CE6 Netbook - first impressios & questions

Dana: uploaded it a day or 2 ago. you can find it here: http://www.hpcfactor.com/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=14648&start=31&posts=45
You're in luck as that zip includes tcpmp and nitrogen already extracted and ready to run.

Cheers.

either that or use application msceinf on a windows machine. It will allow you to extract contents (preserving dir structure) of any cab files. That way you can extract cab, pop apps on memory card and move them to the HPC to try without the non installable cab problem

Thanks RTFM, got it. I can see I'm not going to be too productive at work today...

I've found I've had to use msceinf for pretty much all software I have tried on my CE 6.0 tablet.

Dropped RTFM's zipfile onto the SD card and tried a number of them... thanks again. Nitrogen is pretty cryptic; is there a way to simply shuffle play all songs in a folder (including subfolders)? Can't seem to get anything out of TCMP, though... it seems to load a video file but nothing plays.

Dana

It might be an incompatible video codec. Which type of video file is it - FLV, MP4, AVI, or what?

Device seems picky about USB thumb drives... it reads some but not another, even though both are readable on the desktop computer. The one that doesn't work is an older 512MB Sony drive. Doesn't see my mp3 player (Creative Zen) either.

Hmmm, the camera it doesn't see is also a Sony product... coincidence?

When the battery gets down to 20% or so it no longer can read the external hard drive (a 60GB notebook drive in a usb enclosure).

Music playback, either with the included voplayer or Nitrogen, I get occasional loud clicks. Yesterday I thought it was electrical line interference but it does it even when running on battery through the built in speakers. Some mp3's play choppy too, though they play fine on an XP box.

Doesn't see my mp3 player (Creative Zen) either.

Edited by Dana 2010-03-29 7:53 PM

Nitrogen's UI is a bit odd, but yes you can. Click playlist, tap the top of the screen (odd file browser if you ask me) to navigate to you music folder, click the playlist menu on toolbar (bottom left), click options -> select all and double tap any song to start the player, then click the shuffle or repeat button on the main player skin (bottom left). I also tossed gsplayer2e in the zip which i think can do playlists also.

As for tcpmp, check the settings. Make sure video device is set to gdi or direct draw (see which works best on your device) and set up the file associations. By default i think once you load a video you have to click on the video window itself for it to start playing in full screen mode (can be changed in settings)

Cheers.

When I used GSPlayer on my J-720, it also streamed internet radio. I wonder if it does the same on these netbooks.

Jake

RTFM, Nitrogen I'll have to play with a bit more. Biggest issue I seem to have there is the random loud clicks I'm getting, with any player I've tried... but only on some tracks. All play fine on the XP boxes. Seems to be the lower bitrate songs that click the most.

As fpr TCPMP, I don't see any video device setting. But mpeg files seem to play OK... wmv files don't. A codec thing perhaps?

Dana

Jake: Yep it still does if you associate it with .pls files. Tcpmp does also.

Dana: Odd. Should play most anything. It has all the available codecs added. I've played .flv .wmv .avi and mpg/mpeg with it. The audio clicking with mp3's sounds odd. Tried headphones to see if it's just the cheap speakers popping? Otherwise sounds like a poor audio driver or something else is out of whack on that specific device, or maybe it just doesn't like variable bitrate mp3's? Seems odd though as neither my razorbook or tinybook do that.

Cheers

You might see which version (build) of TCPMP you have as they might not all have had the same capability

TCPMP: Tried Direct Draw, GDI, and GAPI all with the same results. Will trying reinstalling it; I don't recall if I got it online somewhere or from RTFM's zipfile. Not sure yet, but it looks as if TCPMP may be playing audio files without the clicking while WMP, Nitrogen, voplayer, and gsplayer all have the clicking. If TCPMP works OK I wonder if the commercial coreplayer may work even better?

Dana

I wouldn’t count on Coreplayer being more capable that TCPMP, it certainly isn’t from the point of view of playing video files.

I have a Maplin MID that came with Coreplayer pre- installed, I also extracted the TCPMP directory from Miopocket, to see how the two compare. TCPMP has more codecs available, though Coreplayer is much more configurable.

Coreplayer may be a little more polished than TCPMP (perhaps) but I haven’t seen anything to convince me it’s more efficient, overall.

Well, I found a large collections of codecs for TCPMP elsewere on the web Now the wmv files try to play, I see the first frame, then get "unexpected program failure. Please send crash.txt to the developers...", and it leaves that first frame on my desktop.

Next time I try it after a device restart, I get the same message even before I try to load a video. Then, trying again, I can get the program to load only if I do it by doubleclicking on an audio file (I set the association)... but the actual file that plays is not the one I selected. Weird. Playing with the various video settings now but it's slow going when you have no documentation and have to keep restarting between crashes.

I don't really even care that much about video, though... biggest problem is still the pops and clicks in audio tracks.

Dana


Edited by Dana 2010-03-31 12:01 PM