Thread: BBC IPlayer on the N900 - A different approach
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ewan is offline ewan
2009-11-20 , 10:58
Posts: 445 | Thanked: 572 times | Joined on Oct 2009 @ Oxford
#10
Originally Posted by zaheerm View Post
It is unwatchable, VP6 which iplayer uses for all but the really high quality streams has no optimisations on the device.
That doesn't appear to be true, based on actually looking at the data. The iPlayer flash streams are h264 for everything except the lowest quality (in get_iplayer terminology flashlow).

The resolutions of the streams are:

flashlow : 384x216 VP6 1012 Kbits/s
flashstd : 640x360 h264 485 Kbits/s
flashhigh : 640x360 h264 830 Kbits/s
flashvhigh : 832x486 h264 1533 Kbits/s
flashhd : 1280x720 h264 3200 Kbits/s

The bitrate figures are all taken from an episode of the 'The Thick Of It', but they should be representative. I think the flashvhigh looks like a good fit for the N900's screen, but it remains to be seen whether (even with the DSP offload) it can handle the bitrate.
Last edited by ewan; 2009-11-20 at 11:30.