Announcing first beta of PocketTV - MPEG video player

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

You should re-install the PocketTV CAB file. That was broken in the first one that I put on, so maybe that's the one you got. I fixed this but did NOT change the version. BTW the versions in beta mean little, really...

[Guest ClintEastman]

Ah right, because i downed it seconds after you posted!

Is the exe build different? Or is it just the reg keys?

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

Updated the PocketTV CAB again (right now). Fixed the slider's colors when a non-default color scheme is selected. Now it works!

Yes, the only fix was the registry, precedently, when I pull the CAB for a few minutes.

The new version number is 0.10.1 (yes, I know, this is back from the previous one, which was incorrect!). Now the version is correct, but again, this is just a beta... ;)

That's gonna be it for today... See you tomorrow!

[Guest Scarfman007]

I personally I have decided to stick with this player, having seen the blockyness of the matrix trailer on PocketMVP.

One question for you people out there that have played around with the encoding settings though - I'm perfectly happy with 24fps with sound, but is there any way to decrease the fps slightly (say to 18?) and the sound quality (I remember the movies for the old MVP had a v.low sound quality (in mono as well??)? And I was perfetly happy with that .. coming from the speaker as it did) in order to give a slightly higher bitrate for video (i.e. better quality?)?

Oh, and one more Q - isn't DivX supposed to have a significant advantage in file size (better compression) than MPEG2 (which is what this is using??).

Sorry for all the questions, just curious!

[Guest ClintEastman]

my matrix trailer or my matrix experiment? (if my matrix experiment could you please post your findings in the MVP thread) ;)

[Guest Scarfman007]

No, sorry .. no findings - I was just wondering if it would be possible to *make* these changes in order to encode the video at a higher bitrate?

(I'm referring to when using the PocketTV player)

[Guest procalli]

Have tried installing but the associations for mpeg files are with mvp so it starts this program.

Im going to wait for version with built in explorer as I quite like using mvp and its totally free unlike this one which you have to give information to use(although I have already registered pockettv to test it).

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

> is there any way to decrease the fps slightly (say to 18?) and the sound quality (I remember the movies for the old MVP had a v.low sound quality (in mono as well??)? And I was perfetly happy with that .. coming from the speaker as it did) in order to give a slightly higher bitrate for video (i.e. better quality?)?

You can code the audio at 64Kbit/sec in Joint0stereo format (either 32000 or 41500 Hz). This will give you an excellent audio quality, and reduce the fps slightly, and the total bitrate will naturally be 32 Kbit/sec higher than if you code the audio in mono at 32Kbit/sec.

You can also increase the video bitrate, but more than 150Kbit/sec (at this king of resolution) will be the maximum, after that the quality will not get better - since it will be wirtually perfect), and only the fps will go down.

I recommend that you experiment and determine the settings that you prefer.

Also, with TMPGEnc you have the option to code the video at half the source framerate. For exemple, if your source is at 24 fps, you can code it at 12 fos, so the quality of each frame will be better, but the framerate will be lower. In that case, the fps indicated by PocketTV is not the real fps, since each frame is repeated twice. So in the case of a 12 fps stream, if PocketTV shows an fps higher than 12, it means that the actual number of different frames that you see each second is only 12. PocketTV indicates more because it counts the repeated frames that occur in this case.

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

Have tried installing but the associations for mpeg files are with mvp so it starts this program.

Im going to wait for version with built in explorer as I quite like using mvp and its totally free unlike this one which you have to give information to use(although I have already registered pockettv to test it).

That's because you have installed PocketMVP, and POcketMVP does not behave :-) : it steals all the MPEG file associations without asking!

Just go in PocketTV Menu > Options > Files > File Association to restore the MPEG file association with PocketTV, and it will work again!

Hummmm... Maybe PocketTV should set the file association each time you open the file selector. That would make life easier for those who installed PocketMVP. At least for as long as we use an external file selector...

[Guest jim80b]

ummm,

Error

Acces Denied. The program cannot start because it is not digitally signed with a trusted certificate. please contact your service provider for more info..........

have only just installed the cab from page 1, and yes my phone is unlocked, mvp works....can you post the exe please

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

ummm,  

Error

Acces Denied. The program cannot start because it is not digitally signed with a trusted certificate. please contact your service provider for more info..........

have only just installed the cab from page 1, and yes my phone is unlocked, mvp works....can you post the exe please

PocketTV is not signed, so there is no reason that it should not run on a phone that is unlocked.

Maybe your phone relocked itsself. That happened twice to my smartphone (a Red-e). In this case, re-unlock it.

Also, try power off / power on.

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

We have updated the CAB.

New version automatically fixes the file association before opening the file explorer, which resolves issues if you have also installed PocketMVP.

Also, it is much faster at bringing up the File Explorer, and that's nice ;)

No, we don't distribute just the exe, because it is much harder to install, and anyway you can extract the exe from the CAB file, can't you ?

Just install PocketTV from the CAB, see first post in this thread.

Can someone confirm that it works well with other file explorers like IA Utilties ? Works well with us. BTW I really like the IA File Manager.

[Guest procalli]

Hello

I have got it working by doing as was said about the associations.

When it plays the matrix trailer in portrait it plays quite well except for the blockiness. But in full screen because of the size of the file(L,W) it looks to blocky.

I still prefer MVP as it plays all files, plays full screen ok)especially with the latest update) and is more complete(ie has a file explorer built in).

I noticed on your website there are two versions. How does the paid for version differ in picture quality and if it does does that mean you have reduced the quality of the free, pocketpc, version?

Thanks.

[Guest jim80b]

i must just be me....

i try to install the cab as of 20:25 and on installation i get a message...

Unable to install "MpegTV PocketTV" at this location!!!!

any ideas....

the sd card is working and ive downgraded my rom to the 1.3.5 and unlocked to "other" way so i am positive i am unlocked and going to stay that way. i have done a hard reset and this is the 3rd app to be installed, others being smartexplorer and taskman. they both run and so does the installer for pocketmvp. please have a look at your cab

[Guest spacecowboy6982]

I'm confused on this one - that MPEG converter doesnt let me choose the size of the screen i want to use...and once (if) i get it converted is it as easy as dropping the converted file in the storage card and opening it up from smartexplorer?

Soz to be a pain, i'm new to this :

SpaceCowboy

[Guest Vector]

(1)Don't use the wizard to encode thye files :wink:

(2)Yes, all you have to do is drop the mpeg's into the storage card and then select them using Smart Explorer :)

Hope this helps ;)

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

> I noticed on your website there are two versions.

Only on Pocket PC. We incorporated some additional optimizations only in the Enterprise version. Also, support for external VGA cards (for presentations) are only included in the Enterprise version.

> How does the paid for version differ in picture quality

Faster fps with the Enterprise version on Pocket PC. Same video quality. The video quality is defined by the file (i.e. bitrate). PocketTV decodes the fine as desfined by the MPEG standard, and unless there is a bug, the quality is as good as it can be with the file that you decode. If you see blocks, that because low bitrate was not sufficient to get a better quality, or the encoder was not very good, on the encoding parameters were not well chosen. So the same blocks will show with any other decoder.

> and if it does does that mean you have reduced the quality of the free, pocketpc, version?

No, it's the other way. There are some optimizations (especially for better performances on Xscale processors) that were only incorporated in the enterprize version.

On Smartphone, the market is totally different (this is a cellphone with PDA features, not a PDA with cellphone features), so will be our business model.

For example, we will probably make a non-free version that will be listed on some large catalogs carried by phone operators. The free version will still exit, but may not be listed on those catalog that require ISV to pay important sums in order to be listed.

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

> and once (if) i get it converted is it as easy as dropping the converted file in the storage card and opening it up from smartexplorer?

yes.

Just start PocketTV once, after installation, to register it (free) and to terminate the installation process (to make sure that it fixes what needs to be fixed in the registry).

[Guest jim80b]

please post a message if you have got the cab posted on page one working since today!!!!

it wont work for me.

[Guest jim80b]

just tried to extract cab. it says cab is corrupted....

fix please

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

The CAB is fine, you must have another problem. Others don't have problems installing this CAB...

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

We have updated the CAB file with a new beta. Same link in the first post of this thread.

Main change: makes life much easier for those who prefer to use another file explorer (e.g. the very good IA File Manager).

Use Menu > Option > File Selector to select the file explorer you want PocketTV to use.

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

just tried to extract cab. it says cab is corrupted....

fix please

Have you tried the latest CAB ? is it still corrupted for you ?

[Guest spacecowboy6982]

(1)Don't use the wizard to encode thye files :wink:  

(2)Yes, all you have to do is drop the mpeg's into the storage card and then select them using Smart Explorer :)  

Hope this helps ;)

Not tried it yet but it should - cos i kinda got it working last night (4 O' Clock this morning !!!)

Cheers

SpaceCowboy

I also think the Pocket TV team deserve a round of applause - theres 20 pages of answers to questions in this thread alone !! Cheers guys :D

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

Thanks.

But there are still lots of thing not implemented yet. Here is our (partial) list of the most important things. Please tell us which one you feel is a priority, and which important one is missing.

From most important to less important:

1) button mapping - because there are lots of useful commands that are not available in the menu, so it would be nice for people to see the commands currently mapped on the keys, and to customize that mapping.

2) A mecanism to seek forward and backward in the file, making it easy to find a particular position (or approximately).

3) A way to save the current position (a la PocketDivX) and to restore it.

4) A built-in file selector - not a very high priority, since using external file selectors like Smart Explorer work quite well.

5) a way to capture an image (and possibly to email it!)

6) support for streaming. In fact it is currently built-in (you can use .m1u files), but we did not put the "Open URL" menu because with the current generation of phone and cellular networks, the max bitrate that you can get with GPRS is 30 Kbit/sec, which is not sufficient to stream video with MPEG-1 - and barely sufficient to anything nice even with MPEG-4 or H.264. So we'll see when 3G phones come out, with bitrates of 300 Kbit/sec ;)

I did not include in this list a lot of internal things that we must do, but that are not very visible to the user. For example, when PocketTV is inactive, it should not keep the MPEG file opened, so that the file can be deleted or modified from a file explorer or another application. In fact all Smartphone and Pocket PC apps should do that bu MS forgot to include this in there guidelines. This is a consequence of the "No Exit Command" philisophy, i.e. apps should behave the same when they are inactive and when they are not running at all. Only difference is that they come up faster if they are inactive instead of not running. That's the idea behind the "no Exit" philosophy. It makes sense, if implemented correctly.