Pocket projectors: PIQO and Philips PicoPix Max


A lot of people in Germany and France received the PIQO in these days.
Some are happy and prefer this over other projectors, some are complaining for the known issues already discovered in the past (not Full-HD, loud fan, connectivity stuff).

A very big batch of Philips projectors instead is locked at German customs for more than a month, those will have to go in all Europe from there, but seems like that the bureaucracy stuff is giving some trouble...
Philips sent more then once the required sheets to them, but still nothing is moving...
 
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Aaaaand... Philips PicoPix Max is here !! :happy:
As I understood they had to move the packages form Germany DHL to France DHL because in Germany those where stuck for like a month... from France instead the deliveries in all the Europe started in 2 days.

It is damn heavy, incredibly professional package, and right now, I'm projecting next to an open window with direct midday sun coming in... and I see clearly everything !!
Also the autofocus is soo scary, it must have skynet inside, it will destroy the world one day... I'm juggling with it and despite where or how far i point, after 3 seconds is focused !! :cool:
I'm not sure how keystone correction should work, is does something automatically, becase if I disable it the form changes, and I can also recalibrate, but the image isn't square if I rotate a little the projector.
The remote is IR, and the sensor is behind the projector, but seems to work ok from many angles.

Anyway I still have to update the software, and as I have seen from the newsletters, they did a lot of things with it in the mean time.


The PIQO instead will require "a few week more" as the support told me in the last mail. :oops:


EDIT:
Oh, the keystone correction has a tilting sensor that recognize how it was moved from the original straight position... and the calibration happens even when you turn it off and on, so I could have messed some things up when I was playing with the settings while juggling with it around the house.

EDIT:

NOOOOO !!! AWESOME !! I didn't know that the remote works also as a bluetooth airmote device !!
Now not only it works without having to pointing it to the projector, but it uses the mouse pointer too !! :cool:

The audio is SUPER LOUD !! I had to turn down volume to not break glasses in my house !! :D
Bass sounds are not exceptional, but are pretty awesome considering the size of the device.
 
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Am I missing something or on Android there are no video players with volume normalization, is Android stuff so "empty" ?! :confused:

I only found one App in the entire PlayStore that does that, when even VLC seems missing this feature ?! :-#

play.google.com

Night Video Player - voice amp - Apps on Google Play

Video player with voice/speech enhancing , sound normalization
play.google.com play.google.com
 
I've never seen an audio player with volume normalisation in it, if you mean that; the opposite of dynamic range. I've just found out how I can do it ahead of time using ffmpeg to preprocess video, but it's not normally something I want to do because I use headphones mostly.
 
levi said:
I've never seen an audio player with volume normalisation in it, if you mean that; the opposite of dynamic range. I've just found out how I can do it ahead of time using ffmpeg to preprocess video, but it's not normally something I want to do because I use headphones mostly.
Click to expand...

I have a lot of movies in MKV format that have a too high range of volume... for example "The Lord Of The Rings", at the beginning is very low when explaining the Ring story, then the battle starts and the speakers explode !!
But I always watched them everywhere without issues, because like 70% of PC players have volume normalization, and also all the Smart-TV I used... it's just the first time that I use Android to watch a movie, but considering the age of the OS and the existence of "Android-TV" I was pretty sure that a "basic" functionality like this was already present...

I know that I can codify again the files, but when I create MKV I prefer to just compress video, while leaving the audio volume as it is... also because volume normalization is a difficult thing to do, in the past I had some bad experience where the volume was almost perfectly in the entire movie, but some points had metallic sounds... so I tried again, and other points were too low... and again... but every time I had to listen to the ENTIRE track to be sure...
So in the end, I started to use live normalization, and never had issues again.

By the way, Night Video Player works really well, it also supports a lot of codecs.
One of the players installed by default in the projector doesn't even read AC3... in another one I had to disable HW accelleration, but VLC uses it without issues...
 
Yes, that's what I thought you meant by volume normalisation. The LotR movies are not in my collection, but I've never had any trouble with any of my movies. If I really needed to I could alter the volume in VLC instantly using the up and down keys, but if you're using a device without a keyboard I guess that's tricky.
 
levi said:
Yes, that's what I thought you meant by volume normalisation. The LotR movies are not in my collection, but I've never had any trouble with any of my movies. If I really needed to I could alter the volume in VLC instantly using the up and down keys, but if you're using a device without a keyboard I guess that's tricky.
Click to expand...

Well, with Smart-TV and the remote is pretty fast to turn up and down the volume, just I don't want to stay alert to act fast when this happens... most of the time when I'm watching a movie I'm eating or I'm just so relaxed that I don't want to move a muscle until it's finished :cool:
 
PowerGod said:
Am I missing something or on Android there are no video players with volume normalization, is Android stuff so "empty" ?! :confused:
Click to expand...

I have no clue about Android media players either, but you could try out the unofficial Android build of mpv. UI is even more barebones than VLC, but you have the full config power of mpv available (as well as keyboard controls if one is connected) if you're willing to get down to it. I think you can utilize ffmpeg audio normalization filters through that. I have never done this myself though, so I'd be just quoting Google on that topic, but what comes up on searches seem promising.
 
@PowerGod Normalization is bringing the peaks in volume to a predefined level and scale all the rest accordingly. It seems, you want to bring the lows and highs in volume closer together - that's dynamic range compression.
 
Djoga'Ro said:
@PowerGod Normalization is bringing the peaks in volume to a predefined level and scale all the rest accordingly. It seems, you want to bring the lows and highs in volume closer together - that's dynamic range compression.
Click to expand...

When I check "Normalization" in the players, they do what I want... I don't know if that function is miscalled.
When it's active, I can hear whispers without having to turn up volume, and I can listen to screams without having to turn down the volume... I don't know what happens in between, but just works.
 
On second thought, I may have stopped thinking about it early. I only thought in terms of whole-track-as-one adjustments as done with my mp3 collection. Forget, what I said. You wouldn't want DRC. It's the ailment of audio CD.
 
PIQO is still delivering, people have the same mixed feelings, except for this really bad issue:

Virginia Chen said:
Hi Everyone,
PLEASE BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR PIQO PROJECTOR. I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS PRODUCT TO ANYONE TO BUY AND FOR THOSE THAT HAVE THIS PRODUCT ALREADY, PLEASE STOP USING IT NOW.
The reason why I say this is because today 07/01/20 my piqo projector literally WENT UP IN SMOKE and I was NOT EVEN USING IT FOR DAYS. I woke up to my room flooded with smoke and it put me and my boyfriend in danger. The fact that this tiny projector reacted this way on standby definitely shows it’s NOT SAFE to use.

HERE IS A PHOTO AS PROOF THAT I HAVE THE PRODUCT: https://i.gyazo.com/13fb40d11cb6d98de51e3ee74eea342c.jpg Please note I sent an email to them about this issue and before that I've sent emails about concerns of my piqo not working properly. Apparently lots of overheating issues and nothing got resolved. I've seen this product overheat and it's DANGEROUSLY HOT. Please be careful and safe everyone. This is definitely a product not designed well or properly with safety in mind
Click to expand...
 
Behold !! :cool:

PIQO.jpg


In the next days I can do some "unfair" comparison with the Philips PicoPix Max.
 
@Phlyra : I don't worry about that, first of all because no one else reported things like that, when people complained at every occasion, and also because the girl told that the device was in "standby"... but the device has no "standby" mode... it is on or off... maybe it was in charge, but still why leave a thing like that in charge for days ?

@Askarus : As I told, "2 Months" :cool:

Now, for the real things... and you will never expect what I will say, so fasten your seat belts !!

I did a mistake... buying the Philips projector... because the PIQO is AWESOME !! :cool: (no, really, no sarcasm here i swear !!)

I should have really waited for this thing to come instead of rushing for another projector, because it is exactly what I needed.
It was a bet for me to fund a project so discussed, and I had to read trough the promises to find what I would have considered an acceptable truth, but in the end I feel I actually won that bet.

The PIQO was highly criticized for many points, and now I can look at them by myself.

So let's start with some demistifications:
  • "The Speaker volume is too low" -> NO, I tried a random movie in my room and I had to lower volume to half to not lose my ears. Maybe if you are in a movie theater could be difficult to ear it anyway... you know how sound works...
  • "It is not bright" -> NO, I have to actually lower its brightness in a dark room. By default it is set to the max, and like this is perfectly visible in a shadowy area of a room lit by the sun. (As a comparison, its maximum setting somehow corresponds to half the maximum brightness of the PicoPix Max)
  • "The fan is loud" -> The fan is loud almost exactly then the one of the PicoPix Max... personally I hear it only if I want to hear it... it's like watching the TV while you are cooling down yourself with an actual fan, and that is even more loud...
  • "It becomes too hot" -> Maybe because it's a projector? Anyway it's summer, and as far as I don't cover the fan holes, the temperature doesn't give troubles to my hand. The PicoPix Max could become even hotter, but because it's heavier/bigger you don't totally grab it with your hand, like could easily happen with the PIQO.
  • "It's not 1080p" -> Well, technically it's a YES, but the way it looks requires a more indepth explanation that will follow. (tl;dr -> Android interface is visibly pixellated, but movies are good)
  • "It's blurry" -> I rotated the manual focus wheel and wasn't blurry anymore.
  • "The tripod attach is not standard, you want that we use only your tripods !!" -> NO, I tried all the 2 tripods and the wall hang with the PicoPix Max, and matches perfectly. Them are anyway meant for the weight of the PIQO and becomes flat under the PicoPix Max heavy weight :D

Considering the lack of comunication from the developers, it could be also possible that the hardware I have differs from the one of the previous owners, and maybe those complains actually were real for their devices... but in my case, it feels almost perfect.

There was only a thing missing from my package, the europe wall plug adaptor for the charger... so I can't use the charger right now, but there's the USB cable too anyway... I'll contact the support to see if they can send me one. (But in the worst case it's not difficult to find one anyway.)


Image quality:

The menu and the apps are visibly "low res" somehow, you can see square pixels and black dots between them like in the old CRT monitors.
This thing is particularly visible on text fonts...
But the strange thing, it that videos are really sharp... maybe they are not 1080p, but they are really good.
If I force my eyes to focus on those black pixels I described before, I can actually see them only if I remain REALLY focused on them AND the image remains still... because if some color or something else changes in the video, I loose the focus and I can't see them anymore, but just a sharp and really good image...
This is how difficult is to see them... so, in my opinion, all the people who were complaining about video quality, were actually exaggerating.

Anyway the strange thing is that, for example the YouTube APP, shows a beautiful video, but if I click on it, making visible the player interface, it has the text font horrible, while the video playing in the background is still good !!

I don't know how Android works... but seems to me like the Android interface resolution is different from the one of the video... or maybe is just an optic joke...

The important thing is that the projector is good for movies, and that was the main reason for me to have it.


...more to follow... :oops:
 
Last edited:
PowerGod said:
@Phlyra : I don't worry about that, first of all because no one else reported things like that, when people complained at every occasion, and also because the girl told that the device was in "standby"... but the device has no "standby" mode... it is on or off... maybe it was in charge, but still why leave a thing like that in charge for days ?

@Askarus : As I told, "2 Months" :cool:

Now, for the real things... and you will never expect what I will say, so fasten your seat belts !!

I did a mistake... buying the Philips projector... because the PIQO is AWESOME !! :cool: (no, really, no sarcasm here i swear !!)

I could have really waited for this thing to come instead of rushing for another projector, because it is exactly what I needed.
It was a bet for me to fund a project so discussed, and I had to read trough the promises to find what I would have considered an acceptable truth, but in the end I feel I actually won that bet.

The PIQO was highly criticized for many points, and now I can look at them by myself.

So let's start with some demistifications:
  • "The Speaker volume is too low" -> NO, I tried a random movie in my room and I had to lower volume to half to not lose my ears. Maybe if you are in a movie theater could be difficult to ear it anyway... you know how sound works...
  • "It is not bright" -> NO, I have to actually lower its brightness in a dark room. By default it is set to the max, and like this is perfectly visible in a shadowy area of a room lit by the sun. (As a comparison, its maximum setting somehow corresponds to half the maximum brightness of the PicoPix Max)
  • "The fan is loud" -> The fan is loud almost exactly and the one of the PicoPix Max... personally I hear it only if I want to hear it... it's like watching the TV while you are cooling down yourself with an actual fan, that is even more loud...
  • "It becomes too hot" -> Maybe because it's a projector? Anyway it's summer, and as far as I don't cover the fan holes, the temperature doesn't give my troubles to my hand. The PicoPix Max could become even hotter, but because it's heavier/bigger you don't totally grab it with your hand, like could easily happen with the PIQO.
  • "It's not 1080p" -> Well, technically it's a YES, but the way it looks requires a more indepth explanation that will follow. (tl;dr -> Android interface is visibly pixellated, but movies are good)
  • "It's blurry" -> I rotated the manual focus wheel and wasn't blurry anymore.
  • "The tripod attach is not standard, you want that we use only your tripods !!" -> NO, I tried all the 2 tripods and the wall hang with the PicoPix Max, and matches perfectly. Them are anyway meant for the weight of the PIQO and becomes flat under the PicoPix Max heavy weight :D

Considering the lack of comunication from the developers, it could be also possible that the hardware I have differs from the one of the previous owners, and maybe those complains actually were real for their devices... but in my case, it feels almost perfect.

There was only a thing missing from my package, the europe wall plug adaptor for the charger... so I can't use the charger right now, but there's the USB cable too anyway... I'll contact the support to see if they can send me one. (But in the worst case it's not difficult to find one anyway.)


Image quality:

The menu and the apps are visibly "low res" somehow, you can see square pixels and black dots between them like in the old CRT monitors.
This thing is particularly visible on text fonts...
But the strange thing, it that videos are really sharp... maybe they are not 1080p, but they are really good.
If I force my eyes to focus on those black pixels I described before, I can actually see them only if I remain REALLY focused on them AND the image remains still... because if some color or something else changes in the video, I loose the focus and I can't see them anymore, but just a sharp and really good image...
This is how difficult is to see them... so, in my opinion, all the people who were complaining about video quality, were actually exaggerating.

Anyway the strange thing is that, for example the YouTube APP, shows a beautiful video, but if I click on it, making visible the player interface, it has the text font horrible, while the video playing in the background is still good !!

I don't know how Android works... but seems to me like the Android interface resolution if different from the one of the video... or maybe is just an optic joke...

The important thing is that the projector is good for movies, and that was the main reason for me to have it.


...more to follow... :oops:
Click to expand...
Haha fair enough - glad to hear you’re enjoying it! I guess a lot of AnyBeam backers must feel similar...
 
One of the things I don't like about PIQO is that is uses a full google environment... so I need to use an account to have access to the PlayStore... a thing that I want to evade, if I can...

There is the possibility to install APKs manually, but I'm not sure where I can download them, considering the compatibility to the Android version of the device, that it's pretty old. (7.1 Nougat)

I'm principally interested in getting "Night Video Player" for it... because its internal player has the same limits (if not more), then the ones I found on the PicoPix Max.

With "if not more" I mean that the internal player complains about Copyright on almost every video I encoded, and some logo like "Dolby Surround" appear over the video for some seconds, and I don't like that... then, as in the other projector, some can't be played and some are without audio, but the most strange thing is that in some of them an error message appears telling that the video can't be played, and then it plays it perfectly...

So, well I just need to get an alternate player to solve the situation, exactly as I did with the other projector... the only difference is that it had a more recent Android version and to find APP was just like a "APPNAME APK DOWNLOAD" on google... but in this case I'll have to specify what version of the APP I could use...

Where I can find APKs for a particolar version of Android ?

I can't see versioning anywhere when I search for APKs... them are just "for Android"...

EDIT:

I found out that it's not the Android version the problem, but the architecture !!

I'm not sure if the one working was " armeabi-v7a " or " arm64-v8a " because the files were downloaded all with the same name numbered...

Anyway Night Video Player now it is doing its job perfectly !! :)
 
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PowerGod said:
One of the things I don't like about PIQO is that is uses a full google environment... so I need to use an account to have access to the PlayStore... a thing that I want to evade, if I can...

There is the possibility to install APKs manually, but I'm not sure where I can download them, considering the compatibility to the Android version of the device, that it's pretty old. (7.1 Nougat)

I'm principally interested in getting "Night Video Player" for it... because its internal player has the same limits (if not more), then the ones I found on the PicoPix Max.

With "if not more" I mean that the internal player complains about Copyright on almost every video I encoded, and some logo like "Dolby Surround" appear over the video for some seconds, and I don't like that... then, as in the other projector, some can't be played and some are without audio, but the most strange thing is that in some of them an error message appears telling that the video can't be played, and then it plays it perfectly...

So, well I just need to get an alternate player to solve the situation, exactly as I did with the other projector... the only difference is that it had a more recent Android version and to find APP was just like a "APPNAME APK DOWNLOAD" on google... but in this case I'll have to specify what version of the APP I could use...

Where I can find APKs for a particolar version of Android ?

I can't see versioning anywhere when I search for APKs... them are just "for Android"...

EDIT:

I found out that it's not the Android version the problem, but the architecture !!

I'm not sure if the one working was " armeabi-v7a " or " arm64-v8a " because the files were downloaded all with the same name numbered...

Anyway Night Video Player now it is doing it's job perfectly !! :)
Click to expand...
Sounds like the AnyBeam would have another advantage there in the sense that it pretty much doesn’t have an OS, let alone Google limitations!
 
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