RockPlayer 1.5 Update

[Guest SilentMobius]

I see. Good explanation thank you. The first tablet I had was the elonex zt180 like I said that played everything with real player. Do you think we can add support for more codecs once we get the vega's kernel source code?

What warriorscot was saying isn't quite true. You can't play MKV's of the Vega because the opencore/stagefright libs do not support the Matroska container (nothing to do with video/audio codecs). Realplayer on Android just uses the provided codec/containers that the base OS can parse so that means that the Elonex Android install had the Matroska container _added_ (and no, we can't port that support without the source to the opencore/stagefright additions, which are under the apache licence so don't need to be provided) However the Matroska container source is open, so we could do it ourselves, from scratch, but this is _laborious_ (not hard, just extensive) work.

The Vega can do 720p quite well as long as you don't use High profile (improvements will most likely be make here). But I assume you're talking about MKVs in rockplayer hence you are using software decoding (which will never be good enough) if you were playing the same video streams in an mp4 container they would most likely play fine.

DTS/AC3 is a different matter, to ship a decoder for these you need to pay for a licence, given the nature of the Vega as a cheap OEM device we will most likely never be just "given" AC3/DTC decoding nor will it turn up as a core part of Android. (In fact I'll bet that the AC3 handling in the elonex isn't licensed, and would be pulled if Dolby noticed)

All of this mess is why patent-free video and audio codecs and containers are a "Really important thing"

[Guest carl rose]

What warriorscot was saying isn't quite true. You can't play MKV's of the Vega because the opencore/stagefright libs do not support the Matroska container (nothing to do with video/audio codecs). Realplayer on Android just uses the provided codec/containers that the base OS can parse so that means that the Elonex Android install had the Matroska container _added_ (and no, we can't port that support without the source to the opencore/stagefright additions, which are under the apache licence so don't need to be provided) However the Matroska container source is open, so we could do it ourselves, from scratch, but this is _laborious_ (not hard, just extensive) work.

The Vega can do 720p quite well as long as you don't use High profile (improvements will most likely be make here). But I assume you're talking about MKVs in rockplayer hence you are using software decoding (which will never be good enough) if you were playing the same video streams in an mp4 container they would most likely play fine.

DTS/AC3 is a different matter, to ship a decoder for these you need to pay for a licence, given the nature of the Vega as a cheap OEM device we will most likely never be just "given" AC3/DTC decoding nor will it turn up as a core part of Android. (In fact I'll bet that the AC3 handling in the elonex isn't licensed, and would be pulled if Dolby noticed)

All of this mess is why patent-free video and audio codecs and containers are a "Really important thing"

Thanks for you very elaborated answer. Just as I tought the zt180 codecs are not all being used legally. It is a very cheap tablet and I took it back because of the appalling screen. The only thing I miss is the fact that everything I downloaded I could just play it back on it without having to down convert. You are wrong in saying that the Vega plays mp4 low profile 720p though. There is a piece of free software called xenon mkv that converts from an mkv container to mp4, changes the audio to mp3 and lowers the profile of the h264. It does all of this in under 10 mins on a dual core, but still the Vega struggles. You should try it and let me know what you think. It was mostly used in the past to play hd on the xbox 360 which lacks mkv support and ac3.

[Guest arad85]

You are wrong in saying that the Vega plays mp4 low profile 720p though. There is a piece of free software called xenon mkv that converts from an mkv container to mp4, changes the audio to mp3 and lowers the profile of the h264. It does all of this in under 10 mins on a dual core, but still the Vega struggles.

The repackagers for ps3/xbox convert the audio and repackage to mp4. They do NOT convert the video (which is why it is quick). Most video is high profile which the Tegra struggles with. If you think I'm wrong, have a look at the homepage for XenonMKV which states:

No video transcoding required. All video is maintained at its original quality.

[Guest warriorscot]

No way to transcode that much video data in that amount of time like arad85. SilentMobius answer is quite correct if more elaborate than what I was going since I was only addressing the no audio issue not the mkv container problem.

Getting dolby codecs is tricky we will probably get them from one source or another, corecodec is where the best of decoders come from for most platforms and they are apparently working on an android player that will give us full support for all the formats. Google have also been keeping pretty quiet but they could buy the license from dolby when they redo the android media framework. Not saying they will but they might. And just like in the PC its not uncommon for codecs to be used illegally and there will probably be someone at some point that works out how to do it eventually. And if we ever get another OS ported onto the vega like ubuntu we would have full codec support with that.

[Guest arad85]

Google have also been keeping pretty quiet but they could buy the license from dolby when they redo the android media framework.

I have to say I think that's unlikely. Dolbys licensing terms are per unit shipped. That's why the AC3 codec costs from Archos - they can tie it to the software and give Dolby their royalty too.

[Guest warriorscot]

I have to say I think that's unlikely. Dolbys licensing terms are per unit shipped. That's why the AC3 codec costs from Archos - they can tie it to the software and give Dolby their royalty too.

Problem is google need to build it in but to do that they need to at least pay the licenses neccesary to develop it. They don't have to actually include it with Android but the support to add it on either by manufacturers or users has to be in there. Some manufacturers include the codecs but if they don't want to pay for them they are disabled until the user pays for them to be enabled. IMO that would be the best thing for Android to have them added to the framework but simply disabled and leave it to users or app designers to pay for the appropriate licenses from Dolby.

[Guest Sir Gash]

I read on teh interwebs that VLC is being ported to Android within the next few weeks. Hopefully this will be the answer to all our problems, especially if there is a version optimised for Tegra. As the desktop versions plays everything you throw at it, I have high hopes for it.

I'm not a big fan of RockPlayer, I hate the 'R' in the top corner and you can't buy the paid version on the Vega because there is no IMEI number! It's way too overpriced considering it is based on the open source ffdshow codecs.