In All About Symbian Insight 63 (AAS Podcast 120) Rafe gives some insight into iPlayer, Steve talks about YouTube's S60 client application and both talk about their views on Samsung's Omnia HD. You can listen to AAS Insight 62 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Read on in the full article.
Hi Guys,
The link to Insight 63 is pointing to the wrong episode, it's going to 62 instead. Just thought you'd like to know 😊
The video/audio out of sync problem of the omnia HD can indeed be caused by your pc. You need a relatively new pc to playback HD-video. For example a Pentium 4 3ghz will barely cope with 720p (using the coreavc codec it just might).
one of the main things that happen when your pc is too slow to playback HD files is (yes, you guessed it right) is major audio/video sync problems.
So my question is, on which pc (specifications) did you experience audio/video sync problems?
The video/audio out of sync problem of the omnia HD can indeed be caused by your pc. You need a relatively new pc to playback HD-video. For example a Pentium 4 3ghz will barely cope with 720p (using the coreavc codec it just might).
Thanks for that!
That brings up quite an interesting dilemma for Samsung and all manufacturers: what if an HD-compatible phone produces videos which are so high quality that they cannot be played back properly on many people's PCs?
Even if the file itself isn't broken, even if the HD phone is working perfectly, a file which is innately difficult to play properly on widely-used PC hardware is still going to cause problems. The end users won't know where the fault lies, all they'll see is a video which is out of sync.
This problem will go away as PC users upgrade their hardware of course, but that will take time, and what happens if 1080-compatible phones come out? Or possibly even higher video resolutions?
@Cuberob: I was trying to play the file using a brand new, multimedia-friendly Mac Mini with 2GB of RAM - I accept what you say about a fast processor being needed, but if this baby can't play the video then there's something very wrong. Other 'HD' clips seem to work fine, I still think the problems are based in errors in Samsung's video headers.
Well I've watched the omnia Videos on my PC ( Q6600/ ATI 4870x2) and I have had no sync problems at all. I've also tried it on my laptop (T8100/8400M GS) and my dads old PC ( P4 3.0ghz with HT/6800XT) and none of them had problems either. I used VLC to play them. The Lower res one, however only shows the video. I get an error with the SAMR encoding and says it cannot be fixed. Not even quicktime is able to load it up. (cant post a pic cause of the 10 post rule)
Did anyone get the same thing as well?
That said, I hope they fix the poor audio quality and try to get a better framerate.
slitchfield wrote:@Cuberob: I was trying to play the file using a brand new, multimedia-friendly Mac Mini with 2GB of RAM - I accept what you say about a fast processor being needed, but if this baby can't play the video then there's something very wrong. Other 'HD' clips seem to work fine, I still think the problems are based in errors in Samsung's video headers.
Did you try playing it back with VLC? While VLC has a pretty slow H.264 decoder (see my direct comparison to alternatives at http://www.smartphonemag.com/cms/blog/9/update-h264-bible-tips-and-tricks-desktop-based-h264-playback-video-editing-and-stream-captur if interested), neither DivX Player has a Mac OS X port of their latest, v7 player already capable of playing ack HD H.264 nor CoreAVC does support the OS. However, it should work OK on your machine afer all the Mac Mini is pretty fast and it's "only" a 720p video "only" requiring a 2 GHz (equiv.) P4.
mCrem wrote:Well I've watched the omnia Videos on my PC ( Q6600/ ATI 4870x2) and I have had no sync problems at all. I've also tried it on my laptop (T8100/8400M GS) and my dads old PC ( P4 3.0ghz with HT/6800XT) and none of them had problems either. I used VLC to play them. The Lower res one, however only shows the video. I get an error with the SAMR encoding and says it cannot be fixed. Not even quicktime is able to load it up. (cant post a pic cause of the 10 post rule)Did anyone get the same thing as well?
That said, I hope they fix the poor audio quality and try to get a better framerate.
where these (original 720p) videos can be downloaded from?
re: pre-pay
While I find it difficult to fault Steve's advice on pre-pay, I have to side with Rafe. I think that having unlimited data is so game-changing wrt to applications, that I would hesitate to recommend anything else - IMO, this is one of the main reasons that the Apple iPhone has been so successful, and I wish Nokia could insist that users only be allowed to buy with unlimited data (I know that's not true any more, but it was for the most important initial phase of the product).
I suppose that many of the 'worry-free' aspects of unlimited data are true of pre-pay too, so perhaps I'm in two minds a little.
re: boring
I would like to vote for the podcast being on the more boring side, though I have been enjoying the Scottish plays from over the pond....I just didn't want the votes to all go the same way :/
As usual, a balance is best.
re: attitude wrt OSS tools
As an OSS advocate, I didn't much like Steve's tone wrt OSS s/w (quote: "hacked together"😉; especially since that was what was working and not the closed source (and not free) s/w (ie Quicktime and Microsoft Windows Media Player). I'm a professional s/w engineer, and I can say that there is plenty of closed source s/w that is 'hacked together' - usually because of impending deadlines, which is something that OSS has, er, less of. Furthermore, I see plenty of good engineering in OSS products - for example, many products come with working test cases and clearly the authors are keen that their product works and has no regressions/etc. Just look at most of the stuff that comes out of Google for examples of sterling OSS work.
...but, yes, Samsung should make sure their video files work using Quicktime and Microsoft (whatever it's called).
Hrmph...seems like I complain too much. I *do* value the web casts, and please take my complaining as constructive criticism. .... if no one responds at all, then that's a bad thing 😊
I'm with Steve on the PrePay front.
I've just switched over from a contract to PrePay with Three on the Flat12 plan. Got a SIM from expansys for �10 which included �30 credit. Then got another �10 for transfering my number.
Unlimitied Internet for 1 month is �5. And if you want it for several months, you can buy it several times and it just adds on from the last expiry date. So I've got prepay unlimited internet till June already just using the extra free Credits that came with the sim (and credit still left).
If you want lots of minutes, you can also buy bundles to get discounts (use within 30 days).
It's actually cheaper to prepay than have a contract for me. The only thing you loose out on, is a "free" phone. But for me, it's still cheaper with Prepay even if allowing say �10 a month towards buying the phone.
Only reservation would be if going abroad. But then I would probably just get a local sim.
Also, anyone considering ending thier contract. It's actually cheaper to switch to prepay with the PAC code that to actually end the contract have to pay for the 30 day notice period.
And Steve. Go easy on Open Source. VLC has helped me big time. Especially with latest Windows 7 not having proper drivers for intel 915 graphics chips. It's the only player that actually plays DVDs.
Zuber
Unregistered wrote:I'm with Steve on the PrePay front.I've just switched over from a contract to PrePay with Three on the Flat12 plan. Got a SIM from expansys for �10 which included �30 credit. Then got another �10 for transfering my number.
Unlimitied Internet for 1 month is �5. And if you want it for several months, you can buy it several times and it just adds on from the last expiry date. So I've got prepay unlimited internet till June already just using the extra free Credits that came with the sim (and credit still left).
If you want lots of minutes, you can also buy bundles to get discounts (use within 30 days).
It's actually cheaper to prepay than have a contract for me. The only thing you loose out on, is a "free" phone. But for me, it's still cheaper with Prepay even if allowing say �10 a month towards buying the phone.
Only reservation would be if going abroad. But then I would probably just get a local sim.
Also, anyone considering ending thier contract. It's actually cheaper to switch to prepay with the PAC code that to actually end the contract have to pay for the 30 day notice period.
Hrm. Yeah, good point . I see that really this isn't one way vs another...since you can have 'unlimited data' *and* prepay for it.
I suppose prepaying for unlimited data could work very nicely in some situations 😊
Max.
I wish Nokia could insist that users only be allowed to buy with unlimited data
To do that, Nokia would have to sell phones entirely through phone networks, and only allow people to buy them on a restricted number of tariffs.
People wouldn't be able to buy SIM-free models from electronics retailers, and they wouldn't be able to choose their tariff themselves.
The iPhone is fine if you're happy to have all these restrictions placed on you, but a lot of people (myself included) aren't. I don't want my phone's maker to dictate to me how I can use that phone.
Would you buy a PC that only worked with a restricted number of ISPs?
Tzer2 wrote:To do that, Nokia would have to sell phones entirely through phone networks, and only allow people to buy them on a restricted number of tariffs.People wouldn't be able to buy SIM-free models from electronics retailers, and they wouldn't be able to choose their tariff themselves.
The iPhone is fine if you're happy to have all these restrictions placed on you, but a lot of people (myself included) aren't. I don't want my phone's maker to dictate to me how I can use that phone.
Would you buy a PC that only worked with a restricted number of ISPs?
Well, yes, but those are part of the reasons why it won't happen - I wish those problems weren't the case. If SPs were just dumb pipes as pretty much everyone apart from them want them to be, then it wouldn't be too long before all data connections would be "unlimited", just like internet connections at home. If all the objections you pose were to disappear, then would you still object? I mean, all internet connections at the moment are unlimited and you have no restriction on PCs you can use. That's the way it should be, IMO.
There are many reasons why they won't do what I want, and I know there are people who don't want that *right now*, but that wasn't my point. It would be a good thing because it completely changes the whole way the applications on the phones work - it completely opens it up to a whole new world. Eventually, they'll get fast *enough* too and then there'll be little to no need for wifi meaning you'll only rarely have to use PCs - and it'll be easy as anything to make do without a PC altogether.