Divx on the Mobilepro 880?

I have an MP 880 and would like to try playing videos on it. I've never really looked into the option of playing video due to a lack of storage, but I've just bought a 1gb cf card and would like to try it out. Has aynone had experience playing dvix on the 880? If so, how well does it run and what player is best? Or how about mpeg-1 as well?

I do not know about actually playing files on the 880.. However, there are a number of programs including TCPMP and Wodeon...

There is a review of TCPMP 0.66 in the reviews section.

I have converted my 880 to an '890' by replacing the ROM with one from a 790. Still, this should not affect my major 'finding'. Because the 880/890 has a passive screen, there is always significant 'ghosting' at normal frame-rates during fast-moving scenes. When I rip DVDs and convert them to DivX format, I do so generally at 6 fps -- I find that this gets me just about as good a quality as the MobilePro can display while keeping the file sizes manageable. I have watched a number of movies (e.g., Panic Room) and TV episodes that I never seem to get to otherwise using 6 fps and enjoyed myself.

Hope this helps.

Bruce
MP890 Evangelist

Thanks for the info, Bruce and C:Amie. I just got around to trying it out, downloaded TCMP 0.7 and encoded some videos. It works great at 6 fps, but I can't seem to get it to play smoothly in full screen, it plays well at about 1/4 screen size. I guess this question is for Bruce: Can you watch videos on full screen with no break up in video or audio? If so, could you please tell me which video player and version you're using? For all I know the 880's porcessor might not be ale to handle full screen divx video at all? Thanks!

I don't know if you can get it to play smoothly at full screen. I find that I can't get any bigger than 150% zoom on my MP800 without the video stream becoming jumpy. Part of the problem, ironically, is that the MobilePro has better screen resolution (SVGA versus VGA on most large-screen H/PCs), which means a whole lot more dots to manage in the display. Since most of the video clips I have look nearly as good to me at VGA, I can get smooth video at a bigger size on my (VGA) Clio. I agree, though, that smaller frame rates should improve the flow on the 880 screen. Beyond that, I don't know what other option to suggest.

Bruce, you're timing is just right.

Can you confirm or deny the USB port on your 890 functions after upgrading with the 790 ROM?
I see the usb dlls in the \windows dir on the native 790 so I hoped they provide hardware support on a USB equipped NEC.

If your USB is working guess who'll be trying to pry out their 790 ROM to plop into their 880?
(I still don't understand why my 790 has a stranglehold on the ROM, also my 790 brick just died yesterday)

oh well bruce posted that a month ago if i see it correctly

usb dlls: can you tell me their names? i'm curious!

um... what's a 790 brick?

Patrick80639, I am glad the information was helpful. I normally watch divx's at 150%, but I just ran a Star Trek episode using the 'fit screen' option as a test with no trouble. I am using PocketDVD 1.1 to convert the DVDs; settings are as follows:

Output Type: PPC DIVX 6 fps 2 Pass
Screensize: 320 x 240
Video Quality: 160 Kbps
Audio Quality: 40 Kbps Mono

On the '890', I use BetaPlayer Version STABLE.0.5

BTW, I know there are later versions, but this combination has worked so well for me that I have been reluctant to fiddle with it.


Wallythacker, I have had absolutely NO success with USB on my 890. On the PocketPC Magazine NEC HPC Forum, several of us have speculated that NEC did not include the necessary dll's in the 790 ROM because the 790 does not have USB hardware. I personally think it should be possible to restore USB functionality by loading the necessary dll's in RAM and adjusting the Registry. However, while I have spent hours chasing down drivers and testing them, nothing has worked so far. If I ever have $400 to 'blow', I plan on buying a copy of the HPC2000 Platform Builder and trying to modify its sample USB drivers for use with the 890 -- given the state of my budget, this will probably be a while.

If you are serious about converting an 880 to an 890, I would strongly suggest that you do a search on '890' in the PocketPC Mag NEC HPC Forum and read the posts first. The real problem is replacing the backup battery. The 790 backup battery puts out a slightly higher voltage than the 880 one does; and if you don't replace it, you will get continual messages that the backup battery is low. Unfortunately, NEC did not make it easy to get to the backup battery. There are instructions and some pictures on the PPC Magazine Forum; and if you are interested, I have some others that I could probably post.

As for the missing USB functionality, I would like to have it back but the ability to run HPC2000 programs more than compensates. I do occasionally miss having a mouse, but I would generally use the touchscreen anyway. As for mass storage, I use a 20GB Nixvue Vista and copy files as necessary to a CFcard -- not an elegant solution perhaps, but it works.

I hope this helps.

Bruce
MP890 Evangelist

Bruce, you cannot buy the HPC2000 platformbuilder, you need to be a large oem. The CE 3 core one was available, but it is no longer and cost considerably more than $400 from MS eOEMSB.

Unless you'd care to share a cheaper source?