Xvid/divx Tv-out Playback Battery Life

[danboid]

I've borrowed my mates GP2X but he doesn't have the TV-out cable yet. I've been very disappointed with the battery life of the GP2X when playing emulators and I've been wondering how it fares playing back a divx or xvid video through a TV-out cable with the GP2X screen turned off? Can it get a good 2hrs+ off a pair of fully charged AAs? Yes, I know that if you're plugging into a TV you will more than likely have access to a power socket for the GP2x but I'm just wondering.

I understand the TV-out cable just has s-video and phono plugs- don't suppose there is another cable I can buy anywhere that just goes straight to SCART from the GP2X? Where's the best place to buy s-video to SCART connectors in the UK?

I'm presuming that I would be able to plug a powered USB2 disk drive into the USB port of the GP2X and play movies off that. I'd like to hear peoples experiences with this kind of set up too.

 

[FluffyPanda]

Depends on the AAs. 2 hours should be easy pickings. Although I don't have a tv out cable to know if it drains the batteries quicker than the screen I very much doubt it.

For the record most people, myself included, are getting about 5-6 hours with a pair of energizer 2500mah batteries while playing emulators and movies with the screen turned on.

If you get a lot less than this you might want to buy some new batteries and try cleaning the contacts.

 

[craigix]

If you get some decent batteries you should get 5+ hours, the tv cable does work with batteries but a power supply is recommended - the cable draws a lot of power. I guess you would get about 2.5 hours from it on batteries.

 

[BenScar]

If you can't find a decent S-Video to SCART lead, give me a shout. Should be able to put one together for you (or anyone else that wants one) pretty cheaply.

This one works pretty well for me (with many thanks to people who populated the WIKI)

This then connects to a SCART plug with a phono video in.

With fully charged batteries I've been able to watch 2 films back to back, no problem at all.

 

[Aninhumer]

I wouldn't think the TV cable would drain much power, its not like its powering the whole TV. Though I can see a power cable would help.

 

[linoleum13]

As for your last question...the GP2X doesnt recognize USB drives plugged into the USB port. At least not yet. Also, the USB port isnt powered either so you would have to plug any USB devices into a wall socket for power. Only SD cards work for storage and playback.

 

[donny662]

I have noticed reduced battery life when using the tv-out. Although, I've never drained a set of batteries, so I don't know exactly how long battery life is. I think you will be able to get 2-2.5 hours out of it with 2500mah batteries and the normal setting in the 1.4 firmware.

 

[aapje89]

As for your last question...the GP2X doesnt recognize USB drives plugged into the USB port. At least not yet. Also, the USB port isnt powered either so you would have to plug any USB devices into a wall socket for power. Only SD cards work for storage and playback.

​

Uhm, the gp2x can recognize usb drives...
Though you need a special cable for it, no "out of the box" compatibility.

 

[Epicenter]

I've never read of anyone successfully doing this. You'd need a connection to the USB Host contacts on the EXT port rather than the main USB port which is to attach to an existing USB bus with a different device acting as host, and your own power source as neither port is powered (most USB drives expect an external brick anyway, with exceptions like my 40gb Seagate USB2.0 disk.) Connectivity and power aside, AND if the kernel has IDE support AND the reveleant modules for USB support compiled in, the disk should be recognized as a device like /dev/sda (SCSI-emulated), and it would need to have a mount point manually set e.g. with an fstab/mtab file pair or with a commandline (e.g. mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt) or similar-- I see no reason it would mount on /mnt/sd which is the only means you could access files on it from the existing menu application. Unless you felt like writing your own or recompiling the menu with updates to check other mount points.

As for the extra power draw using the TV-Out cable, I suppose it makes sense in that the CABLE won't draw any power and the signal current going to the TV will be negligable and have no noticable impact on the batteries-- but the video postprocessor components in the MMSP2 will be active and working to generate an image scaled to fit a TV and actually generating an NTSC or PAL signal. To knock 2 and a half hours off the battery though; I would have to wonder if there's some enormous inefficiency that could be ironed out in subsequent firmwares or if this is unalterable hardware functionality within the MMSP2 itself .. I would hope for the former.

Although, it's not a travesty to plug your '2x into the wall when using a TV. It's not like you're out and about doing so, you're tethered to something ELSE that is plugged into the wall anyway.

 

[FluffyPanda]

Good post, but

I see no reason it would mount on /mnt/sd which is the only means you could access files on it from the existing menu application. Unless you felt like writing your own or recompiling the menu with updates to check other mount points.

can't we just mount it to /nand/hd or something? Then you could navigate to it with the stock menu.

Not that I want an HD for my gp2x at all, I have my xbox for that.

 

[Epicenter]

Hm, it seems like you'd run the risk of a small mistake accidentally dumping a lot of useless crap in NAND. No one wants that. Might be safer to just make some small changes to the menu program to add a 3rd menu item, "USB Storage" or somesuch thing.

 

[FluffyPanda]

read only nand?

 

[Epicenter]

read only nand?

​

Not everyone's using CramFS though. Meh, if you're going to all that trouble I'd just alter the menu.

 

[FluffyPanda]

It's probably easy enough to mount the nand read only. While you're in etc/fstab you can just add "ro" to the relevent line.

The problem with altering the menu is that we don't have the source, and there isn't a feature complete alternative yet.

 

[ThorC]

I've never read of anyone successfully doing this. You'd need a connection to the USB Host contacts on the EXT port rather than the main USB port which is to attach to an existing USB bus with a different device acting as host, and your own power source as neither port is powered (most USB drives expect an external brick anyway, with exceptions like my 40gb Seagate USB2.0 disk.) Connectivity and power aside, AND if the kernel has IDE support AND the reveleant modules for USB support compiled in, the disk should be recognized as a device like /dev/sda (SCSI-emulated), and it would need to have a mount point manually set e.g. with an fstab/mtab file pair or with a commandline (e.g. mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt) or similar-- I see no reason it would mount on /mnt/sd which is the only means you could access files on it from the existing menu application. Unless you felt like writing your own or recompiling the menu with updates to check other mount points.

Hmm, I'm sure I'd read of someone who was watching movies off their HD into the gp2x (Edit: I think this was it)

At the very least, it doesn't seem too hard, there are some good instructions here - This page at least shows mp3 playback from the HD.

If I misunderstood you, I apologise. The main thing is, although I've admitedly not tried it myself, it doesn't seem too hard and seems to have been achieved

 

[aapje89]

I've never read of anyone successfully doing this. You'd need a connection to the USB Host contacts on the EXT port rather than the main USB port which is to attach to an existing USB bus with a different device acting as host, and your own power source as neither port is powered (most USB drives expect an external brick anyway, with exceptions like my 40gb Seagate USB2.0 disk.) Connectivity and power aside, AND if the kernel has IDE support AND the reveleant modules for USB support compiled in, the disk should be recognized as a device like /dev/sda (SCSI-emulated), and it would need to have a mount point manually set e.g. with an fstab/mtab file pair or with a commandline (e.g. mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt) or similar-- I see no reason it would mount on /mnt/sd which is the only means you could access files on it from the existing menu application. Unless you felt like writing your own or recompiling the menu with updates to check other mount points.

Hmm, I'm sure I'd read of someone who was watching movies off their HD into the gp2x (Edit: I think this was it)

At the very least, it doesn't seem too hard, there are some good instructions here - This page at least shows mp3 playback from the HD.

If I misunderstood you, I apologise. The main thing is, although I've admitedly not tried it myself, it doesn't seem too hard and seems to have been achieved

​

yes, this is what I meant.

 

[Epicenter]

That pretty much mirrors what I said, that it requires building a new kernel, an adapter cable, and isn't all that simple. Sure, it can be done. But if someone comes into a thread randomly asking if they can buy a '2x and just plug their HDD into it you'd do well to tell them the whole story, in case they are not technically savvy enough to pull this one off.

 

[Drak]

I dnt understand my movie player only lasts like 1hour with 2500mah Energizer Nimh [brand new w/ 8hour charger]

with music payer I get like 3-4hours. And emus/oldplay at 20mhzs its like 3 hours

Something wrong with my gp2x? I remember I use to get 6hours from the same kind of batteries, but when my charger broke I had to get a new charger+ new batteries as an exchange.

Oh yeah and this lil c106 resitor fell out... Its the one near the battery tongs when you take off the bottom shell.

 

[Epicenter]

I dnt understand my movie player only lasts like 1hour with 2500mah Energizer Nimh [brand new w/ 8hour charger]

with music payer I get like 3-4hours. And emus/oldplay at 20mhzs its like 3 hours

Something wrong with my gp2x? I remember I use to get 6hours from the same kind of batteries, but when my charger broke I had to get a new charger+ new batteries as an exchange.

Oh yeah and this lil c106 resitor fell out... Its the one near the battery tongs when you take off the bottom shell.

​

If it's labelled 'c' it's probably a capacitor, not a resistor. But I doubt that would result in increased battery drain. It's more likely that if your batteries are getting less and less capacity each time you use them, is that they are suffering from the Memory effects of NiMHs.

Each time you charge an NiMH, if it is not FULLY discharged, it only charges to the amount that was FREE-- e.g. if you had a 30% charged cell and you charged it up to 100% it would last for the length of time it would at 70%. Each time you do this, it compounds the problem so you get less and less life. To fix this issue, discharge the batteries ENTIRELY before you charge them, then charge them to 100%. When the GP2X crashes, the batteries are NOT discharged, they are just too weak to drive the machine anymore. To get close to finishing them off, let the machine stay on until the backlight has turned off. If there is still color on the screen, let it keep going until the screen is fully blank. To even BETTER discharge them, put them in a CD Player or a GBA or something else low-power and let it run on them until they can't operate that device anymore. Then charge them.

Although, just letting the '2x burn them until the screen backlight is out is USUALLY good enough to get the majority of your battery's power out of each charge, you will perodically need to remove the memory effect via this method or your capacity on the cells will degrade.

Also, here's a tip to get the best life playing videos-- ensure they are encoded at 320x240, and use a lower bitrate when you encode them. If you use other resolutions, the scaler in the '2x has to put in lots of unneeded work to resize them to 320x240 which burns battery life. Higher bitrates just take more CPU power. Also, underclock your CPU and see if your performance drops-- if it doesn't, play your videos at the lower speed for longer playtimes.

 

[Drak]

I dnt understand my movie player only lasts like 1hour with 2500mah Energizer Nimh [brand new w/ 8hour charger]

with music payer I get like 3-4hours. And emus/oldplay at 20mhzs its like 3 hours

Something wrong with my gp2x? I remember I use to get 6hours from the same kind of batteries, but when my charger broke I had to get a new charger+ new batteries as an exchange.

Oh yeah and this lil c106 resitor fell out... Its the one near the battery tongs when you take off the bottom shell.

​

If it's labelled 'c' it's probably a capacitor, not a resistor. But I doubt that would result in increased battery drain. It's more likely that if your batteries are getting less and less capacity each time you use them, is that they are suffering from the Memory effects of NiMHs.

Each time you charge an NiMH, if it is not FULLY discharged, it only charges to the amount that was FREE-- e.g. if you had a 30% charged cell and you charged it up to 100% it would last for the length of time it would at 70%. Each time you do this, it compounds the problem so you get less and less life. To fix this issue, discharge the batteries ENTIRELY before you charge them, then charge them to 100%. When the GP2X crashes, the batteries are NOT discharged, they are just too weak to drive the machine anymore. To get close to finishing them off, let the machine stay on until the backlight has turned off. If there is still color on the screen, let it keep going until the screen is fully blank. To even BETTER discharge them, put them in a CD Player or a GBA or something else low-power and let it run on them until they can't operate that device anymore. Then charge them.

Although, just letting the '2x burn them until the screen backlight is out is USUALLY good enough to get the majority of your battery's power out of each charge, you will perodically need to remove the memory effect via this method or your capacity on the cells will degrade.

Also, here's a tip to get the best life playing videos-- ensure they are encoded at 320x240, and use a lower bitrate when you encode them. If you use other resolutions, the scaler in the '2x has to put in lots of unneeded work to resize them to 320x240 which burns battery life. Higher bitrates just take more CPU power. Also, underclock your CPU and see if your performance drops-- if it doesn't, play your videos at the lower speed for longer playtimes.

​

could it be that my videos are 29.97fps? maybe I resize em to 320X240 etcc