Hello! I will be updating this thread on video playback capabilities of the Nexus 10, particularly on high-end resolution. The new software update is out and under testing at many sites, as well is it is shipping worldwide, so I'll try to share as many information about the multimedia capabilities of the Nexus 10 as possible, you can help out too. Discussion should cover
- full HD video playback performance, formats, framerates
- stock vs. 3rd party media player apps
- youtube and streaming at fullHD
- tweaks to optimize performance
Video performance test by italia0101
please visit his XDA thread for other excellent videos!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1994164
How to get DTS working with MX Player
Download this file and follow instructions here (thx olis4)
YouTube 2600k sample:
720p/1080p MKV samples:
404 ERROR said:
HI10P 720p sample file: http://hotfile.com/dl/148950242/e652ee9/
HI10P 1080p sample file: http://android.tnonline.net/Software/Video/Hi10P Software/hotd-op-1080p-hi10p.mkv
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Still on pre-release, but AndroidCentral points out that background tasks and fullHD video cause some lags, killing those tasks makes it smooth. For me to be able to play properly coded videos water tight on a $500 device is essential, if it fails to do so I have little reason to prefer this over the Nexus7. We shall see results soon.
BoneXDA said:
Still on pre-release, but AndroidCentral points out that background tasks and fullHD video cause some lags, killing those tasks makes it smooth. For me to be able to play properly coded videos water tight on a $500 device is essential, if it fails to do so I have little reason to prefer this over the Nexus7. We shall see results soon.
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Yeah this kinda does worry me, as a big part of why i'm looking at this is to play movies while a travel, he does say its only with HD rips of blue rays, but would be nice to see if it does it with HD movies downloaded via the playstore etc.
might have to wait to see what happens when people get it in their hands.
Of course there are some 2600k videos too to get the maximum out of the Nexus 10, mostly gaming. Anyone with hands on the device should check this out:
BoneXDA said:
Of course there are some 2600k videos too to get the maximum out of the Nexus 10, mostly gaming. Anyone with hands on the device should check this out:
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well hopefully this isn't going to be a result of google having to beat the retina, if thats the case then i'd much more want a screen of the 1920x1080 res that is really good, and that the processor isn't running at 100% trying to run.
I'll post some 2560x1440 (not upscaled) clips shortly for folks to check out their new toys, along with same clips in 1080p BD bitrates (35Mbps) for comparison testing.
e.mote said:
I'll post some 2560x1440 (not upscaled) clips shortly for folks to check out their new toys, along with same clips in 1080p BD bitrates (35Mbps) for comparison testing.
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The reviewer said he was trying it on ripped blue rays, does that mean it would be playing a video on 1920x1080 and stretching the image? standard blue ray def is 1920x1080 right?
BoneXDA said:
Still on pre-release, but AndroidCentral points out that background tasks and fullHD video cause some lags, killing those tasks makes it smooth. For me to be able to play properly coded videos water tight on a $500 device is essential, if it fails to do so I have little reason to prefer this over the Nexus7. We shall see results soon.
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He said he was downloading things in the back. I think a lot of devices lag when you're downloading things.
>The reviewer said he was trying it on ripped blue rays, does that mean it would be playing a video on 1920x1080 and stretching the image? standard blue ray def is 1920x1080 right?
Original BD is 1920x1080 with avg bitrates of 30-35Mbps. Rips can keep the 1080p res or be downscaled, but bitrates are inevitably lower (for smaller size) as they're intended to be downloaded.
Many devices now can handle 1080p of the "rip" (lowered bitrate) variety, but fewer can smoothly play "remuxed" (original BD bitrate) 1080p content. So to say that a device can playback 1080p is relatively meaningless unless the bitrate is specified. Anything from Youtube would not be a good test, since YT stuff are highly compressed (very low bitrate relative to resolution), and fidelity is substantially compromised.
My expectation is that N10 should handle "normal" 1080p rips (10Mbps), given it's the latest-gen SoC, and that video playback is a staple use. I'm more curious about performance with BD-bitrate content, and 1440p content, hence the pending clip uploads. Admittedly, these would be more for curiosity's sake than for practical use--there is no 1440p content, and BD ISOs won't fit through wifi pipes, HT40 or no.
Subscribing as videos are the #1 thing I use tablets for. There was one video posted in the general section last week that takes advantage of the N10's resolution. A quick browse back a few pages and you'll find it in one of the threads talking about the screen
Playing back laggy HD video is a major concern. Not that I would watch movies on it myself but the last thing Google and Samsung needs is more ammo against them. This being the only somewhat major issue though, unlike the fake issues like no SD, plastic construction, and tablet specific apps(the ipad ones really are not that much better than the iphone ones, except games with HD in the title).
That said, my core 2 duo chugs during some streams so i am guessing if it chugs on the PC, Nexus 7, ipad 4, tf700, it will chug on the Nexus 10 and everything else that isn't an i7.
Tomatoes8 said:
Playing back laggy HD video is a major concern. Not that I would watch movies on it myself but the last thing Google and Samsung needs is more ammo against them. This being the only somewhat major issue though, unlike the fake issues like no SD, plastic construction, and tablet specific apps(the ipad ones really are not that much better than the iphone ones, except games with HD in the title).
That said, my core 2 duo chugs during some streams so i am guessing if it chugs on the PC, Nexus 7, ipad 4, tf700, it will chug on the Nexus 10 and everything else that isn't an i7.
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What kind of streams are you running against your C2D? I find it hard to believe it's choking on even 1080p 24+ bit-rate streams. Are you on some ancient video card that doesn't have acceleration, thereby forcing your CPU to brute-force the decode?
edge929 said:
What kind of streams are you running against your C2D? I find it hard to believe it's choking on even 1080p 24+ bit-rate streams. Are you on some ancient video card that doesn't have acceleration, thereby forcing your CPU to brute-force the decode?
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My guess it has something to do with my home group connection or wifi connection in general. Playback through a USB drive or internal storage never chugs though. Although some files still have artifacting.
I would be interested in knowing if this can play 10bit MKV files.
situman said:
I would be interested in knowing if this can play 10bit MKV files.
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Good lord. So do I.
BoneXDA said:
Still on pre-release, but AndroidCentral points out that background tasks and fullHD video cause some lags, killing those tasks makes it smooth. For me to be able to play properly coded videos water tight on a $500 device is essential, if it fails to do so I have little reason to prefer this over the Nexus7. We shall see results soon.
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Click to collapse
There are many tweaks that can be used to slim down a loaded system, but regarding games & videos, I would set the heapsize to 512m, to start. The next place I would look is swappiness. Usually when running one big app and not task switching, you'd want to increase this so that other processes are cached to virtual memory, freeing ram for your main process. With 2gb ram, though, the opposite might be better, as some apps will periodically wake to check for email, news, chats, etc. In this case I think it would be better to keep those processes in ram so that they don't cause a hit to disk to wake from virtual memory.
In other words, I would definitely try tweaking swappiness, but I don't know which way would be better. I'm going to sub this thread; please post whatever results you experience.
situman said:
I would be interested in knowing if this can play 10bit MKV files.
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I'd never heard of a 10bit MKV until you brought it up. So I downloaded a sample to see it.
For what it's worth, I just tried it on my Galaxy Note 2.
The gallery player didn't play it (audio only) but it worked OK with MX Player in software decoding mode.
Since this resolution is so high on this device, is the Nexus 10 the 1st. "ULTRA" high resolution mobile device/tablet? Doesn't ultra start around this resolution or so?
Wooba99 said:
I'd never heard of a 10bit MKV until you brought it up. So I downloaded a sample to see it.
For what it's worth, I just tried it on my Galaxy Note 2.
The gallery player didn't play it (audio only) but it worked OK with MX Player in software decoding mode.
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Bsplayer is slightly better. Mxplayer will lose audio. But it can get pretty bad even with my note 10.1. Audio n video gets way out of sync.
situman said:
Bsplayer is slightly better. Mxplayer will lose audio. But it can get pretty bad even with my note 10.1. Audio n video gets way out of sync.
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I've not had any issues previously using MXplayer. However since this video was animated and in Japanese, it might have been completely out of sync, I have no idea
Related
I'm looking for advice on media players for the evo 3D - since I originally hoped it'd be a portable player to match the format compatibility of my HTPC. It looks like I was a little optimistic in that regard, primarily because I knew the chip was 1080P capable. My primary issue with blu-ray rips is that when using MoboPlayer and mVideoPlayer - I can usually get my 720P rips to play back video, but I lose the audio. I'm fairly certain that I'm using the unconverted blu-ray audio - and neither of these apps can handle the codec. Is there another app that can do this without having to convert?
I know how to convert the audio easily - but I was hoping for a drag and drop solution. I don't want to end up with large files for my HTPC and different ones for on-the-go use.
Besides that, 1080P videos would be hampered by Android's (or should I say FAT32's) inability to handle files above 4GB. I'd previously heard rumors that in the future Android would be able to able to access XFAT partitions and that might eliminate the file limitation - but I've heard nothing concrete. Anybody have any useful info on this topic?
I know that a certain amount of readers will ask why this is necessary in a portable device, but a lot of us look at these phones as a digital swiss army knife. To me, there's definitely the allure of potentially bringing just the phone and an HDMI cable to my girlfriend's house in order to share a bluray as opposed to bringing the bluray player, disc, cables, etc.
Well - the only partial solution I've found is the arcMedia media player. It supports a52 (AC3) audio, but unfortunately - the 720P video I threw at it played remarkably choppy. Totally unwatchable.
Doh - I guess I'm talking to myself. But in case someone else is reading this in hopes of a solution, I think I've figured out that MoboPlayer and one other media player I just found - can play the audio if I switch to software decoding. Unfortunately, if I do so - 720P video becomes unwatchable. HTC didn't give us surround sound codecs, which is disappointing.
The only possible solution or workaround would be if the video decoding could be handled separately from audio in one of these media players. But I'm not going to get my hopes up.
In the meantime, I guess I better get used to converting AC3 audio in my MKV's - and making sure none of my portable files are above 4 gigs.
Diceplayer!!!!!!!!!! Try it!!!!
DDiaz007 said:
Diceplayer!!!!!!!!!! Try it!!!!
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OK - I tried IMPlayer+ and Vitalplayer based on recommendations I found elsewhere and neither worked as I'd hoped. Diceplayer however, appears to have done the trick! It's a $5 app, but I'm going to try it for 3 days and test it out first. Thank you very much for the recommendation.
The dev who wrote that software claims the Galaxy S2 is capable of 1080P MKV playback with AC3 audio. I'm going to see if I can track down a similar sample under 4 gigs to test on the Evo 3D. As of now - 720P is working beautifully.
Now there's just two more things that I'm hoping will happen to make this the perfect mobile HD video player:
1) Android somehow allowing a format that accepts files above 4gigs.
2) Actually being able to output 1080P to an external screen via HDMI. I'm sure we'll be able to HDMI mirror the screen, but the file's resolution will be lost in that case. Hopefully Diceplayer or another app will enable HD out.
I'm not holding my breath for either, but I can hope.
Just a couple thoughts. I encode all my videos to .mp4, at their native resolution (1080p for bd, or eve res for dvds). Using a bitrate between 1500-2000 will get u under 2GB for an entire movie and maintain video quality to near original.
As much as I'd like 5.1 surround sound, that really only matters if u can output it via hdmi. In ur case I understand the desire bc u have other media players.
I agree, HTC/android should include support for 5.1 audio, and additionally I feel .Mkv support
Sent from my PG86100 using XDA App
Thanks for the comments! I just figured I'd chime in because I tried a Conan the Barbarian Trailer that was a 1080P MKV with AC3 audio.
Unfortunately, it didn't play smooth even with Diceplayer. Every 3 seconds, there was a little stutter. Which was disappointing, but understandable. I wonder if the Galaxy S2 can really play it better?
Otherwise, the E3D might get to that capability by a little overclocking and/or improved software in the future.
P0ll0L0c0 said:
Thanks for the comments! I just figured I'd chime in because I tried a Conan the Barbarian Trailer that was a 1080P MKV with AC3 audio.
Unfortunately, it didn't play smooth even with Diceplayer. Every 3 seconds, there was a little stutter. Which was disappointing, but understandable. I wonder if the Galaxy S2 can really play it better?
Otherwise, the E3D might get to that capability by a little overclocking and/or improved software in the future.
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update your diceplayer 1.4.2
Try QQ Player..
Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk
QQ player doesn't play the file well at all - it appears not to use any hardware acceleration.
Unfortunately - the Diceplayer Trial Update (1.4.2) doesn't appear to improve things.
Someone who'd overclocked his E3D to 1.5ghz tested this file and STILL found it lagging on Diceplayer. Which is very disappointing. If anyone's curious, this is the sample I'm talking about:
http://www.movie-list.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27232
I was just hoping to get 1080P AC3 MKV playback.
I was just told on another thread that this 1080P file may not play well - only because of the speed of my card. This user claims that his phone with a class 10 microsdhc plays the Conan clip without lag. Apparently my phone (with the stock class 4) must not be able to create enough of a buffer to make up for the memory card's speed. I've got a class 10 memory card arriving tomorrow - and I'll report back then.
This is potentially great news.
I'm not sure if the new memory card played a role - but the latest version of Diceplayer 1.4.4 plays that 1080P MKV with AC3 audio with NO lag on the Evo 3D. I'm pretty happy right now. The only thing I'm hoping for in the future is that somehow we can play files over 4gb so we can actually take advantage of the 1080P capability of this phone.
When I started using my Droid X2 I notice I could not play most of my MP4 files with hardware decoding. (I use MX Video Player which clearly shows you if it is hardware decode.) Using software, the phone is not fast enough to play back 720p or higher.... Even the Droid X had better hardware support as it could play back most of my 480p MP4 files in hardware.
I know the DX2 can play back its own 720p/30fps video files flawlessly and in hardware, so there had to be something going on.
So I dug into what's going on and it turns out the Tegra 2 has a pretty bad video decoder in it. (Thanks for nothing NVidia......) Even the old Hummingbird single core chip in the Galaxy S can do much better!
What I have found is on our phone we can only playback video using the Baseline profile. This is the worst quality profile and pretty much everything out there uses High Profile. (And sometimes Main profile.) Baseline is the easiest to encode and decode -- but really it's not used much anymore because of how inefficient it is with bitrate. (Meaning lower quality in comparison)
As a test I converted some 1080p content to various profiles to test it out ... and then did it again at 720p and then 540p. (The native phone resolution.)
All I could get to play on my phone in hardware was video encoded with baseline.
Now, what was interesting is I created a 1080p/24fps baseline file at about 7.5mbps and the phone had zero problems playing that, even that that high bitrate! Very surprising there....
Now, I created two files -- one using High Profile and the other Baseline profile -- both at the same bitrate so they are both identically sized -- and the quality difference is quite noticeable when playing through VLC on my computer. The Baseline is much more smudgy during lots of movement.... Sucks
NOW, realistically if you only watch video on your phone's screen, then encode at 960x540 and use baseline and it will look really good.
If you connect HDMI, though, then the hardware decoder will send the video to the TV at full resolution (up to 1080p) but then the quality difference really becomes noticeable.
It's a shame really .... This TI OMAP CPU in the Bionic/Droid 3 does not have this problem ... but all Tegra 2 devices like the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and so on have the same issue as the Droid X2.
(Although it does appear the newest 3.1 update on the Tegra 2 tablets allows high profile 720p not, I tried it on our phone and it does not work. Not even 540p at high works.) We are using a lower slightly lower end version of Tegra 2 versus the tablets so that might be the difference.
Attached is the Baseline profile settings to use for Handbrake for our phone.
This is why my computers only rock AMD.
could the latest update have done anything? I would really like some higher res movies with out having to go through all the hassle, cause I have no idea how to do all that with baseline and everything lol
fargles said:
could the latest update have done anything? I would really like some higher res movies with out having to go through all the hassle, cause I have no idea how to do all that with baseline and everything lol
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Very doubtfully no, since its really a hardware issue.
Re-encoding is generally pretty simple, especially if someone gives you the right profile/settings you need, as he did above. Grab Handbrake, check his settings, and give it a shot with a short video file. The worst part is the length it can take to transcode something, which is mostly dependant on your CPU.
Thanks for the info man, was going to play around with this when i first noticed it but never had time and forgot about it. I'll be lazy and keep the old Archos 5 going with component out video lol, doesn't look too great, but 120GB and great battery life will help.
ihavenolife008 said:
Very doubtfully no, since its really a hardware issue.
Re-encoding is generally pretty simple, especially if someone gives you the right profile/settings you need, as he did above. Grab Handbrake, check his settings, and give it a shot with a short video file. The worst part is the length it can take to transcode something, which is mostly dependant on your CPU.
Thanks for the info man, was going to play around with this when i first noticed it but never had time and forgot about it. I'll be lazy and keep the old Archos 5 going with component out video lol, doesn't look too great, but 120GB and great battery life will help.
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I definitely will try that, and the reason I asked was cause at the bottom he sounded unsure that it was a hardware problem... so I thought why not ask lol no harm no foul right?
in my completely n00b opinion if we are using a slightly lower tegra2 than the ones in the tablets it would seem that we wouldn't have such different results. I would think that if we are using slightly lower processors we would get slightly lower results. However I know very little about what I am talking about so I could completely be off base
This phone just keeps getting better and better.
To topic greater what derision of android were you using and what rom? Cause I found that on 2.3.3 using eclipse 0.2.2 I had next to no problems playing any 720p video files using hardware. They were h264 in mkv. Just.get mobo video player and its codec pack. If you trying to watch anime download mkv ripper to rip the subs out so you can still.use hardware. Yes software support make it skips but i rarely need to use software. At least on my dx2. And using software support on 480p runs with out any problems.
Mobo player is the best video player out for android use that instead I tried mx player and it was quite crap. Your.playback of video files depends on the video player itself as well as the phone. And in hardware 720p runs just fine on mobo with very little hickups for.fast.pace action scenes and I know I'm not on baseline.
Sent from my DROID X2 using XDA App
I am trying to decide between the International Note or the Att note (both being equal in price). My biggest concern is the video playback in browser (HD 1080p flash video) and 720/1080p mkv videos (using stock or 3rd party players). I found that there are some reports of choppiness with the ATT note in the "Att note vs International Note review" thread. How true is this? And is it still true after overclocking?
LTE is not very impt, but definitely a plus since my area is LTE ready. Biggest thing is video playback and web browsing experience(especially in flash heavy websites). I actually find my Tegra 3 Asus Prime to be less smooth than my current galaxy s2 smartphone (can be a resolution thing..).
I had the HP Touchpad before with the same snapdragon processor as the att note and it was pretty terrible at playing the type of files I wanted smoothly (ESPECIALLY IN BROSWER). That was using Webos, so it can be a different story here.
720p mkv play perfectly - no re-encoding required - but you are apparently still constrained by the 4GB limit, so full length movies are not possible in many cases.
TV shows average about 1.2 gig so its most useful for those.
If we ever get ICS, I assume the 4gb limit will no longer apply, only you will have to transfer files via wifi or use a card reader and transfer directly to the SD card - the retarded samsung/MS USB file transfer protocols still fail at 4gb even if the device can store larger files.
I have this problem with my galaxy tab 10.1 I can play re-encoded mp4 much larger than 4gb but they have to be transferred by wifi. I assume the same problem will exist with the note under ICS.
Edit: Apparently NTFS formatting of the SD card has been attempted, don't know if it is an effective solution to 4gb limit, haven't tried it myself: http://www.xda-developers.com/android/galaxy-note-can-now-format-sd-card-to-ntfs-file-system/
Thanks, what about 1080p flash in browser? My Galaxy s2 can do this on youtube without a problem (and on engadget), but I'm wondering if it's possible with the galaxy note att. I am sure the international version will fair fine.
Yes, works with stock browser.
Tried Dark Knight 1080p trailer - plays fine.
NVIDA Pure Video 1080p test - plays fine.
Sharp Aquous Full HD 1080p test - plays fine.
1080p 30 fps 17Mbps HD Test Footage by DizzyDougTV - Plays fine
All were tested using LTE not wifi
Singuy1234 said:
My biggest concern is the video playback in browser (HD 1080p flash video) and 720/1080p mkv videos (using stock or 3rd party players).
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Since the Note's screen is 800x1200, and one typically watches videos on the phone "sideways", there's no real benefit of watching video above 720p; the phone can only go up to 800p "sideways". Not only that, but because the screen is so small you likely won't be able to tell the difference in videos at resolutions higher than DVD-quality (i.e. 480p) anyway.
As for poor playback performance, I've watched a couple of YouTube videos in HQ and I find that there is the odd minor stutter here and there, but nothing to serious. I'm not sure how much of that is the result of network latency, though.
I've played DVD-quality videos (480p) -- copied onto the device memory; not streamed online -- with absolutely no issues whatsoever.
I've also played 720p and 1080p videos which were copied directly on to the device. There is occasionally a frame dropped here and there (most people wouldn't notice, but I'm pretty sensitive to that after years of messing around with video on computers) but I would say they play perfectly fine, also.
From my understanding, the newer I717 has more CPU horsepower and a GPU that is a little more than twice as fast. I would imagine this would make it better at playing videos than the older N7000 (i.e. international version).
Don57 said:
Since the Note's screen is 800x1200, and one typically watches videos on the phone "sideways", there's no real benefit of watching video above 720p; the phone can only go up to 800p "sideways". Not only that, but because the screen is so small you likely won't be able to tell the difference in videos at resolutions higher than DVD-quality (i.e. 480p) anyway.
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True, but he might want to output the video to a higher resolution display - I assume this thing has some sort of HDMI adapter.
Just my opinion, but 720p looks sharper than DVD quality to me even on a 5.3 inch display, though, granted, the difference is small.
Tried several MKV movies in 1080p (had to chop them up into smaller MKV size)..
Smooth as butter with Dice Player
I should also mention that you would want a player that will leverage Hardware Decoding..
Tried turning this feature off in Dice Player for 1080p playback, and sure enough, it was choppy.
Hi,
I've just noticed something strange on my machine: When I watch HW accelerated 720p video the screen glitches every so often, maybe once or twice a minute. It doesn't happen on SW decoding. The glitches are , for example, part of the picture appearing corrupt or in the wrong place for a fraction of a second.
Does this suggest my Tegra is on the way out? I had a quick play of a game to see if it caused glitching but couldn't see anything. Are there any decent video stress test apps out there that could maybe reproduce this?
I hadn't actually noticed this before the new update, but I expect it is just coincidence.
Can you please post the video player you use and maybe some more infos about the video file you used?
The problem you described seems to be similar to what I experience while using Dice Player with mkv files that contain x264 video and ac3 sound. This happens with pretty much every tv series (all made with the standard release rules used for the illegal releases) I watch on my prime.
I get the same with Dice player. I will try others when I get a minute and see if it's the same. Never put two and two together because it happens when I'm not watching a video. But the last few times I noticed it happening it was after I had been playing a video and the player was still "live" in the back ground.
Sent from my Desire HD using xda app-developers app
I get this all the time when watching 720p / 1080p. Its only for a split second.
I was watching How I met your Mother which was 720p last night and a small square where a persons face was kind of corrupted for a second, then went back to normal.
Its also happened with 'A very Harold and Kumar Christmas' which is 1080p.
Both were Mkv files and I use a combination of MX player and BSplayer, because MX player sometimes doesnt play sound for some reason
Same problem here. I have come to the conclusion that the Prime is unable to play 720p or 1080p smoothly. Every single file on every player skips frames every 10 seconds or so when using HW decoding.
This tablet is useless.
I've been noticing the same thing, using the ad version of Dice Player. Most of the video I watch is 720p, h264 or x264.
But I have to disagree with Fizzerr -- I only noticed it after the .28 update. I'm fairly certain this wasn't a problem before -- I'm very picky about video quality -- so I don't believe this means the Prime's hardware is incapable of playing hi-def video smoothly.
I get intermittent frame and sound skips, very jarring. Happens in default player as well as Dice.
mbieler said:
Can you please post the video player you use and maybe some more infos about the video file you used?
The problem you described seems to be similar to what I experience while using Dice Player with mkv files that contain x264 video and ac3 sound. This happens with pretty much every tv series (all made with the standard release rules used for the illegal releases) I watch on my prime.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry - I meant to add the player info, but forgot.
I'm using 720p AC3 MKV container files.WEB DL essentially. The problem doesn't seem to happen on non 720p files.
I'm using Dice Player AD, BS Player lite amongst others. Essentially any that use HW acceleration seem to have the issue. I thought it was caused by a bump the machine received as I didn't ever notice this item the bump. Mind you, I did update to the latest firmware around the same time, so this could be the cause.
Essentially is looks like artifacts produced by a dodgy card, but if others are seeing it then there is maybe hope. Perhaps I'll try a non-AC3 720p vid.
Fizzerr said:
Same problem here. I have come to the conclusion that the Prime is unable to play 720p or 1080p smoothly. Every single file on every player skips frames every 10 seconds or so when using HW decoding.
This tablet is useless.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My tablet played 720p fine until very recently (either a bump or the new firmware seems to have caused the issue). Hell, I even used the Prime to play SBS video into my Sony HMD and all was fine. I only get stuttering on 720p when I use software decoding.
Danforth said:
...
But I have to disagree with Fizzerr -- I only noticed it after the .28 update.
...
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Click to collapse
In my case I can definitely say that this problem occurred from the very beginning with honeycomb.
I find it only mildly annoying because the happiness about a tablet playing high def videos smoothly (at least almost...) outweighs the glitches. It's THE main reason why i bought this thing.
At least now we know that we are not alone with our problem. Maybe Gary takes a look at this thread and puts the issue on his to-do list
I really want to think this is a firmware issue. I don't recall this happening until I upgraded to the .28 firmware. I also believe it happens at any time using any app (no restricted to just videos), only that it is easier to detect when video watching.
I see similar visual glitches sometimes when web browsing (stock browser) and sometimes see it on my calendar widget on the home screen. Once again, I don't recall having these issues until upgrading to .28 firmware.
The thing is, it is random and doesn't happen at the same spot when I watch again.
It looks like artifacting caused by a GPU that is too hot! Hope I'm wrong.... Or maybe right. Asus'll have to give me a new machine! :laugh:
I would like to weigh in on this
Oh, it's the .28 firmware alright, this coming from someone who has had the Prime since release date, on Honeycomb. Other than .15 which also gave me some video ****ery, all other firmware releases have been fine as far as video. I have been able to watch both 720 video and 1080 Blue Ray mkv files without a hitch, a glitch or a twitch. >28, which took close to 3 months to spit out is the absolute worst release yet, as they focused on a couple of issues, and screwed up a whole bunch of stuff in the process. ANR reduced greatly, WiFi is cranked to the max (so it works only SLIGHTLY sub-par, instead of hugely, but video? The worst. I went back to .21, added my custom build.prop (from Seanzscreams) SIO scheduler, and I am good for the moment. Can't WAIT to see how bad 28.5 or it's successor is. I swear, the longer they take to release, the worse they are, no ****.
In January-March we had FW being pushed every 7-15 days, like clockwork. Then they slowed to a snails pace, and the FW sucks. Lends credence to the theory that they took developers off the Prime, and put them either on Nexus 7 or other tablets such as the 300, and the "new" Infinity. Maybe we SHOULD all start screaming for "free upgrades to the Infinity again, LOL. Mark my words, I saw 32 gb Infinity for $499. If that's correct then the Prime is about to be pulled. I know exactly how they will do it. They will trickle out all the remaining (fixable to a degree) Primes, and keep saying "We arre NOT discontinuing the Prime" Then, when they have dumped the stock, they will say: "Well, we tried, but it just wasn't SELLING" so we HAD to stop production.
Do I sound a bit jaded, LOL? I see a bunch of posts from new forum members in this thread, and I wonder: How much crap are THEY willing to take. I have had more than my share from Asus.
In which case.... how the duck do I go back to the previous firmware?
I bought a Sony XTZ couple weeks ago. I love everything about this tablet, until I watched a movie on Netflix on it. It is borderline blurry compared to streaming the same title on Windows 8 or iPad. So I thought it's just a Netflix thing, until last night I played a movie from Google Play. It looked absolutely horrible, SD quality. It is not my internet connection speed as I get 100/30Mbps here.
I Googled this subject and found no information about this. Am I seeing things or is there something wrong with my Sony XTZ?
iosandroid said:
I bought a Sony XTZ couple weeks ago. I love everything about this tablet, until I watched a movie on Netflix on it. It is borderline blurry compared to streaming the same title on Windows 8 or iPad. So I thought it's just a Netflix thing, until last night I played a movie from Google Play. It looked absolutely horrible, SD quality. It is not my internet connection speed as I get 100/30Mbps here.
I Googled this subject and found no information about this. Am I seeing things or is there something wrong with my Sony XTZ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So I did some more reading, apparently Sony didn't pay for licensing for HD playback on the XTZ :silly: I've read that even Sony's own video services do not offer HD playback on the XTZ. Wow, just wow. I really love this tablet but this is a deal breaker.
I have 4 more days to request a return on this. I was trying to get it to update to the latest 10.4.1.b.0.101 but it's not available yet. I will give it 3 more days to see if the update hits, and see if it enables HD playback. If not I have to return it which will be unfortunate and very disappointing.
Please tell me this is not true ..
iosandroid said:
So I did some more reading, apparently Sony didn't pay for licensing for HD playback on the XTZ :silly: I've read that even Sony's own video services do not offer HD playback on the XTZ. Wow, just wow. I really love this tablet but this is a deal breaker.
I have 4 more days to request a return on this. I was trying to get it to update to the latest 10.4.1.b.0.101 but it's not available yet. I will give it 3 more days to see if the update hits, and see if it enables HD playback. If not I have to return it which will be unfortunate and very disappointing.
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Click to collapse
Please tell me this is not true DAMMN im about to buy this tablet ..( not waiting for the z2 because the tablet is on 350$ deal so yeah..)
i love watching netflix and i when i see this .. well no, just no i have like 24 hours before the deals end .. someone tell me that i can watch hd content on it .. is it netflix only or all hd playback?
jesusitox12 said:
Please tell me this is not true DAMMN im about to buy this tablet ..( not waiting for the z2 because the tablet is on 350$ deal so yeah..)
i love watching netflix and i when i see this .. well no, just no i have like 24 hours before the deals end .. someone tell me that i can watch hd content on it .. is it netflix only or all hd playback?
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Click to collapse
Yes, all streaming HD services. Very disappointing as I loved everything about this tablet. I really wanted it to work, so much so that I called Xperia support even knowing it'd be a waste of time. First thing I was asked was if I can copy the movies to my XTZ to be played.
This appears to affect the entire range of Xperia devices including the flagship Z1 Ultra. I'll link two samples I found here, but I saw the same complaints on other Xperia devices. I've found no complaints about Netflix, but trust me, if you watch the same title on Netflix with any other devices, the quality difference will be clear - it's way sharper even on a 720p device than on the XTZ.
http://talk.sonymobile.com/t5/Xperia-Tablet-Z/VOD-and-HD-Video-Playback/td-p/362656
http://talk.sonymobile.com/t5/Xperi...vice-does-not-support-HD-playback/td-p/417467
iosandroid said:
Yes, all streaming HD services. Very disappointing as I loved everything about this tablet. I really wanted it to work, so much so that I called Xperia support even knowing it'd be a waste of time. First thing I was asked was if I can copy the movies to my XTZ to be played.
This appears to affect the entire range of Xperia devices including the flagship Z1 Ultra. I'll link two samples I found here, but I saw the same complaints on other Xperia devices. I've found no complaints about Netflix, but trust me, if you watch the same title on Netflix with any other devices, the quality difference will be clear - it's way sharper even on a 720p device than on the XTZ.
http://talk.sonymobile.com/t5/Xperia-Tablet-Z/VOD-and-HD-Video-Playback/td-p/362656
http://talk.sonymobile.com/t5/Xperi...vice-does-not-support-HD-playback/td-p/417467
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well sucks a lot I think I'll wait for the z2 or the next nexus 10
jesusitox12 said:
Well sucks a lot I think I'll wait for the z2 or the next nexus 10
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Click to collapse
I don't know if the XTZ 2 will not have that issue - this seems to be an issue with every Xperia devices even the Z1 Ultra which came out not that long ago..
So I returned the XTZ and bought an LG G Pad 8.3, and find that the LG also has poor Netflix streaming quality, but at least the LG can play HD contents from Google Play which the XTZ would only play SD quality.
Did some more reading on this matter. 1080p Netflix on Android requires Android 4.3 (which the XTZ does in fact have) that has additional DRM API built-in, but it seems the ONLY Android device that can do 1080p streaming is the Nexus 7 2013. One might say on a smallish tablet device 720p vs 1080p shouldn't matter. I probably would've thought so myself if I hadn't been spoiled by the biting sharpness from iPads and Windows 8 devices when watching Netflix. The difference is immediately noticeable.
I've attached some pictures to show the difference in case anyone is interested to see. The difference in person is greater than these pictures show.
iosandroid said:
Did some more reading on this matter. 1080p Netflix on Android requires Android 4.3 (which the XTZ does in fact have) that has additional DRM API built-in, but it seems the ONLY Android device that can do 1080p streaming is the Nexus 7 2013. One might say on a smallish tablet device 720p vs 1080p shouldn't matter. I probably would've thought so myself if I hadn't been spoiled by the biting sharpness from iPads and Windows 8 devices when watching Netflix. The difference is immediately noticeable.
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Click to collapse
I'm pretty sure all non-Nexus 7 2013 devices only get 480p, hence the low quality. Netflix help pages also say HD is only supported on "new Nexus 7".
dsfdfsdfs said:
I'm pretty sure all non-Nexus 7 2013 devices only get 480p, hence the low quality. Netflix help pages also say HD is only supported on "new Nexus 7".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is the reasoning for this? That's ridiculous.
I kid you not, the regular iPad Mini with the 1024x768 screen and the Dell Windows 8.1 8" 1280x800 tablets look much sharper than the non-Nexus 7 full HD Android tablets I've tried so far. Yes I had a 2013 Nexus 7 previously and Netflix is very sharp on it. This inconsistent experience from Android is a big turn off, although I like the LG G Pad a lot and it is a keeper. I'll just use my other gadgets when I watch Netflix.
I don't think there would be much differences in your images above.
Since each tablet you used has different brightness and contrast, so the picture sharpness looks different.
I have attached my photos showing pictures from XTZ and iPad Air. The two are a little out of sync.
Look at detail of Liam's shirt. They are the same on both XTZ and Air.
iosandroid said:
What is the reasoning for this? That's ridiculous.
I kid you not, the regular iPad Mini with the 1024x768 screen and the Dell Windows 8.1 8" 1280x800 tablets look much sharper than the non-Nexus 7 full HD Android tablets I've tried so far. Yes I had a 2013 Nexus 7 previously and Netflix is very sharp on it. This inconsistent experience from Android is a big turn off, although I like the LG G Pad a lot and it is a keeper. I'll just use my other gadgets when I watch Netflix.
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Click to collapse
I believe it is because of DRM mess, i.e. the Widevine DRM interfaces are not implemented properly or something about it is different, etc.
I modified the Netflix APK to enable verbose logging and I looked through the code, and it seems to check specifically for Nexus 7 2013 on Android 4.3 only to enable Widevine DRM mode, otherwise the Widevine mode is disabled (which, I guess, disables HD playback completely). On Android 4.4 there is no separate check for device name, so maybe HD playback could work with Netflix for any 4.4 tablet that implements the Android Widevine DRM interface properly (or it could be it is limited in other places as well)...
And yes, the playback doesn't go above 480p according to the logs on my Tablet Z.
ngvuanh said:
I don't think there would be much differences in your images above.
Since each tablet you used has different brightness and contrast, so the picture sharpness looks different.
I have attached my photos showing pictures from XTZ and iPad Air. The two are a little out of sync.
Look at detail of Liam's shirt. They are the same on both XTZ and Air.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can't see any quality difference in the pictures because the photo resolution is way too low for that. 480p video has 480 pixels in the vertical direction, and your photos doesn't even have that amount of vertical pixels for each display.
To definitely see what resolution your Netflix is maxing out at, search for "example short" in Netflix and play the "Example Short 23.976" video (in U.S. Netflix). The video shows the current playback bitrate and size in the upper-left corner. For me it maxes out at "1750 kbps, 720x480", which is consistent with what I saw in the APK, and which is not HD.
Sorry to bump this old thread, but it seems Netflix has finally let it loose on full HD streaming to other Android devices, at least on both my LG (G Pad 8.3 and G2 phone). I think since two Netflix app updates ago. The difference is immediately noticeable - same biting sharpness I've been used to from iPads and Windows 8.1. I imagine this would be across the board on all Android devices.
I remembered this thread when I searched "LG G Pad Netflix stuttering", which very surprisingly was rectified by rebooting the G Pad.
Edit, seems Netflix has "fixed" it again with the new update. The super sharpness is once again gone. In trying to fix the stuttering issue, I updated the Netflix app to the current release. I'm not seeing things. I've gone nuts since the XTZ in trying to see what's going on with Netflix on Android. I settled on a scene on Skyfall. At 12:21 the conference call speaker (plus M's wrinkles on her face), you'll see the very fine details when on HD, which I saw on the G Pad on the last Netflix app update. It's gone now.
I give up.
Edit 2: I think Netflix is messing around with things on their backend. A couple days ago I started noticing titles actually say "HD" when browsing on the Android app. Now it's gone. I went as far as downloading the .apk for 3.3.3 and 3.4.0, nope HD is gone.
Now I give up.
very poor product, equally poor customer service
dsfdfsdfs said:
I believe it is because of DRM mess, i.e. the Widevine DRM interfaces are not implemented properly or something about it is different, etc.
I modified the Netflix APK to enable verbose logging and I looked through the code, and it seems to check specifically for Nexus 7 2013 on Android 4.3 only to enable Widevine DRM mode, otherwise the Widevine mode is disabled (which, I guess, disables HD playback completely). On Android 4.4 there is no separate check for device name, so maybe HD playback could work with Netflix for any 4.4 tablet that implements the Android Widevine DRM interface properly (or it could be it is limited in other places as well)...
And yes, the playback doesn't go above 480p according to the logs on my Tablet Z.
You can't see any quality difference in the pictures because the photo resolution is way too low for that. 480p video has 480 pixels in the vertical direction, and your photos doesn't even have that amount of vertical pixels for each display.
To definitely see what resolution your Netflix is maxing out at, search for "example short" in Netflix and play the "Example Short 23.976" video (in U.S. Netflix). The video shows the current playback bitrate and size in the upper-left corner. For me it maxes out at "1750 kbps, 720x480", which is consistent with what I saw in the APK, and which is not HD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I bought this tablet thinking it would be amazing, dust proof, water resistant, slim slick design, SD card etc. It is very poor for the price I paid here in UK £380, live streaming rarely works, it goes off after about 30 seconds. Battery life poor, takes forever charging. Uploading videos is shocking, producing such poor quality videos even from the HD GoPro cameras, it's all blurry. I wish now I had stuck with my original plan of staying with Apple. Waste of money, customer service on Twitter absolutely useless, saying for me to do the same thing "system repair" black black black, why should we have to do this after paying nearly £400 for a tablet. I did do the system repair process and it made absolutely no difference whatsoever. Avoid Sony Xperia at all costs.
Back to Apple for me after my refund. Boom