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Handhelds Hardware

TheKompany Releases DivX Software For Zaurus 148

Posted by timothy from the if-it-only-had-a-hard-drive dept.
An anonymous reader writes: "InfoSync has an article on DivX for the Zaurus. Finally, you can watch movies on the go!" Between this and theKompany's ogg player, the Zaurus looks cool. It's a little chunkier perhaps, but another reader points out that Archos is now taking pre-orders for its do-everything Jukebox Multimedia device, which might be another option for those seeking a portable anything box.
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TheKompany Releases DivX Software For Zaurus More

TheKompany Releases DivX Software For Zaurus

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    • mmmhhhh, just checked out the
      specs a bit and this thing
      features a ridiculous 1.5"
      237 x 234 pixels screen....

      that thing should have a
      800x600 minimum resolution
      screen taking up the whole
      back, so it could be used
      as a portable picture book
      as well...

      chees 1.5", my digicam has a
      bigger one....

  • OpenDivX for Zaurus (Score:1, Informative)

    by red_gnom ( 545555 )
    Link to OpenDivX for Zaurus [projectmayo.com]

    • Re:OpenDivX for Zaurus (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Quit modding this up...it's just a link to a board that talks about getting together to start programming a player. Nobody is interested in it and then they post to the link that's mentioned in the Slashdot story...dumb moderators...

  • Hrm (Score:1)

    by psypete ( 416256 )
    i never did get why a divx player wasnt ported from any other linux project. i don't know much about the Zaurus, but it should be able to handle a standard X app, shouldn't it? If not, it uses java, right? Wouldn't it be technically possible to write a divx player in java? Either way, we shouldn't be charging for this shit. Just look to DCDivX for an example of an embedded dreamcast player.
    • Agh. DivX player, not dreamcast. DCDivX = divx player for dreamcast. that coupled with the dreamcast story recently got me confused. plus i'm a moron.
    • The Zaurus run Linux and java...
      Heres's a spec pages:
      Zaurus [sharp-usa.com]
      Also, the "dev" version have only 32meg of ram instead of 64
    • Either way, we shouldn't be charging for this shit.

      Why not? Software coders are not worth paying? Good projects not worth supporting? When you say 'we shouldn't be charging..." DO you imply that you were a contributing developer or a user who somehow feels you should decide the business model?
    • I have ported mplayer (mostly a recompile with some mucking around, I didn't do much hard work.) admittedly not everything worked out and I am still working on a nice little qt gui

      The reason most won't work is because the Z uses a framebuffer and Qtopia (Qt embedded).

  • Kazaa for PDAs?
    Only problem is HD size.. if a DIVX movie is huge, seems like you can't fit very much on one small PDA...
    • "If a DIVX movie is huge, seems like you can't fit very much on one small PDA..."

      Point taken. But there was a time when you couldn't copy a CD onto a hard drive...
      • I suppose so, but my comment was pointing out that the usefulness of DiVX usability on a PDA will only truly become worthwhile when you CAN fit more than 1 movie on it.

        After all, would you buy an mp3 player that only held 2 songs?
        • Well, just to play Devil's Advocate, what about wireless?

          I set up a 'media server' at home which is essentially a Windows 2000 box converted into a TiVo. It captures TV at 330kbits to Windows Media 8 format that PC's, PocketPC's, and Macs can support. Eventually I'll set up a wireless network so that I can roam around with the laptop and watch video straight off that machine.

          Concievably, a PocketPC would be able to do it via 802.11 as well. Unfortunately, I need a titch more processing power. A 206mhz iPaq can handle the video at 15 FPS, but not at 30. When the XScale PocketPc's come out (if they haven't already), I should be able to do just that.

          Okay, I won't be watching a movie/TV at a restaruant, but any computer in my apartment would be have video on demand. I'm about $200 away from getting that working right now.

  • Chunkier? (Score:3, Informative)

    by dmorin ( 25609 ) <dmorin@@@gmail...com> on Thursday August 01, 2002 @02:56PM (#3994018) Homepage Journal
    Ummm...let's not forget that it has a builtin compact flash and SD slot in that footprint, shall we? How big do the other guys get when you add the special sleeves and adapters to do that? Not to mention the integrated keyboard.

  • Playlist in picture (Score:4, Funny)

    by scott1853 ( 194884 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @02:56PM (#3994026)
    I saw bourne-identity listed in the playlist on the picture. Has this movie been released on DVD yet?

  • Someone needs to think of the long-term effects (Score:4, Interesting)

    by krog ( 25663 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @02:57PM (#3994031) Homepage
    It seems like everyone in the world, particularly the US and Japan, is looking towards more and more sensory overload for happiness. I mean, seriously, do we need a cell phone, PDA, pager, and a DivX player all vying for our attention every moment of our day? Will this make us any happier, or will it push us further into becoming the attention-less, cynical pricks we silently feel ourselves becoming?

    All these stimuli are really going to do a number on us in the long run, mark my words. I fear for two generations from now, who will grow up in a world of stimulation we can't even currently dream of.
    • I'm may be becoming a attention-less cynical prick, but I plan on screaming every step of the way. That way, some other people may be able to save themselves from the tragedy of my fate...

      But then, I have less and less interest in shiny things, so maybe I'm not becoming attention-less. I am certainly a cynical prick(or worse), but then, I don't like that, so I tend to try to do things that go against that trend.

      And about stimulation 'we can't even dream of' -- Dreams are usually a pretty stimulating experience for me. Seriously.
    • or will it push us further into becoming the attention-less, cynical pricks we silently feel ourselves becoming?
      I am NOT a prick, you dickhead! :P

      It just means there will be more and more features the buying public won't use.

      The wife's got the same uber cool J2ME LG flipphone I've got, with the web browsing and the funky ringtones.

      Short of changing the ringtone to Monty Python, she barely knows (or cares) how to more than answer and call-out.

    • Re:Someone needs to think of the long-term effects (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Sensory overload: sex with three supermodels while on LSD with the London Philharmonic playing "Favorite Selections from Brahms" while watching a 3D screening of StarWars episode VIII in full sensurround THX sound on a computer controlled hydraulically actuated platform.

      Actually the ultimate experience was prefigured in the "total perspective vortex", which few survived with intact sanity, altho it's better than CNN.

    • Will this make us any happier, or will it push us further into becoming the attention-less, cynical pricks we silently feel ourselves becoming?
      You talk like those are mutually exclusive...
    • All these stimuli are really going to do a number on us in the long run, mark my words.

      Pffft!

      That's what the luddites used to say about radio too.

  • Saleman (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Zapdos ( 70654 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @02:58PM (#3994039)
    This is just the thing for a small portable sales demo tool. It has one of the best screens.

  • Storage ? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Let's see - the Zaurus offers 32megs of storage. Extend that to 256 if you buy an expensive CF card. That's nothing compared to the 700 megs of a typical DivX movie.

    Now, if you really want to watch movies on your Zaurus during a flight, you'll have to export nfs shares from your laptop, and have the zaurus connect to it (everything on top of 802.11b, that's cooler that way).

    Apart from watching pr0n during a meeting/flight, what is the point ?
    • if you you use DivX (mpeg4) like it is supposed to and drop the bit rate down, and incode it for the size of the zaurus's screen you should be able to fit about an hour of video onto a 128mb card.
    • The Zaurus offers 32megs of storage

      SL-5000D (developer's version) was 32mb.

      The commercial version, the SL-5500 is 64mb.
    • Apart from watching pr0n during a meeting/flight, what is the point ?

      Do you really need another reason? :)

      -Ed

      docbrown.net [docbrown.net]
      Graphic Design, Web Design, Role-Playing Games...all the good stuff
    • >Extend that to 256 if you buy an expensive CF
      >card.

      $100 is "an expensive CF card"?

      I guess when you consider the Zaurus itself is $400ish, it could be considered expensive, but...

      -l
    • Just to clarify a few points:

      256MB CF cards can be purchased online for $80 USD (that includes shipping). Not expensive at all.

      Although typical DivX movies are 700MB, those are formatted for desktop PC use. If they are reformatted for a PDA screen, those 700MB films will easily fit in 100MB. ( I know, because I regularly re-encode my films for viewing on my Casio BE-300, and a 2 hour film is only 90MB)

      As for uses, it is like any other media. If reading an eBook or listening to an MP3 is "useful", then so will watching video.

    • Apart from watching pr0n during a meeting/flight, what is the point ?

      pr0n was one of the big driving forces of the internet IMHO. So, what more justification could you need? :-)
    • Actually I've seen 1GB CF cards on the market - pleanty of room for a divx movie.

      Course they're running about $600-$700 from what I remember.

      • Re:Storage ? (Score:2, Informative)

        by noda132 ( 531521 )
        Yeah, but nowadays they're most likely to be Microdrives, which actually have platters and spin and suck your battery's life out. It'd be a race between which is finished first, the movie or the battery.

        256 is *plenty* for a divx movie. Converting 640x480 to 320x240 already knocks a 700MB movie down to 175MB, no more compression required.
    • Um. The typical 700MB DivX movie has a higher resolution than the handhelds (around 570x280). Compressing the movie to 200x100 (or thereabouts) would result in a much smaller file that wouldn't look any worse on a tiny screen.

  • Why no demos from these people? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dmorin ( 25609 ) <dmorin@@@gmail...com> on Thursday August 01, 2002 @03:02PM (#3994065) Homepage Journal
    I've noticed that theKompany's got the best Zaurus software, but they don't offer demos on anything. Does anybody know why? Particularly on a device like the Z, where there is effectively no commercial competition, I'd like to be able to evaluate their software before I buy it. After all, it could stink, who would know? Not saying it does, just saying that unlike in the Palm world, for instance, theKompany doesn't have 10 competitors breathing down its neck and making sure the quality stays high.
    • It's like $10 - $20 for one thing. You shelled out $400 ish for the device what is $10 or $20 on a piece of bad software?

      Ah just my $.02

      • Well, I suppose laziness on my part is one thing. It's not so much the $$ as it is the effort to register, break out the credit card, blah blah blah.

        Besides, my company paid for the Zaurus, but I have to pay for the software. :D

    • Re:Why no demos from these people? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      it's always just been a matter of time and resources, we do have a demo for tkcRekall, and at some point things will slow down and we'll find a reasonable way to do demo's for the other apps.

      Shawn Gordon
      President
      theKompany.com
    • Never mind the demo. Why is there no product? Their Python/QT IDE, blackadder [thekompany.com], has been "in Beta" since February 2001, when I paid $50 for a copy. Since then there has been one further beta release, in about June 2001; there has been a book published about how to use it. But there is no sign on their website or elsewhere that any actual product will ever be released.

      It may be a hassle over licensing QT3. I don't know. But the least they could do is say so and if the product is dead, admit it.

  • What better use could a device like this provide than streaming video over it's 802.11b connection? Not sure why I would want they but it sounds like a good idea.

    Anyone have expierience with battery time using a 802.11b connection for something like that? I keep getting more and more reasons I want one of those SL-5500 things. I would probably only use it for each of those reasons once though...

    What's the killer "keep using it" app for these?

    -Pete
    • I get about 2 hours with my brand new battery. Thats general web browsing, I haven't had it long enough to tell how much a constant download will hurt battery life. I know 2 hours doesn't sound like much compaired to palms that claim weeks, but my samsung I300 only gets maybe 2 hours as well while on the internet (14.4 wireless modem). All in all its an amazing little machine. I like it so much I bought a book on C so I can learn to develope for it. I'm starting to go off on a tangent so...
      ............,Cal
      • I doubt that the palm claim factors in wireless access. The programming literature says to keep the IR port turned off when not in use otherwise it drains the batteries too much. Browsing is bound to be worse than that.
        • I've got a Palm VIIx (probably the most power hungry Palm ever--I got it from work), and a pair of NiMH AAAs last me about 2-3 weeks of normal use. I only use up about 50kb of data traffic a month though (I'm grandfathered on the $10/month plan). I know I'm not getting the optimal life from my batteries though. I charge up the batteries right after I swap them (Two sets of batteries, one set is always charged and ready to go), so the batteries sit around on the shelf for a couple of weeks discharging into the air waiting to be swapped back in.

          Of course I'm not watching movies on my Palm either...
    • It sucks it dry in about 1 hour of continuous use...maybe less. The battery on the Z is probably it's biggest weakness.

  • Mplayer ( %100 GPL ) already runs on Zaurus (Score:5, Informative)

    by unixmaster ( 573907 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @03:05PM (#3994086) Journal
    Here is a Mplayer-Zaurus Howto [twsu.edu]
    • Wow, thats great. I've been messing with that for a while and finally got it to work useing that link. thanks.
    • ahh you beat me =)

      The nice thing about Mplayer, it's the fastest player, and probably the smallest (All good for a PDA). The mplayer binary on my k6-3 is only 1.5 Mb and thats with a bunch of extra junk.
      • I am the person who wrote that howto and got it running somewhat.

        The one on the Zaurus is 2.2 MB. I think some of the reason is that I have to have it link with -Lpthread (nothing else works, and the test had to be disabled in the configure script) Trying to cross-compile worked, but it has to link the same way. This is dispite everything needed being on the Zaurus.

        There are issues with screen refreshes because it bypasses qtopia, and writes directly to framebuffer, so I am working on a psudo-gui to clean up after it as well as easily configurable settings.

  • "Mr. Johnson, would you come up to the front and answer this question on the blackboard?"

    "One second. Friends is almost over."

    =-Jippy

  • being playing divx on my ipaq for ages..

    take a look at BBPlay [bbrox.org].

    Open source divx player :)

    Works fine for me and should work on the zaurus (same cpu)
  • If the colour LCD screens are now good enough to handle "movies", these PDAs would make a handy portable TV receiver too. That would also open up a whole new market segment for these currently "geeky" gadgets: the consumers.

    PDA-with-TV&Tivo-in-your-pocket?

    What pieces are still missing until that can happen?
  • You can look at it here [handango.com]

  • Now to make some movies! (Score:4, Informative)

    by IceFox ( 18179 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @03:20PM (#3994195) Homepage
    To go with this I have put up a howto for making videos that can play on the Zaurus.

    mpeg_encoding_howto [zauruszone.com]

    Enjoy

    Benjamin Meyer

  • Stuff like this for the Zaurus is neat (I have one), but if the Zaurus is going to be successful there are more important things that have to happen:

    Battery life has to improve drastically (currently about 2 hours in developer's model)

    Standard apps (calendar/address book) need to be as good as the standard ones available on Palm

    Without those basics, the 'Wow' applications make neat demos, but won't win market share.

    • Battery life has to improve drastically (currently about 2 hours in developer's model)

      I have the 5000D model, too. Turn the backlight down to 50% and the battery will last a lot longer; of course, you have to get used to the lower light conditions.

      Supposedly, this is only a problem with the 5000D. The 5500 fully charges the battery, whereas the 5000D only gets to about 50%. I read this on one of the zaurus sites... don't ask me for the URL, tho... it's long gone. :)
  • Ok, so I beat them by a couple of days or so. I am working on a nice little gui for it.

    url: http://kirk.math.twsu.edu/family/james/mplayer.htm l

  • While consumer-level services that use Linux on the backend are well established, with examples such as Google and Amazon, consumer products are just now showing their colors.

    Everyone loves their TiVo, a device that makes TV worth watching, and the Zaurus has reached a critical mass where there is enough mindshare to facilitate the development of tons of great custom software for the Linux based PDA. So what will we see next? I think that it would be nice to see the Zaurus technology used in a mobile phone.

    For many, PDAs are great, but for most, PDAs take a backseat to their mobile phone. Why not cut the chase and combine the two?
    • Exactly, my next PDA will have to combine cell phone functionality, otherwise I will stay at my Psion.
      • Well, if you get a P800, you can combine PDA and cell phone, while still staying at your Psion (well, Symbian at any rate).

        It's just a real shame the P800 uses Sony memory sticks rather than the more standard CF cards.

  • Idea! (Score:1)

    by Erwos ( 553607 )
    Interesting idea: combine open 802.11b network with local hard drive full of multimedia content connected to it.

    Imagine having a spare hour to kill waiting for class. You walk on over to the nearest dorm, boot up your slick PDA / laptop and check the ether for some movies to keep you busy. Seems like it would have some potential.

    -Erwos

  • strikingly similiar to ffmpeg (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Funny how the codecs used in tkcVideo are the very same, listed in the same order as ffmpeg [sourceforge.net] which is lgpl'd. Take a look for yourself.

    They even have RealVideo version 1 and mjpeg. Who even uses realvideo version 1, unless you encode it with ffmpeg?

    I think this is more than a conincidence. I also heard the author of ffmpeg got an email that the many error codes in tkcVideo are very similiar to ffmpeg...

    and there is no WAY they could have written those codecs by themselves in the short amount of time. No fuckin way...

    • I think this is more than a conincidence. I also heard the author of ffmpeg got an email that the many error codes in tkcVideo are very similiar to ffmpeg...

      Ok, yes, you're probably right, it probably does use ffmpeg. What's the big deal? As you point out, ffmpeg is LGPL'ed, which allows proprietary applications to link to it. Any modifications they make to ffmpeg would have to be released, but I'm betting they had to make zero, zilch, none. A Zaurus is just a fairly typical ARM Linux system. As long as they're using a standard shared library version of ffmpeg, supply a copy of the LGPL somewhere, and give credits to ffmpeg in the about box and a pointer to where the LGPL is, they are in the clear. That's not really asking a lot. If they do this, they don't even have to provide ffmpeg source. At least, this is how I and quite a few people read the LGPL.

      The LGPL is quite a different beast to the GPL, and that's by design.

  • At first I thought "what a complete waste. Cool, but useless." Then I realized, it has a very good practical use. It would be ideal for viewing training videos. The test equipment I work with is pretty complex. It'd be nice to have a small display that you could easily move around while you're watching. If your computer (laptop or desktop) is on your desk, and your equipment is in a lab, this would be much easier to move around. Just a thought before everyone says "stupid idea." (makes you wonder... posting a message saying "lame" or doing something cool but preceived as lame. I wonder which is actually useless.)
  • Heh. A "do-everything" box that can't even play Vorbis.

    That sounds about as useful as a Swiss army knife that has a screwdriver, tweezers, scissors, etc. but -- oops -- doesn't have a knife blade.

  • Does anybody have any details of the levels of performance (frame rate, etc.) of this player on the Zaurus? I've seen DivX players for other PDAs that play at 6fps, which means you only get to see 1/4 of a film!

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