What software are we still missing on Pandora? (A Wish List)


I meant, do we expect to get 720 p videos to be working through the DSP ? Any idea of the performance we can get?


I'd just like to understand if its a game changer for anything.
I don't know if 720p videos are playable or not, but the h264 decoder only supports baseline profile, so if the video is encoded with higher profile it won't work. (See this wikipedia page for explanation of profiles.)

No so useful then...
 
LaTex would certainly be a good addition. But Lyx would be even better :)
Without LaTeX, LyX has no real use (imnsho). At some point Streak ported LyX but not LaTeX. I'm not sure if it is still available somewhere as I don't use his software. I never liked LyX, it doesn't handle custom (La)TeX code very well. I prefer AUCTeX myself.
 
I meant, do we expect to get 720 p videos to be working through the DSP ? Any idea of the performance we can get?


I'd just like to understand if its a game changer for anything.
I don't know if 720p videos are playable or not, but the h264 decoder only supports baseline profile, so if the video is encoded with higher profile it won't work. (See this wikipedia page for explanation of profiles.)

No so useful then...

If you count xvid encoded videos, I've had 720p+ resolutions work fine on the Pandora even without the DSP. Decoding h264 seems to be the biggest slow down.
 
I might be missing something, but why would you want to play 720p videos on a 480p device? Only reason I can imagine is if you have a lot of those around and you are too lazy / don't have time to transcode them to a lower res. Still feels like a waste of SD card space...
 
I might be missing something, but why would you want to play 720p videos on a 480p device? Only reason I can imagine is if you have a lot of those around and you are too lazy / don't have time to transcode them to a lower res. Still feels like a waste of SD card space...
A lot of my video content is 720p. SD card space doesn't matter, you don't keep the video content on it permanently anyway. Transcoding is annoying, it should just play 720p (i.e. downscale it). Well, too bad. The Pandora absolutely sucks as a video player.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I prefer to watch movies on a big screen (e.g. using my beamer). Even when I'm on the go, I wouldn't use my Pandora to watch a movie - if I have time to watch a movie, I have time to bring out a big laptop and watch the movie with that. So I don't mind too much about the video player capabilities of the Pandora. Still, it would be nice if someone would manage to release a PND with a movie player that uses the DSP to decode high res movies...
 
I might be missing something, but why would you want to play 720p videos on a 480p device? Only reason I can imagine is if you have a lot of those around and you are too lazy / don't have time to transcode them to a lower res. Still feels like a waste of SD card space...

That's exactly why I dont want to transcode. A lot of my rips are in high resolution too, I dont want to re-encode everything everytime I want to watch a movie on the go. And space is not really a problem nowadays, I can get a 32 gb for 20 dollars where I live, it's so cheap I dont even worry about it.

So I don't mind too much about the video player capabilities of the Pandora. Still, it would be nice if someone would manage to release a PND with a movie player that uses the DSP to decode high res movies...

I would rather use the Pandora to watch TV series than movies, by the way. I feel like you, movies are for the big screen. But I dont care as much for tv series.
 
I might be missing something, but why would you want to play 720p videos on a 480p device? Only reason I can imagine is if you have a lot of those around and you are too lazy / don't have time to transcode them to a lower res. Still feels like a waste of SD card space...
A lot of my video content is 720p. SD card space doesn't matter, you don't keep the video content on it permanently anyway. Transcoding is annoying, it should just play 720p (i.e. downscale it). Well, too bad. The Pandora absolutely sucks as a video player.

You don't mention how your 720p videos are encoded so its impossible to say if it they would work even if using the DSP. If they are encoded with H.264 using the popular encoder x264, unless you explicitly constrain the options to be compatible with the baseline profile as M-HT pointed out they aren't going to work and you will have to reencode anyway.


I realize that 720p H.264 video capabilities would be convenient, but where did you get the idea that the Pandora hardware was capable of such a thing? When you say the Pandora sucks as a video player, what devices are you comparing it to?
 
If they are encoded with H.264 using the popular encoder x264, unless you explicitly constrain the options to be compatible with the baseline profile as M-HT pointed out they aren't going to work and you will have to reencode anyway.
They are, and no they won't work. That's why I deem to Pandora to be incapable of any (relevant) video playback. Never really expected it to be capable of doing it either.

I realize that 720p H.264 video capabilities would be convenient, but where did you get the idea that the Pandora hardware was capable of such a thing?
As mentioned, I didn't get that idea anywhere. I merely state that without the capability it is simply not usable for that purpose as transcoding the content is an unacceptable solution (for me).

When you say the Pandora sucks as a video player, what devices are you comparing it to?
Mostly an absolute evaluation, not a relative one. If you want to compare it to another low-power ARM device then take e.g. the raspberry pi, which does a hell of a lot better on h264 encoded content. Xvid and divx are a lot worse though, it doesn't hardware accelerate them. Some of the higher end smartphones tackle it a lot better as well.

Try http://www.localhorst.tv/hlwm-pnd/ instead of awesome wm. http://wwwcip.cs.fau...ftwm/index.html


Herbstluftwm works nice on the pandora, easy to configure and use.
That looks interesting. Thanks for the link, will check it out.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
(not sure if this is possible)


A low level (firmware?) keyboard reconfigurator; I would like to bind my keys (including the gaming controls) in different ways so that non supporting games, apps and emulators can use the optimal key configuration even though they are not made for it. That would make a huge plus for me (some emulators are simply unusable with the configurations they have).
 
Oh, and a slideshow program! Please, please, PLEASE make a decent, lightweight image slideshow program!


EDIT: I know Android can do it, but I'd rather not have to switch to Android or launch a big program like XBMC every time I want to show a slideshow.

What kind of features do you want for the slideshow program ?
 
Some calendar with sync support (i.e. for egroupware) would rock.


It's the only thing where I need my phone right now.
 
I've still found no decent software. I want to be able to span my calendar data onto my Windows PC, Android phone and my Pandora...


I was tempted to look at writing a standalone CalDAV server, then all you'd need is a compatible client (though I don't know any for Windows). Probably won't look any more into that though until P01 reaches release
 
Are there already some open sourced software that do something similar, to use as a base?
As already mentioned:

gpe-calendar worked quite good for me, but as it comes from angstrom-repo all its app-data gets lost when updating the Pandora-firmware.


Not that handy in case of an Calendar-app with lots of sync-settings.
I did a ftp sync with all my differnet calendars over privat webspace, because CalDAV crashed at every start.


Can someone make a PND out of it? Would be a nice start!
 
A port of evolution would be really nice, but any recent version will need more recent libs than our pandora has right now (gtk3, glib etc.)
 
how about a wi-fi auditor software similar to miniwep-gtk compatible with usb wifi adapters plugged to the pandora.
 
something Dropboxish would be good, something skypeish or something like Trillian would also rock. battery economical MP3 player would be awesome (visualisations w/TV-out support would be the icing on the cake).


Oh and Spellgen or similar for D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder Edition would be very useful
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top