Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

I use my PDA to stream episodes of Simpsons/Family guy etc via my home network. Is this possible with N800?

1. Are there any media players with xvid/divx codec available?
2. Is the CPU powerfull enough to play a 320x240 xvid clip @25fps?
3. How is WLAN working - is it only for web access? Are files and folders shared on computers available just like files on SD-cards for instance?

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

I'm not sure if you can stream it or not, my guess is yes because the bandwidth is there, I have tried mounting samba fs and I can transfer files with breeze. But there is a problem, playing most codec. It play well on certain codec w/ certain specific format, which mean, you have to re-encode your movies. I'll try this and report it. WLAN is a full fledge working Wireless Networking, unless you decide to put your own firewall up. As I said before, install samba and you can stream from your windows box, but you need to mount it via terminal, there is no GUI for that.

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

The movies I encoded w/ Media Converter at 400x240 is playing fine. It's probably playing around 20fps, I believe it encoded at 23fps, but there is definitely some drop frame, and you can't fast forward it. But the same movie store on the SD is playing smoothly. The movies I decided to encode is "Last Exile" episode 1 , "First Move" It's an Anime about 24 mins long for the 1st episode. I have not use Media Streamer, but I have try watching divx/xvid streaming through cifs, and it's ugly, jerky(and one in a while, very jerky and some time look stuck), worse than one formatted for Nokia. BTW, you might need both cifs and smbfs if you connecting to windows box.

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

Yes, MPlayer supports xvid/divx codecs, and CPU has more than enough power to play 320x240 videos. Actually I'm testing it with 512x384 videos now and it works without dropping frames most of the time (be sure to install the latest version, that is at least mplayer_1.0rc1-maemo.10). Unfortunately right now it suffers from image tearing which makes watching video not so enjoying, but that will be fixed later.

You can search around, some people used streaming with Nokia 770 quite successfully.

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

Thanks for your replies!

My purpose is to be able to play files that are not in anyway "prepaired" for the device and if MPlayer is ported to meomo, it sounds like that will be possible :)

Regarding mounting of network drives - if i do that using terminal - will there be any problems when i'm not connected to the network anymore? (other than an error when trying to open a file) E.g will i need to reconnect it using terminal after i reconnect to the network?

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

I have mounted my 200gb data partition on windows via cifs and use canola to play (stream) music and other stuff. When I disconnect from my network, the files are all simply "lost" until I reconnect and mount the stuff again.When I have time again, I'll try to make a script which checks my connection and mounts my shares. Would be nice if I can access the Connect/Disconnect menu bar from within the console and bypass some stuff that helps me mount/umount my share automatically. There must be some scripts for wlan connections that can be used. The final goal would be to seperate between your remote share from different locations and mount the right ones automatically. Like one share @home or one another share @work or @home2 ...
Since I have ifconfig/iwconfig I always have a status where I am connected to. Hmm...Ok...
I am looking forward to try something when I have time again.
Oh yeh, one big problem with canola right now is that you have to scan you library again when you disconnect and start canola again while still disconnected. Also I can't connect to localhost configuration server while offline (wtf?), but that's another canola beta2 story ;)

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

I have had N800 for about a week, with two 4GB 150X SD cards and latest OS.

Here are the two major problems:

1. The Video is poor. Jerky, with frequent freezes.

I installed MPlayer. I used Media Converter to convert a DivX file and a DVD VOB file, using High and then Medium settings. Nothing helps. Even the included Nokia clip plays jerky.

Interestingly, MPlayer takes somewhere from 30 sec up to a minute to load.

2. The wireless card seems to be less sensitive that in the laptop. I only get good connection at home in areas with "excellent" or "Very strong" signal. Forget about public WiFI access points.

It seems to me that the device does not live up to consumer expectations.

May be it is my device (or me)?

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

1. Nokia have indicated there will be significant video improvements in the next release (due "real soon now")

2. That's odd - there have been several posts in this forum which would say the opposite, that the N800 is more sensitive than many laptops.

Might be you :) It lives up to my expectations in that it's an unfinished device and will improve once Nokia get a handle on the firmware and optimise the software for the device. Since I'm a former user of the 770 from November 2005 (ie. initial release) this seems to be the way Nokia operate with these devices - first firmware is poor, second firmware is much better. It's not ideal I admit, but it's still better (==more fun) than WinCE! :)

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

"2. The wireless card seems to be less sensitive that in the laptop. I only get good connection at home in areas with "excellent" or "Very strong" signal. Forget about public WifI access points."

Before I owned my N800, I had used a Dell Axim X5 with compact flash network card to surf the Internet; WIfi.
From the same locations, the N800 finds more Wifi connections than the X5 did.

But yet in my house, the X5 always had difficulties connecting to my computer's Westel wireless modem/router. No such problem with the N800; so that pleases me much.

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

Hmm. It does find a lot of locations indeed, but when I try to connect I usually get a network error or something like that. It only connects when the signal is III or IIII.

Anyway, will wait for the new release.

Thanks

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

Serge,
What is recommended settings for DVX encoding for best playback Mplayer?

I set for 320x340 ( I think) and 30fps... It didnt like it at all.

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

320x340?? Are you sure? Usually it is 320x240.
Try with 400x240 (exact quarter of the screen). Don't change the frame rate of the source, mplayer can handle the 30fps and some encoders do not handle frame rate modification in a nice way. Select a video bitrate between 700kb/s and 1Mb/s, depending on the content energy (from slow movie to basketball match), the final content size limitation and the expected quality. No absolute rule here, make some tests.

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

The onboard hardware is more than sufficient for playing video unfortunately the built in players and add -ons such as mplayer are not quite there yet. This screen size is perfect for a portable movie/video solution. Being that this is an internet tablet I am a little disappointed that the video on the device is less than spectacular heres hoping for a nice upgrade soon.

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

Ive given up on it. Its a bummer. I tried all different file types. The ones that do play are choppy.
MPLAYER works ok but:
I get the digital Tiling (tearing)
Takes to long to start up a video
Cant shut it off without rebooting

This is on a E800.

Hopefully next version of mplayer will resolve the issues. I appreciate their hard work on it. Glad someone enjoys playing with those issues.

Ive tried Divx (cccc)-XVID(4444)-MP4..

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

Jazz

I have been struggling with the video on the 800 as well, the divx formats that used to work for me on the 770 just won't play on the 800, it doesn’t matter what player is used, Mplayer, the delivered one or canola. I finally got the 800 working by creating files out of a product called DVD Catalyst in the 3GP format, the playback is acceptable compared to not working at all. Keep trying it's all about finding the right format, frame rate, screen resolution. Unfortunately all those things need to line up at the same time, very tricky.

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

Yes, that's a known issue caused by some problems in the current kernel framebuffer driver implementation :( I hope that it will be fixed by firmware update.

I can reduce tearing effect to about the same level as can be observed in the standard player, but performance will have to be sacrificed. But that should be ok for watching transcoded video, maybe it could work as a temporary solution.

Gui may take a lot of time to start up if you have many files on your memory cards. Launching mplayer to watch video also takes some time as it is quite a large executable which has a lot of codecs compiled in. Also it fills cache on start, so this also slows down startup time somewhat.

Thanks. It took me quite a long time trying to imagine how you could screw up shutting off mplayer (some more details would be definitely welcome) before I realized that you could possibly try to press [x] icon in the top right corner of mplayer window. Apparently this forces the window manager to shut down mplayer forcefully without it having a chance to do a clean exit, so framebuffer video planes remain in enabled state and overlap your desktop. I'll try to fix this issue ASAP. Too bad, nobody cared to report this problem for more than a month :(

A proper way to exit from mplayer is to press ESC hardware button (third from the bottom), you should have no problems using it. If this is not the case, please try to explain how you get your problems with a bit more details.

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

Very strange, I can open up webpages at 1 bar at a small speed of maybe 600-900 Kbps, but at 2 bars I email larger files fairly quickly at around 1000-1600 Kbps. I think it depends on the quality of the network you are using or if the network you are connecting to has itself connected to the internet.

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

I use the Sandisk V-Mate to record movies to my SD card. It's easy and simple to use. It connects to any video source: tv, vcr, dvd player. It even works like a tiivo as you can schedule recordings when connected to cable or satellite. I use 3gp format at BEST setting and it works flawlessly with the 800. I have 7 full featured movies in my 2 GB SD. RecordIng takes awhile as it only records in 1x speed but I'm very satisfied with the results. Sandisk V-Mate costs $129.99 at Circuit City and as low as $85 online.

Hope this helps.

Re: Is N800 capable of playing videos?
 

Just a progress report, this 'quit' problem is now fixed in the latest version of MPlayer. Please note, it is very important to report bugs so that they can be fixed. Reporting them you are doing favour not for me, but for yourself.