Multi-Media Capibilities

[think_tanker]

I was wondering how good Pandora would be on the Audio/Video front. I am a little bit of a A/V geek and need to have something that not only play movies like my Archos 605 does, but have better sound quality through the headphones. My 605 sounds horrible as an audio player and if this device lets me listen to FLAC and other Lossless audio codecs, I would really hope it has a good D/A converter and headphone amplifier.

 

[gruso]

It has a Burr Brown DAC if that helps. It won't be audiophile, but it will be quality.

 

[think_tanker]

Burr Brown is good enough for me. Thanks for your reply...I was starting to wonder if my question was a valid one given that most likely people aren't that concerned about audio and video quality as much as a person like myself might be.

Long live open-minded people!

 

[gruso]

Heh, whatever your area of geekdom is I guarantee there will be other Pandora owners like you. It's certainly captured a broad cross section. Some of them aren't even gamers, the sky is falling!

There are quite a few musicians and enthusiasts in the community. In time, Pandora will be used for making music as well.

 

[Dingo_aus]

I just wish they had a hardware SID chip inside it

 

[think_tanker]

Yeah for sure there will be many people finding this gem useful. I would also like to use this as a little sketch book so that I can sketch out cool designs to propose to the boys for Pandora2.

This device allows us tech geeks to have our cake and eat it too.

 

[phrosty]

I'm also interested to know if it will be able to handle 800x480 1mbit H.264

 

[eksasol]

Not another head-fi member, 150mW/channel output@16ohms is pretty good, but you'll still need to get your own external amp for your sennheiser hd650. It's good to know it's using a burr brown dac, from the spec the 99db s/n ratio is pretty good too, which is at CD spec so it's good enough for me. Most other mp3 players only have 32mW/channel and 95db s/n. I'm actaully more intended to use this device to replace my late 604wifi. I'm looking for a device that can play music, movie and surf well, so I'm glad the Pandora is designed for a variety of people in mind, not just a gaming device.

The beagle board with similar cpu is said to be able torun 720p. I was under the impression that after software optimization this thing could handle 1080p. Maybe not displaying from raw source, but atleast scaled down bitrates. Keeping in mind all this will have to be scaled down for the display screen resolution.

 

[gruso]

I think Pandora sacrifices 1080p capability in order to provide performance in other areas. It's good for 720p though. But I can't check my facts while gp32x is down!

 

[fischju]

According to Wikipedia, the Archos 5 and the Pandora share most of the hardware - CPU, DSP, and 3D chipset are the same. Using licensed TI codecs for the DSP, Archos has been touting limited format 720p capability for the near future.

 

[Supertoy]

Regarding support for particular video formats, the real question is whether a codec (ie. software) with sufficient performance is available. I don't know if the ARM is up to H.264 (maybe it is, it's relatively easy to try; I would but I don't have hardware yet) but code targetting the DSP and/or the GPU may be. So, are there going to be open-source DSP-enabled video decoders for this thing? If there aren't any, then that's a good project for someone!

Regarding 720p, it's moot if the output device is 800x480. It would be *convenient* to be able to read files that are designed for 720p or 1080p, but really it would make more sense to transcode these to 800x480 for playback.

One thing I do lament about this device is the lack of a high-quality output suitable for plugging into an external display, i.e. VGA or DVI (HDMI has licensing issues, but VGA, which would allow a dongle to component, would be totally fine. S-video? Ugh...). Unless I'm misreading the spec...)

If I AM reading the spec, is there any possibility of hacking in a mini-VGA connector using the "hardware prototyping" area? Are the right pinouts provided on the board somewhere? I'd be happy ripping out the S-video stuff, too

 

[andy_js]

It has a Burr Brown DAC if that helps. It won't be audiophile, but it will be quality.

My hifi uses a Burr Brown DAC and it sounds f**king excellent, so there is nothing to worry about there.

Now I can't wait for my Pandora

 

[rmm2131]

S-video should work well as everyone seems to own at least one recent TV.

As for 800x480 1mbit H.264, I think, according to a previous gp32x post, Pandora was more than capable of that using mPlayer which has VERY broad media playback ability: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/info.html

 

[think_tanker]

When looking at the value that Pandora brings to the table, my idea of selling my 605 wifi and using the funds to purchase the new Archos 5 seems a little silly. I think I have owned every significant portable media player that has been released to date. I know that going with an open piece of hulking hardware will give me peace of mind knowing that I can play pretty much anything without looking over my shoulder at the next device to "do it all". I can't wait to receive it so I can put all these ideas into action.

 

[Chip]

Regarding support for particular video formats, the real question is whether a codec (ie. software) with sufficient performance is available. I don't know if the ARM is up to H.264
...
One thing I do lament about this device is the lack of a high-quality output suitable for plugging into an external display, i.e. VGA or DVI (HDMI has licensing issues, but VGA, which would allow a dongle to component, would be totally fine. S-video? Ugh...). Unless I'm misreading the spec...)

If I AM reading the spec, is there any possibility of hacking in a mini-VGA connector using the "hardware prototyping" area? Are the right pinouts provided on the board somewhere?

Squidge's quick and dirty MPlayer port was able to get to within 15% of full speed playback with a 720p h.264 video @ 600MHz. You could easily make up the difference just with overclocking, though obviously an optimized codec tailored to the DSP (Squidge's port was all CPU) would be even better. Such a codec exists, but TI is charging for it. Ideally, we will get an open source version at some point. We'll just have to overclock (or use less demanding codecs) until then.

As I pointed out earlier, higher quality video out is not an option. The OMAP SoC has two video outputs - One digital (which is driving the LCD) and one analog (which is S-video). The only way to get DVI or HDMI or anything similar would be to hijack the digital signal and process it into your desired format with some additional silicon. This is not something I would suggest anybody other than a well qualified EE attempt

 

[lardman]

I'm ever hopeful that moving some parts of the decoder (e.g. the audio decoding, or video) to the DSP would offload enough ARM CPU cycles to allow full speed decoding of the remaining part, and equally that as the DSP supports 8bit types it won't be as hard to "port" to it as it is for the C55.

Anyway, I'll be looking at this when my Pandora arrives

 

[phrosty]

libavcodec has some ARMv6 optimized stuff, but nothing for ARMv7 or TMS320C64x. Looks like a good project for anyone who is familiar with those

 

[AireTamStorm]

I'm also interested to know if it will be able to handle 800x480 1mbit H.264

It has been demonstrated that the OMAP3 can do 720p Video using h.264, WMV, DivX, and MPEG2/4 codecs.

Here is TI showing off without actually showing anything:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRI0NUaWko8
However the BeagleBoard guys did actually do a demonstration with their Ångström distro of Big Buck Bunny playing in 720p using h.264.

 

[Drack]

The problem with hi res video is how are you going to get it out of the device?

Screen, S-Video out, USB all have the same limitation: Inability to carry that resolution of video.

 

[Charbax]

I'm also interested to know if it will be able to handle 800x480 1mbit H.264

It has been demonstrated that the OMAP3 can do 720p Video using h.264, WMV, DivX, and MPEG2/4 codecs.

Here is TI showing off without actually showing anything:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRI0NUaWko8
However the BeagleBoard guys did actually do a demonstration with their Ångström distro of Big Buck Bunny playing in 720p using h.264.

Yup, but that would require full DSP access. Access to proprietary DSP codecs that cost a certain amount of money for each device. So unless Pandora has some way to legally purchase and install those proprietary codecs, or unless the cost of those come with the purchase of the Pandora (I guess it hasn't been calculated like that), then I guess only way would be to hack DSP codecs or make some open source ones (which would still probably be illegal in software patent countries).

Chip says someone can play 720p h264 on the Cortex ARM 600mhz using mplayer, I dunno if that would be true. It guess it must play on DSP or something for that to be possible.