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[Q] Can the Thunderbolt handle 720p HD video smoothly?

Howdy folks, hope some of you might have a few suggestions for a new Android guy.
After much love and consideration for the Android platform, I decided to come over to the Android world. Sold my iPhone 4 and picked myself up a Thunderbolt at the neighborhood Verizon store. So far, I love it. Great device, screen, customization and service. A world of difference from AT&T. However there is one lingering issue.
On my iPhone, I could send 720p direct from iTunes to the phone. It played smooth as silk, nary an issue, perfect.
With the Tbolt's fantastic size of screen, I would think it would be the perfect place for mobile HD video. However, when I take an mp4 onto the Tbolt, it chokes. The playback is varying levels of choppy, and audio often loses sync.
Am I doing something wrong? Is the Tbolt not capable of playing this type of file? I see a lot of talk on the forums about Froyo messing with 720 playback. I'm not sure what to do because aside from that one issue, I love the phone.
Any feedback/advice/info is appreciated. I love Android and so far the community rocks.
Signed,
Former iPhone User

i had the same problem. installed "vplayer advanced" and it was much better - no skipping, no sync issues. i think you just need to find a different player. the hardware should play them fine, but i havent tried a 5 gig 720p HD movie yet. and the default player wont play mkv files, but vplayer did.

You guys do realize the thunderbolt's screen is 800x480, which is a lower resolution than 720 (which you normally think of in terms of 1280x720 resolution). The horizontal scan lines on the thunderbolt (480) is the same as a standard definition television (640x480), so all you're getting is a placebo effect and a huge drain on your phone battery/resources.

yareally said:
You guys do realize the thunderbolt's screen is 800x480, which is a lower resolution than 720 (which you normally think of in terms of 1280x720 resolution). The horizontal scan lines on the thunderbolt (480) is the same as a standard definition television (640x480), so all you're getting is a placebo effect and a huge drain on your phone battery/resources.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Totally understand this. However, for me its more an issue of ease of use. I don't want to convert videos 3 times because I have 3 devices, which was the nice thing about the iPhone/iTunes. One file, done.
Plus, I've downconverted the videos to test, sometimes they skip too, and they never look as good to me. Placebo effect maybe, but again the ease of use thing is the biggest importance to me. If the iPhone 4 can handle this kind of file, why shouldn't my Tbolt?

Problem is probably not the hardware (since the thunderbolt outdoes the iphone in this), it's probably the codecs on the phone not being adept enough to handle them or the developer of your media player not keeping up with certain advancements in android hardware.
Just for instance on a pc, coreAVC will work on really old computers for x264 hd movies (ive gotten it to run smooth on pentium centrinos), however, the built in codecs for something like VLC player (last I checked), couldnt handle a computer that old for rendering HD.
The other issue could be how well they (both the android os developers and the media player developers) take advantage of using the hardware to do all the heavy lifting in the decoding. If it's all being done with software (like VLC does by default on a pc), then that is going to kill the cpu. If it's leveraging the gpu in the phone to take some of the burden off the cpu (similar to what something like coreAVC does now on a pc with nvidia's cuda), then that would help immensely. If in fact android can leverage the gpu to handle things like video decoding, then the final issue is whether or not the developer of your chosen media player is taking advantage of that.
However, if it was some sort of hardware issue, it could be the read speed of the included sd cards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital#Speeds. Try sticking a smaller video file directly in the internal storage of the phone and see if that makes a difference.
I haven't looked too far into the internals of the typical android phone and os yet, but coming from many years of linux and windows development for the web and desktop, those are just my thoughts on the issue.
Android OS 3.0 has an encoder built into it already for h264 avc, so that should take care of issues in the near future for converting your video. Whenever we get gingerbread finally (well 2.3.3 that is), we'll have vp8 decoder as well and that should run things much smoother as google built it themselves for html5 video streaming, so I'd hope it would run efficiently on android. I've read issues with people not being able to handle high res MP4 files on the inspire (the att's thunderbolt) so it doesnt overly surprise me you are as well. I assume they are h264/mp4 files, right? Perhaps try encoding to h263 if so or wmv
http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html#core

Yeah your gonna have to Download a Video Player app that is Hardware accelerated and plays those kinds of Video Formats. Rockplayer should work too i think.

Been up all night loading my anime + tv shows on the bolt. I agree, i really don't want to be bothered with trans-coding everything i have, plus the bolt does has DLNA capabilities which is another plus if you have a server loaded with the proper media but chances are, those are 720p or better as well.
The best player i used so far is rock player, it beats out meridian, qq player, and vplayer advanced as is the only player that played back everything i threw at it. that said is not pefect, it drops frames when you try to playback 720p mp4 but still smooth for the most part. It lags a bit more with 720p mkv, and lags really bad with 720p avi files. Anything not using the native hardware decoder however, sucks a ton of battery life out the Bolt.
it will playback almost anything at 480p, which is about what the screen native resolution is at. The Bolt does come with a Adreno 205 gpu but i don't think that does anything for video acceleration, maybe is missing the proper hardware decoding chipset which is why is not armed with a HDMI port.
It should only get better with improvement in software/codec but for now, is a let down in terms of video playback.

Try Diceplayer 1.3.0
Thunderbolt's QSD8655 can play H.264 720p.
but HTC's stock media player can't handle MKV, DTS , Flac.
Diceplayer take advantage of hw decoder.
it can play MKV(+DTS+720p).
Don't worry about battery life. diceplayer use almost same power as stock player.

MoboPlayer with ARM V7_NEON coded plays everything fine.
http://www.moboplayer.com/moboplayer_en.html

For reasons stated earlier there does not seem to be any good solution that will handle all common formats used in a PC/Mac/Home theater system on a Tbolt without re-encoding. I posted a video player "shoot out" of sorts over on the "other" forum. In short I was completely let down by all the players I tested. There are a couple here I did not include at that time.
http://forum.androidcentral.com/ver...layers-review-test-comparison-included-3.html
The only one I left on my device was MoboPlayer.
Don't bother with files larger then 4GB either, our SD cards do not support them (or was it the OS...). That being said a good 720p rip with 5 or 6 channels of audio (yes I know there are not enough speakers to hear them all - just so no re-encode required) should generally be smaller than 4 GB.
I am quite keen to hear about any diceplayer vs. MoboPlayer as I did not test diceplayer.

yumms said:
MoboPlayer with ARM V7_NEON coded plays everything fine.
http://www.moboplayer.com/moboplayer_en.html
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mobo or Rock or vital or QQPlayer can not play MKV(+DTS) HD.
dice is the best. dice use hw video decoder. no sw video decoding.

juami said:
Mobo or Rock or vital or QQPlayer can not play MKV(+DTS) HD.
dice is the best. dice use hw video decoder. no sw video decoding.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did some quick testing of diceplayer. It is no good. I used the same blend of file types, video formats, audio formats, files sizes and audio and video quality as my tests I posted about with the link to the other forum (prior post in this thread). Diceplayer was very bad. It played 1 out of 4 of the files I tested. Some played but had garbled audio or a very slow frame rate meaning effectively no successful play. I found Moboplayer to be slightly better than Diceplayer.
We really need an equivalent to VLC for Android. VLC as anyone can testify is the "swiss army knife" of players. Plex is the only app better than VLC in that it can output DTS and Dolby via optical (not concerns for a mobile device obviosuly). Who can or wants to re-encode a multi terabyte movie library?

[Q] HD playback with no lag...?

Im trying to watch either .mp4 or .mkv but both lag in stock player and moboplayer. Anybody get this to work with zero lag?
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App

I get no lag using Vital Player.

Popsiclestand said:
I get no lag using Vital Player.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just tried that and it lagged a lot...
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App

What are the specs on the videos that you are trying to play?
Here is a vid of me using Vital Player on the transformer with a H.264 encoded MP4 and an MKV movie. No lag, no sync issues.
http://vimeo.com/23927515

If the movies you're trying to watch are encoded with High profile then playback will be laggy no matter what on the TF.

Popsiclestand said:
What are the specs on the videos that you are trying to play?
Here is a vid of me using Vital Player on the transformer with a H.264 encoded MP4 and an MKV movie. No lag, no sync issues.
http://vimeo.com/23927515
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice!
Okay I'm a new when it comes ti all these video formats.. all I know is that I get choppy playback
So this handles 1080 but with some tweaks I'm assuming..again, I'm a new at this
Were those movies you converted? Is so you mind writing up a little tutorial
Thanks

For the MKV, I downloaded it was already encoded so I am not sure of its specs, but the playback quality and resolution are excellent even on my desktop's 24" HD monitors.
For the MP4 played at the beginning of the video, that was shot in 1920x1080, brought into Premiere CS5 for editing and exported through Adobe Media Encoder using H.264 at 1280x720.
There are some threads with Handbrake encoding specs on the forums as well.
When using Vital player make sure the Decode Mode settings are set to automatic. It will automatically recognize there is no hardware acceleration (as I understand is normal with the Tegra-2). It will then compensate with "software acceleration". Also in the Video Mode settings I have it set to speed over quality as the performance is better without sacrificing much of the quality to my eye.
With these settings, Vital Player should play just about any video you might download off of a torrent site. I have yet to find a video that does not play well through it. I'm not sure if other users who say it does not work for them have checked the Vital Player settings, if my videos are just not up to the elusive "high profile" they are talking about, or if I just have a rare Transformer that just works, but as you can see in the video it does work for me.

Popsiclestand said:
For the MKV, I downloaded it was already encoded so I am not sure of its specs, but the playback quality and resolution are excellent even on my desktop's 24" HD monitors.
For the MP4 played at the beginning of the video, that was shot in 1920x1080, brought into Premiere CS5 for editing and exported through Adobe Media Encoder using H.264 at 1280x720.
There are some threads with Handbrake encoding specs on the forums as well.
When using Vital player make sure the Decode Mode settings are set to automatic. It will automatically recognize there is no hardware acceleration (as I understand is normal with the Tegra-2). It will then compensate with "software acceleration". Also in the Video Mode settings I have it set to speed over quality as the performance is better without sacrificing much of the quality to my eye.
With these settings, Vital Player should play just about any video you might download off of a torrent site. I have yet to find a video that does not play well through it. I'm not sure if other users who say it does not work for them have checked the Vital Player settings, if my videos are just not up to the elusive "high profile" they are talking about, or if I just have a rare Transformer that just works, but as you can see in the video it does work for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you had to encode the mkv or mp4 before playback? So it cant just play them straight up?
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App

I believe that nearly any video you get is going to need be encoded in some form at some time.
The MKV was more than likely encoded by someone else before I downloaded, but no further encoding was necessary on my end. The MP4 was shot on my own camera (Canon 7D recording at 1920x1080p) and needed to be edited. When you export directly from the timeline in Premiere, it must be encoded to even be usable. For sites like YouTube or Vimeo to even accept them there must be encoding. The H.264 encoding that I used is the highest setting for that type of video's purpose (HD web playback). It is different than what I would have exported for burning to Blu-Ray but is adequate for a screen the size and resolution of the Transformer's.
When I return home, I will try bringing in the raw, unedited video from the 7D (which is around 3GB for a 4 minute vid at that resolution btw) and see if Vital Player plays it back with no lag. I seriously doubt it as some average computers have a hard time playing that back without lag. Even Final Cut Pro can't import raw 7D video without a conversion (Adobe Premiere does not have this problem though). Why anyone would want to play a video of this size and resolution on a tablet is beyond me (3GB for 4mins is ridiculous in a playback form). I can't even imagine wanting to watch a full length movie in that form.
Both of these videos seriously choke in any player other than Vital Player (including Mobo, QQ, and MVideo). I couldn't play any video in my library with them or the stock player, but all of these files play just fine in Vital.

I'm playing 720p with no problem
converted with Handbreak. Settings below.
container: "mp4" everything else turned off
picture: "1280x720"
video: "h.264 (x264)"
target size as least as large as the source
advanced: reference frames = 4
b-frames = 0
I'm using moboplayer and downloaded some sort of codec pack (the player prompted me the first time and opened the app store). The default player also works.

AtomicAge said:
I'm playing 720p with no problem
converted with Handbreak. Settings below.
container: "mp4" everything else turned off
picture: "1280x720"
video: "h.264 (x264)"
target size as least as large as the source
advanced: reference frames = 4
b-frames = 0
I'm using moboplayer and downloaded some sort of codec pack (the player prompted me the first time and opened the app store). The default player also works.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe that's all I was missing for the other players (I didn't get prompted to download codecs). I'll stick with Vital Player though simply because it's already on my tablet and it works.

Popsiclestand said:
Maybe that's all I was missing for the other players (I didn't get prompted to download codecs). I'll stick with Vital Player though simply because it's already on my tablet and it works.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ive tried lots of different players and anything i download from BitTorrent (.mkv which I convert to MP4 for my Xbox) won't play worth a damn on my transformer. They are all720p. They all lag like crazy. Can the transformer not handle this?
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App

tsatrom said:
Ive tried lots of different players and anything i download from BitTorrent (.mkv which I convert to MP4 for my Xbox) won't play worth a damn on my transformer. They are all720p. They all lag like crazy. Can the transformer not handle this?
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
90% of all HD videos you download the internet are ripped from blu-ray and likely encoded with high profile h264 because that's what looks best. the tegra 2 cannot handle these files at 720 or 1080p, and thus they need to be re-encoded to main profile, which as i understand it, means a much lower bitrate (and thus worse picture).

you can read more about it here
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=98211 (bottom of page)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Profiles

fakeyfakerson said:
you can read more about it here
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=98211 (bottom of page)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Profiles
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks guys
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App

I got all excited because of this thread...but I just gave VitalPlayer a shot on a 720p high profile x264 and it still sucks. No artifacts but the framerate is really low it seems.
In case anyone is interested I did receive this message from ASUS:
"On this issue, we have tested some of the 1080p video is playing well. We have cooperation with google and will launch android 3.1 in June to resolve the 720p and 1080p video playback problems."
We'll see...

GetLaid said:
I got all excited because of this thread...but I just gave VitalPlayer a shot on a 720p high profile x264 and it still sucks. No artifacts but the framerate is really low it seems.
In case anyone is interested I did receive this message from ASUS:
"On this issue, we have tested some of the 1080p video is playing well. We have cooperation with google and will launch android 3.1 in June to resolve the 720p and 1080p video playback problems."
We'll see...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i believe that is flash only, as in 720/1080 youtube streaming which is much lower quality than a high profile blu-ray rip. the problem is tegra 2, which is a year old, not supporting 720/1080p playback. it's the reason boxee box dropped tegra for an intel chip.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1060825
this thread seems to do a pretty good job of explaining everything and going through how to get HD vids working

Fast video playback - SD videos

Hey all;
So, I've had my Eee Pad for a few months now. Absolutely love it. One of the things that I'm aiming to do, is movie playback for road trips. Myself or my wife (whoever is passenger) can watch a movie, while streaming the audio through the car via Bluetooth (FordSync).
I had converted a couple of movies from HD MKVs (720p and 1080p) to MP4 for playback on my tablet using Handbrake and they played fine. Even HD (720p) music videos I've ripped from YouTube playback OK once converted, however any of my 420p (DVD) rips don't want to playback properly. The video is 2-4 times faster than it should be. I've Googled, and even done some searching on these forums, but the threads regarding fast video playback didn't apply to the Eee Pad.
I'm still on stock ROM, but updated to the latest one (3.1 I think it is). I've tried the built in video player, as well as a couple of others (current one installed is mVideoPlayer).
My Handbrake settings are as follows:
Picture
Keep Aspect Ratio
Anamorphic: None
Modulus: 16
Video Filters
All off
Video
Video Coded: H.264 (x264)
Framerate (FPS): Same as source
(Video)Quality
Avg Bitrate (kbps): 2200
Audio
Audio Coded: AAC (faac)
Mixdown: Stereo
Sample Rate: Auto
Bitrate: 160
DRC: 0.0
Advanced
Encoding
Reference Frames: 1
Maximum B-Frames: 0
Analysis
Motion Estimation Method: Uneven Multi-Hexagon
Subpixel ME & Mode Decision: 6: RD in I/P-frames
Motion Estimation Range: Default (16)
If the video has a 1080 resolution, I usually bring it down to 720 as it plays back better. If its an SD film, I leave the resolution/aspect ratio to whatever the video is encoded as.
Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Some things to try:
Go here build.handbrake.fr and download the latest SVN Handbrake GUI (Not CLI) and install it. It's possible that it is a bug in the latest official version that has been fixed.
Second, rather than using your own settings which may have inadvertently switched some switch - use the High Profile preset and encode this way. It should be automatic, but use Constant Quality = 20 instead of average bit rate as well. These are settings that are known working on mine and other devices.
Try that and report back.
sassafras

How are you ripping the DVDs? If you're just re-converting the .VOB files, that might be the cause depending on if Handbrake can properly read the d2v info embed in VOB files and properly inverse-telecine the DVDs. This will explain why seems to play 2x faster as the timecode is not read properly by handbrake.

sassafras_ said:
Some things to try:
Go here build.handbrake.fr and download the latest SVN Handbrake GUI (Not CLI) and install it. It's possible that it is a bug in the latest official version that has been fixed.
Second, rather than using your own settings which may have inadvertently switched some switch - use the High Profile preset and encode this way. It should be automatic, but use Constant Quality = 20 instead of average bit rate as well. These are settings that are known working on mine and other devices.
Try that and report back.
sassafras
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did 4 movies, one I ripped myself, the other 3 I've had for years which I downloaded. Aside from some granyness in the videos now (I'm going to re-try with the 2-pass encode) they played perfectly. Thank you!!
frosty5689 said:
How are you ripping the DVDs? If you're just re-converting the .VOB files, that might be the cause depending on if Handbrake can properly read the d2v info embed in VOB files and properly inverse-telecine the DVDs. This will explain why seems to play 2x faster as the timecode is not read properly by handbrake.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Once I ripped the movie using AnyDVD, I'd throw it in to Handbrake and use the HighProfile setting. I'd set the aspect ratio to be the same as that of the movie, 2-pass encode with a turbo first pass, set the audio to be the 5.1 track as passthrough, no chapters, and the rest of the settings as the default for the profile. The original ripped videos play fine on my PC, and even the re-encoded ones played fine as well.

Optimal video compression

I tried using handbrake to convert some standard definition video. I used the default H264 main profile settings. The video plays smoothly on any PC including a lowly netbook. When I play it on the Transformer it is very jerky almost as if every couple of seconds a frame is skipped. This happens on the video gallery app as well as Mobo. Are there any recommendations on compression settings or apps? By comparison, Youtube HD video plays flawlessly.
Thanks.

Using Anamorphic: strict and a constant quality of RF:22 I have been able to minimize the frame skipping of 1280x720 videos but not completely eliminate.

Thanks.
Isn't strange that the Transformer is having any difficulty at all? I am seeing the frame skipping with SD video (720 x 480). I am wondering if the Transformer just does a really poor job with H264 or if there some other way to encode video such that there is absolutely no issue with 480p or 720p video.

ryan stewart said:
Using Anamorphic: strict and a constant quality of RF:22 I have been able to minimize the frame skipping of 1280x720 videos but not completely eliminate.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just checked what I was using and it was the same. Those are the default settings except for the RF22. I am using the default RF20 but considering I am only trying to encode 480p it makes no sense that the video should be choppy at all.

Setting Handbrake to Universal, then setting the encode to a constant 1Mb or 1.5Mb, seems to help, but its not perfect. The most important thing seems to be to downmix the audio from DD5.1 or whatever to plain old 2-channel AAC stereo or similar.
Rockplayer seems to be the best player I have tried so far. Mobo is OK.

Video rips for our Tranny's
Having some problems with this too..
Killing me as my Evo runs smooth video..
little disappointed I have to do so much work finding a way to play video's..
I will report back with my findings as I am playing with a few different players at the moment..
I too would like to just setup up a video rip system for the transformer that works without too many hassles..

dgcruzing said:
Having some problems with this too..
Killing me as my Evo runs smooth video..
little disappointed I have to do so much work finding a way to play video's..
I will report back with my findings as I am playing with a few different players at the moment..
I too would like to just setup up a video rip system for the transformer that works with too many hassles..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It'll be interesting to see what you come up with. I've been using handbrake with both main and high profile, and haven't had any trouble in the stock player, or any other player.

TF Barely plays 480p video! (32GB, Prime ROM)

I'm having trouble figuring out what's going on here. My Asus Transformer (Prime Rom, dual-core 1ghz Tegra with 1gb RAM, ~20gb free SSD space) Is having problems playing video. It stuters the sound (rarely), or the sound plays normal 1:1 but the video plays at a speed of 1:2 or worse (1/2 speed) so after a few seconds its unwatchable, not to mention that if I watch 15+ seconds it crashes the app. Also, if there are Subtitles, they keep pace with the audio without issue. on a few rare occasions, (notably 1 set of rips) the video plays fine but the audio is severely compromised where people speaking sounds like somone playing notes on a low-quality synthesizer...
Most videos are encoded as MKV (varying audio codecs, all the way from low-quality 56kb all the way up to FLAC)
I've played off internal storage, MicroSD, Dock+USB (flash and USB HDD), Dock+SDHC, none seem to make a difference.
My guess is that it's a app or rom issue, since my EVO (1ghz single core, 512mb ram, CYM rom) plays full 1080p video without a hiccup (while mirroring it over HDMI!!!).
Can anyone suggest a player that will play 720p without a problem? 1080p would be nice. If this is an Android problem, is there any kind of workaround without down-grading my videos? (I mean 480p already doesnt look great on my TF's screen, 240p would REALLY suck...)

You never mentioned what player you're using, but Tegra 2 doesn't support MKV containers properly, it needs to be fed raw h264 streams for hardware acceleration to kick in. The only player that does this is DicePlayer. It'll demux the mkv file and decode video with hardware and audio with software giving you lagless experience. Your experience with FLAC may vary though.

frosty5689 said:
You never mentioned what player you're using, but Tegra 2 doesn't support MKV containers properly, it needs to be fed raw h264 streams for hardware acceleration to kick in. The only player that does this is DicePlayer. It'll demux the mkv file and decode video with hardware and audio with software giving you lagless experience. Your experience with FLAC may vary though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried the built-in video as well as "Mobo Player" which claimed it had MKV support.
Someone else on another forum suggested Dice, since it's got a free trial I'll be installing it this weekend and seeing how well it works. (While I would have preferred a free solution I'm willing to pay a few dollars to support devs as long as they're not asking like $19.99 or something for a dinky little app)
I'll report back if I can get it working later, thanks for the explanation!

Give Dice Player a try. It's by far the best player now. It claims to us the actual hardware instead of software decoding.

Hmm, do you have streaming problems too? For some reason, my netflix seems to be lagging in video now. It didn't use to (pure-root, no prime) then it did (prime 1.8? 1.6? can't remember but it was 1.x), didn't lag (2.0.1) but is now laggy again (2.0.3 or whatever the latest patch is).

I'm getting mixed results.
Yes, a certain number of videos will play now, but some still wont it still says it's unable to use hardware decoding. However these are 720p and 1080p (480p plays fine now) so I'm wondering if it's an HD issue... (Yes I did install the Tegra Plugin) So it _IS_ an improvement... I'll have to compare the encoding info to see what else is different between the ones that play and the ones that dont...
Overall, I am pleased with Dice and will likely put up the $6 the developer is asking for. it DOES appear to be Hardware decoding and hopefully it will only improve from here (considering my EVO, with half the specs, can decode + Mirror 1080p I assume this is an issue that will be resolved with time and dev work on the app/plugin)
@ asdfuogh:
I've not done any updates. I bought it used with Prime pre-installed, so I cant really compare. I dont have netflix but I'll try some of the longer youtube streams and see if they hiccup (I was having issues earlier with youtube but I was also on cellular so I had limited bandwidth to work with)

Ashton_Durkhun said:
I'm getting mixed results.
Yes, a certain number of videos will play now, but some still wont it still says it's unable to use hardware decoding. However these are 720p and 1080p (480p plays fine now) so I'm wondering if it's an HD issue... (Yes I did install the Tegra Plugin) So it _IS_ an improvement... I'll have to compare the encoding info to see what else is different between the ones that play and the ones that dont...
Overall, I am pleased with Dice and will likely put up the $6 the developer is asking for. it DOES appear to be Hardware decoding and hopefully it will only improve from here (considering my EVO, with half the specs, can decode + Mirror 1080p I assume this is an issue that will be resolved with time and dev work on the app/plugin)
@ asdfuogh:
I've not done any updates. I bought it used with Prime pre-installed, so I cant really compare. I dont have netflix but I'll try some of the longer youtube streams and see if they hiccup (I was having issues earlier with youtube but I was also on cellular so I had limited bandwidth to work with)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The thing with Dice is, it'll use Hardware acceleration for Main Profile 1080p (I forgot what level) and High Profile 720p with certain reference frames, etc. Exceed it and Tegra 2 can't decode it so it becomes software. I believe the full specification can be found through a search "tegra 2 h264 decoding profile"

After digging through the dumps of the videos I found my problem.
I mislabeled them...
What I labed as "720p" had a resolution of "1920x1080" I had switched to true HD recording about the time I got my BluRay drive (as opposed to my old HD-DVD drive) and for some reason screwed up and labled some BR rips as 720p...
After comparing the dumps and re-labeling, I've found nothing 720p or lower that Dice wont play (and with shocking efficiency! 2-3 hours of 720p playback (mostly over internal speaker) from my USB HDD and I am still at 97% power!!!
I'll still look over the codecs that Tegra can support, maybe I can find a way to get a "low profile" 1080p sometime, but for now since I dont have anything except my PC monitor that can exceed 720p, I'm good ^_^
Thank you all for your help!
EDIT:
Nevermind the 97% bit, I forgot the dock had a seperate battery, the dock was down to 16%... though I think that's still impressive for what I was doing...

MX Video Player is the best.Install the app and the Tegra plug-in.

Ashton_Durkhun said:
I'm getting mixed results.
Yes, a certain number of videos will play now, but some still wont it still says it's unable to use hardware decoding. However these are 720p and 1080p (480p plays fine now) so I'm wondering if it's an HD issue... (Yes I did install the Tegra Plugin) So it _IS_ an improvement... I'll have to compare the encoding info to see what else is different between the ones that play and the ones that dont...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately hardware decode of HD H264/AAC files is still broken with HC 3.2.1. It used to work with 3.1, but got broken with 3.2. It doesn't matter which player you use.
I have a ticket open with Asus. They initially said they would fix it in 3.2.1, but didn't. When I then told them this in the ticket I had open, they said "nobody has reported a problem". This is in the very same ticket where I reported the break 2 months ago! I got quite cross at this point as it clearly hasn't been passed up the chain.
Anyway, they have promised to look into it. I've supplied them with a file that plays back with hardware decode in 3.1, but doesn't in 3.2.X. Let's hope they sort it out soon.

Killer Bee said:
MX Video Player is the best.Install the app and the Tegra plug-in.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this 10char

Killer Bee said:
MX Video Player is the best.Install the app and the Tegra plug-in.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have to agree with this. MX Player is all I use now. It will dim the button bar and notifications, blank the tablet screen when connected to HDMI, and can easily play back all my (previously) problem mkv files with hardware on the video and software on the audio.
And its free, something DICE player cannot claim.

Rockplayer
Try Rockplayer.