Is it worth to buy a Pandora?

[TrashyMG]

^Only if Moga had a keyboard.. and didn't use over the shelf batteries.

 

[EvilDragon]

try to beat the battery life or of the note 3 (or Mi3)+ MOGA pro with your pandora. free tip: check what moga pro is. It is not 2009 anymore there are so many other options for 500 euro, and all of them are bether than pandora.

Ps i hate android too,

The Note 3 has an active battery life of 10 - 13 hours (playing games, not just simple messaging, etc.)

And instant-on times of over 100 hours?

That would be pretty neat for a phone.

 

[bsp]

@ekianjo:

I am really not an expert at video codecs..

I do know that TI has some free-as-in-beer DSP video codecs (mpeg 1/2, h264) for download.

The h264 one is said to decode only "base-line" h264, whatever that means in practice.

I also have no idea whether these codecs use the completely undocumented video accelerator hardware. If they do, that HW probably needs some initialization before the codecs can be used.

What we need is more DSP devs, in this case ppl who are familiar with video players/codecs, I cannot do this all by myself.

Maybe someone should try to use an open source codec and DSP-optimize the time-critical decode loops (probably just a few lines of code) ?!

DSP-accelerated video would indeed be cool, and I would support anyone who seriously attempts this as best as I can.

 

[Binky]

It is not 2009 anymore there are so many other options for 500 euro, and all of them are bether than pandora.

Depends entirely on your requirements.

I seriously doubt anything that I think is better will be coming along in the near future. When it does, it will probably be brought by a dragon.

 

[notaz]

Maybe someone should try to use an open source codec and DSP-optimize the time-critical decode loops (probably just a few lines of code) ?!

There is supposed open source c64x Theora decoder:http://code.entropywave.com/git?p=theora-c64x.git;a=tree;f=lib/c64x

but I don't know how complete it is or if any videos use Theora these days..

 

[bsp]

I guess you are refering to this: http://schleef.org/wordpress/wp-content/cache/supercache/schleef.org/2009/11/11/theora-on-ti-c64x-dsp-and-omap3//index.html
 

The “DSP core” in that little TI chip can easily decode 1080p, at nowhere near 100% (it can do far more, in fact it can decode h264 and reencode as, say mpeg2 without getting to 100% usage)

Read it a couple of weeks ago, that statement is most likely true (from what I've witnessed)

Disclaimer: I really don't want to get involved in any political discussions about Theora vs. h264 (especially since streaming video is not my field of expertise)

On topic: It is absolutely worth it to buy a Pandora, in my honest opinion. (I recommend the 1Ghz (DM3730) edition)

Things have not evolved that much during the past 5 years -- Current devices suck approximately the same amount of power in standby (i.e. most of the time), and major performance improvements (GPU..) don't come for free, they suck your battery dry just a little bit faster. That's why I like the Pandora: It hits a sweet spot since it is fast enough for common tasks (emulators, games, office work), and is power efficient as well.

p.s.: before anyone starts arguing -- yes, an A15 is more power efficient than an A8 but the main factors here are the peripherals, like RAM, display, GPU, software..

 

[comradekingu]

Xiph are working on daala.
Wikipedia uses theora, but its not often i come across a video there.