanks Mara!

[lardman]

If not an mplayer issue, perhaps the file can't be read fast enough from the SD card. You could try messing about with the cache setting to see if it will play for longer.

[JeffElkins]

If not an mplayer issue, perhaps the file can't be read fast enough from the SD card. You could try messing about with the cache setting to see if it will play for longer.

Yes, I'm going to play with settings. Anyway, I was really encouraged with mplayer's performance with my little clip. All kudos to Serge for his optimization job in porting this app.

[chongl]

I can't login to Gmail through the webpage or sign on to Gtalk using the built in app in OS2008. Anyone have an idea?

[Moonshine]

I can't login to Gmail through the webpage or sign on to Gtalk using the built in app in OS2008. Anyone have an idea?

People have lots of ideas. :D But without any idea of what your seeing or errors that are being displayed I don't think you'll get much help.

[chongl]

I get an unable to conenct to one or more accounts when using the built in accounts application. And when going to just gmail.com and I enter in my login credentials, it keeps telling me I have the wrong password...

[MstPrgmr]

I get an unable to conenct to one or more accounts when using the built in accounts application. And when going to just gmail.com and I enter in my login credentials, it keeps telling me I have the wrong password...


There is a known bug that passwords do not enter correctly using the fullscreen thumb keyboard. A password of "passkey" will not only show as ******* but will erroneously be entered as "*******" giving you the incorrect password. Do not use the fullscreen keyboard and make sure you type carefully.

[sjgadsby]

Wayfinder's odd in the way it doesn't recognise local mailing addresses, but lnstead requires the township (or ZIP code) of that address. It certainly makes the software less useful.

[blakboy98]

I tried to hold out for the official release of 2008 for the n800 but couldn't stand the pain. I don't see why i waited. I love the polished feel. A little work to get things installed but no more than 2007. Thanks for all the info in all the posts. Now i think i will buy 2 of those 16gb sd cards.

[munky261]

one thing for me i can say that i like is the included themes even better than nuvoblack i like the homscreen with a black theme but everything else...menus and such , light colored