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Archos 70 / 101

Ah... can you test a clip for me? It has embedded subs (just a text stream) and people with the Archos 70 told me when they played it they could enable or disable the subs from appearing onscreen using the default Archos media player. I made this clip for someone to test over at the ArchosFans forum but it should still be useful to test and see if the new or so-called updated media player from 2.2 can still pull the subs out:

http://www.mediafire.com/?io5at474li7wqtv

Any comments about the quality would be nice as well. One person reported a lot of artifacts between about 34 and 44 seconds but, I can't speak for that on the Archos 70 as I don't own one, but on the PC that created the clip it looks fine. This isn't some HD clip down-converted/encoded to DVD resolution, it's from the retail DVD "Rush - Beyond The Lighted Stage" so when it's played on the Archos 70 it gets scaled up to 800 pixels wide. On the 101 it'll get upscaled even more for full screen playback.

My concern is whether or not the media player picks up the subtitle stream in that clip - if it doesn't then that's another problem with the 2.2 Froyo build as 2.1 on the same device does allow the subs to be enabled/disabled with the media player options.

No hurry, test it whenever. Thanks!
 
Checking, is that the one with the drummer?

BTW, less than 24 hours and google market is up again
 
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Yep, "The Professor," Neil Peart himself. That clip is Chapter 4, "The New Guy" where they discuss him in his youth and then joining the band but that encode is just a 1 minute sample, not the whole chapter.

You won't be able to snap a screenshot and I don't really need one (but people at the other forum tried); all that shows up in a screenshot are the subs. :D

Just want to know if the subs are there and you can turn them on and off manually in the default player.
 
Sly,

some simple questions if you don't mind...

how is multimedia playback? what file formats have you used? video and music quality? sound?

how is browsing? correct me if i'm wrong, but Android only gives you the mobile 'version' of websites right?

finally...have you used Skype on your 101?

Thanks!
 
@Bahamut
Video runs ok, aside from the glitchy part you mentioned. The subs it uses are still supported.

Cliff Couser said:
Sly,

some simple questions if you don't mind...

how is multimedia playback? what file formats have you used? video and music quality? sound?
Click to expand...

Mostly MKV subtitled anime. It does support other codecs as well, including DIVX, XVID, FLAC, and probably a few others. I don't use my iPod anymore , and my media is being run over the archos now.

Video quality is pretty good but you have to look at the screen straight on to get the best colors. Black is really black which makes it better than my desktop LCD.

If you want to see what it's like, just look at your laptop/netbook. It's pretty much the same thing. You look at it at one angle, and the picture turns white, look at it from another and it turns black. Doesn't really affect me since i normally watch videos with the screen facing me.

Sound quality... i don't think i'm qualified to judge. But it does have pretty good speakers, as in really loud ones.

how is browsing? correct me if i'm wrong, but Android only gives you the mobile 'version' of websites right?
Click to expand...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWVENR-DqH0

Both the stock and dolphin browsers has profile to trick the website into thinking it's a practicular browser. If you want it to say it's an android, set it to android, if you want desktop, just set it to desktop.

The stock browser can identify itself as either a mobile or as a desktop. The Dolphin browser has options for Android, Desktop, iPhone or iPad.

finally...have you used Skype on your 101?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Not yet. I'm mostly using this for media playback. Which at the moment is limited to english ones since the subtitle function broke during the update.
 
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Kinda going off topic...but this just caught my attention...

Sly said:
HDMI Demo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYAyQQk2C78&hd=1
Click to expand...
This is so full of win. Do other devices do this? Specifically - phones?

If my EVO would export its interface to HDMI and worked with a bluetooth keyboard/mouse, I would have no need for a laptop. My laptop is (normally) just used when I want a screen bigger than my phone. Someone could make a portable 13" hdmi screen with a rechargeable battery and I would be content.

Hell, they could make a docking station in the form of a laptop. You don't need the cpu, ram, processor, LAN, storage, OS, software, etc - just let the phone do that stuff. The "laptop" would just be to provide a screen, keyboard, touchpad. Maybe audio outputs. Let it charge the phone too.

Kinda like akai is using the ipod in their SynthStation. They provide hardware. They let the ipod act as the brain of the device.

If priced right, netbooks would die IMO.

This HDMI demo sends my mind spinning of the convergence possibilities of these devices (android, ios, whoever) - especially the phones.
 
Seems there's another lock on the google market, to get access to yahoo apps, i had to do this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l-nySibzeA

Works on my Archos 101

@doctah
HDMI and USB are becoming standard for android slates (Do china slates have them?) so it *should* work on all of them. I just haven't seen a demo of it being used like this on the others.

It's not gonna replace netbooks. Because my netbook has effectively replaced my desktop (Power outage protection, portability, setup like a desktop w/ full keyboard/mouse/22" monitor, CPU more than powerful enough for multimedia stuff). I don't need a power hungry quad core I5 for most of my tasks. The rig on my sig is collecting dust.

As for docking stations, there's a few of them out already for china slates. They're just leather cases with keyboards sewn in that turns your slate into a laptop. However, i would advice against it because they don't have properly placed rubber feet unlike real laptops, so the keyboard is effectively touching the screen. Not something i'd recommend.
 
If a netbook has replaced your desktop the HP Slate would be perfect for you as that's what it is essentially at it's core.
 
OT:
@heatlesssun
HP Slate is a bit out of my budget. And the netbook in question is an MSI u230. Which uses a dual core *desktop* x64 CPU :D I can do 3D modeling on this thing! It is arguably one of the fastest netbooks on the planet and other than 3D games, it beats nVidia's Dual Core ION on everything else ;) I've used an Acer AOA150 for a year before i got this tho, so i'm fully aware of what you can do with a single core atom... which is a heck of a lot.


Back on Topic:
I've gotten Yahoo Messenger Video running on my Archos 101, you can now video chat with someone's PC. YM is more prevalent than Fring so this is a big plus.
 
Sly said:
OT:
@heatlesssun
HP Slate is a bit out of my budget. And the netbook in question is an MSI u230. Which uses a dual core *desktop* x64 CPU :D I can do 3D modeling on this thing! It is arguably one of the fastest netbooks on the planet and other than 3D games, it beats nVidia's Dual Core ION on everything else ;) I've used an Acer AOA150 for a year before i got this tho, so i'm fully aware of what you can do with a single core atom... which is a heck of a lot.


Back on Topic:
I've gotten Yahoo Messenger Video running on my Archos 101, you can now video chat with someone's PC. YM is more prevalent than Fring so this is a big plus.
Click to expand...

Skype please...try Skype ;)
 
I don't really use skype, but here's what it looks like.

I used a second skype account to put in the archos.

And just FYI, i have five yahoo accounts, one for each device so i can pass values between them.

fb20101203171126.png
fb20101203165255.png

fb20101203170428.png


I can't seem to find the option for video. The audio's pretty good tho.
 
Not sure what to make of this, but they down clocked the CPU in the froyo update. Apparently, the speed improvement meant they downclocked it to add battery life. /facepalm
 
Yep, there's a lot of discussion about that over at the ArchosFans forums, and a pretty lame thing for Archos to do considering they use that 1 GHz CPU speed as a major selling point. Cutting 20% off the potential performance is basically kneecapping people that upgrade to 2.2.

Thankfully, using SetCPU (once rooted) can get back that lost performance). Rumors over there at that forum suggest they did it on purpose to see how the update goes for people then they'll issue another update "at some point soon" to restore the full 1 GHz speed.

Just seems a little underhanded to me - sell a product that works at a given speed, then issue the update everyone has been expecting and chop performance by 20%... that's just not right.
 
yeah, i did the mentioned overclock to remedy the underclock (which is annoying). It makes the tablet experience substantially better.

But I haven't had much luck getting the bluetooth tether to work consistently on my phone. I just bought the USB Host cable, so hopefully it will at least tether via usb.
 
I haven't really used the bluetooth since i got froyo, but the bluetooth GPS that's now integrated into it, now connects to my phone's onboard GPS every time. They've made it really easy now. I just turn on bluetooth from the control bar, run google maps/earth, and it automatically connects to my phone for the GPS data.

When i get a chance to take this out in our car (I usually commute so i need one hand on the guardrail, and the other on my backpocket), i'll make video of it.

I'm gonna go see if there's a turn by turn GPS app for manila.
 
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yeah the GPS works for me. But my concern is more about the data since I have no use for the tablet when I am at home or at work (where i normally would have wifi)
 
I find that the two most important things to have installed are the SetCpu app to have this thing running back at full speed and the LaunchPro app because the normal launcher for android is pretty bad and unresponsive
 
I've been using my archos 101 for about a week now, love this thing but it does have few minor issues,
  • the touch screen is super sensitive and until I realized I was putting too much pressure on it I had problems moving widgets etc on the home screen.
  • Had problems staying connected to my wifi until I changed security from wpa2 to wpa. The device still showed connected to the wifi but no network traffic would go through and I had to manually disconnect/reconnect. Changing encryption to WPA solved the problem
  • Only 256MB Ram is kinda limiting, you have to watch what services you run or you'll be out of memory in no time.
The built in archos movie player is pretty good and it had no problems playing any of my SD content over the network but it wouldn't play any HD stuff without the Cinema plugin. The plugin should have been included in the stock firmware, they market the device as HD media player but it doesn't play most of the files without the extra plugin.

Overall I'm very happy with the tablet.
 
The issue with the "HD stuff" is because that's got AC3 soundtracks most likely - the only things the Archos media player can't handle out of the box are AC3 and MPEG2 media (basically DVD content) and it's because of the licensing issues (oh joy).

If you've got an h.264 HD MKV file with a simple stereo soundtrack (AAC or MP3 audio) it'll pay without issues, but if it's got AC3 audio in it, forget it, gotta have that plugin.

Also, it's been demonstrated that some very high bitrate HD content can choke the device so, more often than not people find themselves encoding or re-encoding that kind of media to lower bitrates, or potentially just streaming it onto the device over a network connection.
 
ya i know it's because of AC3 but most HD content has 5.1 or better audio so it's ac3 or dts. Kinda pointless making 720p or higher res video with crappy stereo sound. I'm ok paying extra $20 to be able to play the files I was just saying it should have been included.
 
As stated, I believe there's something in the licensing agreement that prevents Archos from including the plugin or the capability directly with the device out of the box and requires the end user to purchase it separately. I've seen comments to that effect from Archos employees in the past and also from people familiar with how Dolby Labs handles the licensing of the AC3 decoders, etc.

Seems pretty stupid in this world but, I suppose things just get worse more by the second. Personally all the HD content I have that gets encoded to MKV files gets a stereo soundtrack and all the 5.1/7.1 stuff just gets tossed, go figure.
 
This seems odd because i just tried running an anime on my pc that was running fine on my Archos previously and there's no audio. I tried reinstalling the codec packs but that didn't seem to work.

When I checked the videos profile it turned out to be using ac3. Why did it run on the archos? Is there more than one kind of ac3 and one of them got left behind?
 
I bought the 32 model at sears for 129.99.. Nice little handle held media device. Plays MKVs well too.

Encoding settings used on the mkv

Format profile : High@L3.2

x264 core 107 r1766 f9f0035
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:-2:-2 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=10 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=64 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=0 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=3 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=0 / interlaced=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=8 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=23 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=40 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=418 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / vbv_maxrate=22000 / vbv_bufsize=15000 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00 / nal_hrd=none
 
Sly said:
Can it play 720p?
Click to expand...

Video Playback
• MPEG-4 HD (up to 720p, 30 fps@6Mbps)
• MPEG-4 (ASP@L5 AVI, up to DVD resolution, 30 fps@8Mbps)
• H.264 HD (HP@L3.1 up to 720p, 30 fps@5Mbps)
• WMV9/VC1 (AP up to 720p 30 fps@10Mbps)
• M-JPEG (Motion JPEG Video) in VGA resolution
 
Dion said:
I bought the 32 model at sears for 129.99.. Nice little handle held media device. Plays MKVs well too.

Encoding settings used on the mkv

Format profile : High@L3.2

*snip*
Click to expand...

Ok, so what resolution was that? :D
 
You're actually encoding for the Archos 32 at 720p resolution, even considering it's just a 400x240 screen?

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but as the 32 doesn't have an HDMI output capability (whereas the 43 does, but that's an 854x480 screen also), I'm not sure I see the point unless you're encoding for some other purpose while maintaining compatibility for the 32 in the encoding process which is perfectly understandable. ;)

Just curious, I suppose.
 
Bahamut said:
You're actually encoding for the Archos 32 at 720p resolution, even considering it's just a 400x240 screen?

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but as the 32 doesn't have an HDMI output capability (whereas the 43 does, but that's an 854x480 screen also), I'm not sure I see the point unless you're encoding for some other purpose while maintaining compatibility for the 32 in the encoding process which is perfectly understandable. ;)

Just curious, I suppose.
Click to expand...

No i encoded mine at 400 x X. Just saying they all support 720p.
 
That means you don't have to convert most of your videos for it either :)
 
Yes, the 70/101 can handle some MKV files with 720p content, but if they've got AC3 audio, forget it - that means you're paying extra for the AC3/MPEG2 decoder and I don't think I'd go that far myself. I'd rather just remux the MKV files with a simple stereo soundtrack I suppose - that would save some space since the results would be smaller files in the long run.

But I suppose most folks want that soundtrack so they'll keep the files intact as they acquired them.
 
Why, because Windows has been around for decades and Android has been around for what, 3 years, and even less on "tablets"? :D

Come on, give it a rest already, heatless. Android and the accompanying hardware are the new kids on the block (not like any of us care about the damned iPad and it's practically locked-up-like-Fort-Knox basis).

We're trying to get things rolling. People went through all this shit years ago when Windows tablets first appeared (I owned several of 'em back when they were first introduced by Viewsonic) so, let us have some fun will ya? :p
 
I wish it had 3G capability. I'd buy the 101 in a heartbeat. Yes, you can tether it to your phone but thats just one more thing I would need to do. Hopefully these tablet makers will make 3G/4G units soon. I wouldnt mind paying for the extra feature.
 
Bahamut said:
We're trying to get things rolling. People went through all this shit years ago when Windows tablets first appeared (I owned several of 'em back when they were first introduced by Viewsonic) so, let us have some fun will ya? :p
Click to expand...

I've been using Windows on slates and tablets for many a year myself and have seen my share of issues. Playing video however wasn't generally one of them.;)

And I know it'll get better, just like everything else in the slate and tablet world.
 
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