There is a shimmer or shine to the screen. It needs to be held at just the right ange to see the video without the shimmer or glare. I'm coming from an ipod and quality of the screen was much better.

I am disappointed.

And its not the encoding. I have encoded with guides above with no problems now. and encoded with different methods. I am commenting on the screen itself.

what do you think? let me know.

Hi ucdoc,

I have to agree with you to a point. I'm familiar with the whole 'holding the screen at just the right angle business' to make it work yet I'm wondering whether it might have something to do with screen protectors? I put on a screen protector the moment I received my Axim in the mail and it hasn't seen a day since without one. Furthermore, I never bothered to look at what it was like before I put on the protector. I'm hesitant to take my screen protector off as it's the only one I have.

Cheers

I have taken off the dell screen protector (which are the best imho) and problem persists. I dont know why people here are always extolling this screen. Look at ipod video... the best. sorry folks. I just bought my axim so I dont like it either.

Well, for one thing -- iPod Video display is 320x240, while the Axim (x50v and x51v at least..) has a 640x480 display. The issue is that the display is polarized for use in portrait mode. I read somewhere else on the forums that, a display that's polarized for multiple angles would require more power to make a brighter backlight. There's also talk about swapping out the Sharp LCD assembly with another one that Sharp makes that uses an LED backlight and is polarized for multiple angles.

I use my Axim for video with no screen protector, using TCPMP player and Divx encoding and the images are great! Equal to LCD only smaller!

Gotta agree with Udoc about the display shimmer, but at the same time, I am over the moon about being able to watch films at all on what has to be one of the most versitile gadgets around. Try running GPS on an iPod, or any other application for that matter.
The quality of the screen isn´t at all bad. I love my Ax and I love this site (pathetic, I know, but what do you do about it?)

Ciao!

Under certain lighting I find the Axim nearly impossible to view (short of holding at the correct angle). There are situations where it does indeed work, though ... and I'm quite happy with my x50v (not sure which one you use).

It's a matter of expectations, too. Watching videos wasn't really something I even considered doing with my Axim, but it was really nice once I got it working. The Axim has a larger screen (particularly watching video in full-screen landscape mode) and better resolution (well, the VGA does). But I bought mine as a PDA. Later I figured out I can have a portable movie collection with a few tiny SD cards (holding the movies). The iPod has more room (by far), but I have yet to be wanting for space (a power outlet, maybe ... but not space).

75.73964% - Dysfunctional Geek (but only barely!)

I havent seen any of the newer axim screens because I still use my trusty x5 and the screen on it is excellent for watching videos and there is no certain angle you have to view it from. When people see my ax playing videos they gather around and watch too with no problems maybe the x5 screen is different I dont know.

 

and it is proven that the Zen Vision:M's screen is better than the iPod video screen... and the hx4705's screen is simply unbeatable by any other handhelds.

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I agree that the image quality on the Axim can be great (I never bother re-encoding just for the Axim and generraly get very good playback quality), but also have to agree that the shine or glare from the screen does make it very hard to see in certain circumstances. Generally, however, I have found the Axim to be a very good portable video player and use it all the time.

The absolute best screen I have ever used, however, would have to be the Sharp vga LCD screen on the Zaurus SL-Cxx00 series of Linux powered PDAs. I had a Zaurus C1000 for a few months and found the screen just unbeatable. Unfortunately the Linux operating system just required too much messing around for me and the available movie player options (which for best results really needed to be run from the command line!) just did not cut it.

Finally I have my Axim x50v, but I still love my Newtons...

Check out Australia's very own Windows Mobile site Technology at Play

That sounds interesting. The only thing I really dislike is the polarization issue.
Any links or suggestions?

1. Be Kind.
2. Have fun.

Right over here : http://www.aximsite.com/boards/showthread.php?t=141214 , my good friend

I was just gonna post something similar to this. heh.. The display on the Axim has a bad viewing angle. Its almost like the old DTSN laptop screens. After having a PSP for a while I don't think I'm gonna bother using my X51v for video, its just too painful.

Dell Axim X51v
Rhinoskin Aluminum Hardcase
ThinkOuside BT Keyboard
Dell X51 GPS Navigation System/TomTom 6
http://www.sounddomain.com/ride/458402

Yah the PSP screen is great for movies. Only problem is that the psp can't run very many formats unless you are running homebrew on some older ROM (I'm running 3).

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Again, more of the polarizing issue -- even though WM5 features screen rotation, it seems pretty obvious that Dell didn't see that multiple viewing angles was worth both the investment in money and battery usage to put in. The PSP on the other hand, is made to be used landscape. Comparing any active matrix display to passive matrix is unfair though, since passive matrix has poor contrast and refresh rate consistantly through the display, while most PDA displays are active matrix but are only polarized in one direction.