Ranma13

You know, originally I typed up an entire post refuting PocketTV's response to my post, but I'll post a simple question for aximsite.com owners:

Would you rather have a program with limited functionality and some seldom-used features, or would you rather use a program that can play back almost any type of file? Regardless if they're free or not, it's easy to see which one is superior. Lots of programs are free but that doesn't necessarily mean they're worthy of installing...

Dr. Piranha

Originally Posted by AdamaDBrown

The PocketTV devs have previously not only made some rather rude insinuations of their own, but also come out with what were felt by the majority of the people here to be dirty tricks aimed at the development of BetaPlayer. If there's lingering resentment, I'd suspect it has much more to do with that than with any preference of software. And, if you want to talk about rude, your post demanding that all dissenters shut up is considerably more rude than anyone else has gotten as yet.

Well, I suggest you take a look at the last couple of pages of this thread and re-evaluate your above statement about me being rude.

Also, I've seen nothing that seems to me is a "dirty trick aimed at the development of BetaPlayer." It seemed to me that the PTV team was pure in intention and certain people just wanted to lash out on the creators of this software. I, however, am human and capable of making mistakes.

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drum4ever

I want to add my thanks along with those who have the class to graciously accept a free offering at face value.
I'd hate to go to lunch with some of these other people at any restaurant other than their favorite.

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willyarief

Where can i download PocketTV version 1.0.1 ?

Ranma13

Originally Posted by Dr. Piranha

PocketTV Team came here to tell us about the work that has been done to their software to optimize it for the x50v, and what do people here do? Bitch about it.

Tell people you came out with some new free software, that's fine in my book. But PocketTV basically implied that their player was better than Betaplayer. I've highlighted the offending comments below:

Originally Posted by PocketTV Team

[b]PocketTV automatically powers off the 2700G video hardware accelerator chip when the application is Minimized (i.e. de-activated in the background). So you have no risk of draining your battery faster just for having PocketTV sleeping in the background. Note that Betaplayer does not power off the 2700G when it is in the background. ------------------------------------------------------ On the other hand, PocketTV does release the 2700G hardware when it is Minimized. So it does not prevent you to start Betaplayer. Hopefully the Betaplayer people will correct this problem so that they can co-exist better with other applications using the 2700G. ------------------------------------------------------ For example: - PocketTV can stream from a web server using http protocol. Betaplayer can only play files. - PocketTV can play video frame by frame, to look for a particular image in a movie. Betaplayer cannot do that. - PocketTV can capture an image from a movie. Betaplayer cannot do that. ------------------------------------------------------ Exactly. PocketTV tends to be simpler than Betaplayer, i.e. it has less options, because it tries to select automatically the best options, and does not offer choices that make little sense. Betaplayer is a bit the opposit: they have about all the options that you can imagin, but most of them are of little or no use. I'll give you a simple example (among many) to illustrate this: when you play video in Fullscreen with PocketTV, if your Screen UI (User Interface) is oriented in Landscape (right handed or left handed), PocketTV will automatically orient the fullscreen video to match the orientation of the UI. With Betaplayer, you must select what orientation you want for the fullscreen video, i.e. if this option is not selected correctly, the fullscreen video will play up-side-down compared to the User Interface. That does not make much sense, and Betaplayer does not have any option to let Betaplayer select the video orientation automatically and correctly for you.

Mentioning that Betaplayer 2700G doesn't release the resources is kind of a moot point. I never even realized that this was a problem until it was mentioned just now, and I confirmed it by playing a video in the background while trying to play Enigmo at the same time. As for battery life, I'm not sure.

Mentioning the features of your player is perfectly fine. What's not fine is to compare them to another player and say that you have all these features but the other one doesn't. It's basically just a thinly veiled attack.

Mentioning that Betaplayer has lots of features but most don't make sense or have no use is just silly. The way that he stated it made it seem like Betaplayer was just a program full of useless features. Let me draw up a comparison: most people would agree with me that Winamp is a very good MP3 player (let's not get into a iTunes vs. Winamp debate), but it has tons of features that a normal user wouldn't even touch. Betaplayer works out of the box and I'm guessing so does PocketTV. You're not forced to mess around with the settings unless you really want to. It would be a valid complaint if you were required to set up a whole bunch of settings before you can even play a file, but Betaplayer can play files no problem on a fresh install.

His given example about screen orientation is still confusing to me. What does he mean exactly when he says PocketTV automatically rotates the screen while playing a video? As far as I know, playing a video in landscape mode in Betaplayer is as simple as loading the file and then hitting the full screen button...

Dr. Piranha

But you also have to look on the other side. From the moment that PTV Team posted about the release, everyone else started to make comparisons to BetaPlayer as well. So, in an effort to defend their software, PTV Team had to post the opposition to BetaPlayer.

Keep in mind that I am NOT biased towards either player, as I don't use either one at this point. Now, with that said, I understand your point. The main point that I was trying to make in the begginning is that people were being VERY harsh towards this whole matter.

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PocketTV Team

Originally Posted by JoeQFlyer

ps. did pockettv team insinuate that this was a file sharing , illegal dvd ripping forum or am I reading too much into those rude comments? -Q-

You are reading too much.

We just wrote that DivX (which is based on MPEG-4) is the most popular format among the file-sharing and DVD-ripping community. I think this is a well known fact, do you disagree ?

We never said this forum was an illegal dvd ripping forum.

In fact we think that DVD ripping should be legal, as long as it is for "fair use" (e.g. watch DVD's your own DVD's on your Pocket PC). Whether you code the ripped content in MPEG or DivX/Xvid, it should be legal if you just want to watch your own DVD's.

Now file sharing is another issue, and clearly lots of hollywood companies (film copyright owners) clearly think that it is illegal to share ripped film and music on the internet (most ot it being in DivX format), and they are technically correct, this file sharing enfringes on their copyrights. But they must also understand why people do it: It't because 1) it's technically possible and it's easy 2) purchasing "legal" downloadable content is generally not possible, and when it is, it is way too expensive. 3) people don't "feel" like file sharing is "stealing".

However, this is totally off-topic in this thread. You should probably start another thread to discuss the legality of DVD ripping and file sharing.

PocketTV Team

Originally Posted by willyarief

Where can i download PocketTV version 1.0.1 ?

The latest version of PocketTV Classic is now 1.0.3 (a vew bugs have been fixed).

You can get it from www.pockettv.com .

PocketTV Team

Originally Posted by flipcody

Pocket TV team: I did get those numbers running at maximum settings (624 mhz) and after soft resets before both benchmarks. I am running A02 rom (as you saw on my brighthand post). I did get the numbers with the default settings of Pocket TV install. If there is a setting that I need to change, let me know. When you got the same speed, was video on SD card or main memory? Was it running full screen when benched with pocket tv?

Our benchmark test was done on a factory-clean Axim x50v with ROM A01 (10130400), with no third party driver installed (Only PocketTV and Betaplayer installed).

I just re-ran this bechmark and again, PocketTV got me 187% (same as Betaplayer on our device). Processor speed is set to "Auto". We get the same results with each fullscreen orientation.

The test file 5e-640x480-1.7Mbps-v2.mpg is located on a Sandisk 256MB SD Card.

Quote:

I turned off the tweaked GAPI driver to make sure there was not a conflict. no change. If there is anything else you would like me try to find problem, let me know. I appreciate you optimizing your software for the 2700g. I think it is great when anyone is optimizing software (and for free) for hardware that I have. Hopefully this will lead to more people doing the same. I was impressed with increase in performance from your last non-2700g version that I tried.

Thanks!

PocketTV Team

Originally Posted by Ranma13

Would you rather have a program with limited functionality and some seldom-used features, or would you rather use a program that can play back almost any type of file?

And what about getting both for the same (zero dollar) price ?

Ranma13

Not to be mean but I'd like one program to do everything that I want, even if it means lacking certain features. For example, I use Betaplayer to play my MP3s even though Pocketmusic has more features.

I would actually download PocketTV to give it a spin except for the fact that I don't have any MPG files and I don't want to download any Pocket PC optimized ones. The point of me getting the Axim was so I can throw a bunch of my files from my computer onto my microdrive without having to recompress and crap and watch it on the go without skipping, audio delay, etc... I have some Chinese VCDs I can dig up for some decent MPGs but I have to find some that are good quality to do any substantial testing...

PocketTV Team

Originally Posted by Ranma13

I have some Chinese VCDs I can dig up for some decent MPGs but I have to find some that are good quality to do any substantial testing...

PocketTV should play any VCD. Just copy the .dat file on your Storage Card, no need to do any type of transcoding.

But VCD are encoded in a resolution of either 352x240 or 352x288, which is much less than VGA, so you will not get the optimum quality that the x50v VGA screen can render.

To get optimum quality, you should encode video (e.g. from DVD source) in VGA resolution, and this can be done with the excellent free tMPEGEnc converter. See this MPEG conversion guide: http://forum.pocketmovies.net/viewtopic.php?p=3415#3415

I general an MPEG bitrate of about 1.7 to 2.0 Mbit/sec will give very good results with VGA resolution. This means about 1GB for an entire 90 min movie.

Ranma13

Slight problem: I don't own any DVDs.

Most Chinese VCDs are really bad quality but I have a couple of SuperVCDs lying around somewhere, just gotta go find it.

I'm assuming PocketTV can do scaling? If so, what type of scaling does it use? (nearest neighbor, bilinear, bicubic, etc...). I believe Betaplayer uses bilinear without 2700G decoding and bicubic with, on XviD and DivX content.

PocketTV Team

> Most Chinese VCDs are really bad quality but I have a couple of SuperVCDs lying around somewhere, just gotta go find it.

SuperVCDs won't play directly on the Pocket PC, since they are MPEG-2 format. But they are higher resolution than VCD, so you should get pretty good results if you convert them to MPEG.

> I'm assuming PocketTV can do scaling? If so, what type of scaling does it use? (nearest neighbor, bilinear, bicubic, etc...).

It does the scaling that the 2700G hardware does, i.e. exactly the same scaling as Betaplayer. The 2700G hardware scaling is very good, probably uses bilinear or bicubic.

Dad

Originally Posted by PocketTV Team

I general an MPEG bitrate of about 1.7 to 2.0 Mbit/sec will give very good results with VGA resolution. This means about 1MB for an entire 90 min movie.

WOW! 1MB, thats pretty extreme compression :D