Movie Playback Capability Questions

[mcqfesijiba]

I have been reading this forum pretty much ever since the GP2X was announced and have read over the various GP2X FAQs, and while emulation is covered well in this forum, I am left with some questions on the ability to play back video. I love emulation, but I am also hoping that the video playback ultimately fulfills my expectations considering I leave pretty much all of my videos in formats not natively supported by DVD players (which aren't as portable as a GP2X anyways).

1)The supported codecs have been listed but what container formats does it support? (ie. avi, ogm, mkv, etc)

2)Has TV-Out been confirmed as being S-Video?

3)All audio output to external devices (ie. to the TV) will have to be done via headphone port, correct?

4)Can the GP2X screen be turned off at will while video on the TV plays, saving battery power?

I'm just curious about out-of-the-box performance since question #1 may ultimately be solved by a software video player along the lines of vlc or mplayer or even future firmware upgrades (hopefully the neglected or newer codecs would be added eventually too) and both #2 and #3 can be solved via converter cables. I guess the worst case scenario with #4 would just be to keep a power adapter handy.

 

[Julius]

1. dunno exactly, but adding new one later on shouldn't be a problem.
2. Yes
3. Yes that is what it will be I guess
4. I think GPH said that it can be done while listening to mp3, so I bet it can be done for movies as well.

 

[craigix]

Mplayer is the media player being used on the gp2x as far as i remember.

-Craig

www.gp2x.co.uk

 

[Vimacs]

wow, if it realy should be mplayer it will play next to anything, great

 

[DijiTao]

Mplayer in and of itself doesn't do to much, it's all about the codecs. All the same it is good news if Mplayer is being used since it's a great app. I'm curious about Mplayer taking advantage of the video processing abilities of the Magiceyes MMSP2 SOC. (see block diagram here: http://www.mesdigital.com/english/Products...duct_mmsp2.asp). I'm even more curious about WMV support. Not because I actually like WMV, or that I would ever use it - but because AFAIK WMV is only supported under x86 Linux by using a wrapper to the win32 codecs, something that surely won't fly on an ARM processor. Perhaps there’s a wrapper for the WinCE codecs? I wonder how or if it will handle DRM'd WMV files as I’ve never seen one of those work on a non-Microsoft platform. In the bigger picture thou I’m pretty sure it will have hardware accelerated XviD support and that’s all I’d ever use.

 

[Alpha2]

Assuming it can play DRMed windows media I'd say it wouldnt be much different than the way WMA files work.

I have a Rio MP3 player and it player DRMed WMA, as long as you can access it first to prove you own it it can then be transferred to a handheld device. at worse you'd only have to copy over a back up of the licence(i forget if that's the right word) that comes with it to play on your computer.

 

[Cahaz]

wait, S-video is that 'Yellow for video, White for left audio and Red for right audio', right?
...then, i supose you'll be able to hear the sound from the speakers of your tv. If the video can be showed on tv, then why couldn't you hear the sound from your speakers? that's like a portable dvd player that you can plug in your tv.

 

[junker]

nah, svideo is this:

composite is what you mean. and i do hope they have rca audio(red/white) out alongside headphone out.

edit:
is svideo used in europe, too?

 

[Julius]

Yes S-video is used in Europe too, but not too many TVs have it.

But you can get a cheap converter for S-video to Scart (including rca audio to Scart), and also a converter cable from Headphone to rca audio.

 

[Cahaz]

damn, i only have this on one tv, and this is not the one i use for gaming.

why didn't they used composite? it's a way more used signal, for the us market anyway.

 

[efegea]

edit:
is svideo used in europe, too?

​

Yes. But I'd prefer composite output. I'm going to live one year on another city, and the apartment has a tv with frontal composite input B)

Well, the best GPH can do is a cable with both composite and svideo! And RGB!

 

[Cahaz]

there's alot of tv that have frontal composite input and/or more than one composite input. On the ther hand, svideo is only on high-end tvs, and that's not on every high-end tvs... Well, over here anyway.

 

[reallynotnick]

Well I like svideo and you can get a simple adapter at radio shack to go to composite. I like it this way.

 

[Alpha2]

Could someone post a link to where they say they;re using Svideo? I can't seem to find it.

 

[junker]

yeah, s-video gives a bit cleaner picture than composite, and adapters are easily available(not sure if radioshack is the spot to go, as their prices are usually high even for cheap stuff).
gph will most likely have both composite and s-video out, though. or s-video out cable along with a little coupling/converter for composite out.

 

[DaveC]

S-video gives a much cleaner picture. It eliminates that annoying dot crawl, color bleeding and gives a higher contrast image than composite or RF. It is not as good as component or RGB though.

 

[Julius]

Could someone post a link to where they say they;re using Svideo? I can't seem to find it.

​

I think they mention it somewhere in that huge customer suggestion list

But the guy from GP32Z also confirmed it on this forum.

 

[Cahaz]

i never used s-video, but is it only for video, or does it 'support' sound also?

 

[Squidge]

SVHS (S-Video) does not support sound, it's simply composite video, but with the luminance and chrominance signals seperated to prevent interference. If you want composite instead of SVHS/S-Video, then just shove them all back together again

 

[joele]

An adapter to convert from the svideo cable to composite connections is cheap. So I am happy they started with a half decent connection, I was woried it would have only been composite.. thanks GPH ;-)