I wonder how the video quality is or either one. The hava is cheaper but wonder which has the best upload video quality. I know the slingbox has software for $30 for android, but I heard the software for the hava is free, I think.
I've used the sling player and it's pretty cool. Video looks good, works well on 3g
worth every penny. there is nothing like sitting around in an office watching whatever you want. video quality is great with a good signal. sling player
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
works awesome on strong 3g and even better on 4g
ok great
There is someone near me selling the previous version of the slingbox hd pro. It's colored red. I wonder if the newer ones have some better compression built in giving better video quality or does it 99% depend on the internet connection.
I am considering this as well. Does anyone know if the quality on your phone depends only on the connection to your mobile network? Or does the quality also depend on the connection speed of your home network? I currently have att DSL which maxes out at 600kbs. Since you have to plug the sling box into your home network I was just curious.
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App
I have one and it does depend on your Home network uploading speed. Its best to have 1mb or more or it will skip a lot. Also your 3g strength factors in as well.
Sent from my Evo!
I have the slingplayer software with both a slinghd and slingpro.
And actually, the quality sucks. I posted screenshots some time ago. The aliasing is out of control. And this was on my LAN. And before the doubters say anything, feel free to post your own screenshots.
I have had a sling box for a few years now. I Couldn't be happier with it. I do have a 20/5 connection at my house so this helps me alot. The video quality is pretty good on 3g. I have watched whole basketball games on a 3g connection and its more than watchable even with all the action. Streaming on the laptop is even better for obvious reasons.
Found my old post:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6915956&postcount=28
Decide for yourself. I think youtube looks 10x better. Which is ridiculous.
I use it through the Dish Network software. I have found it to have good quality for shows that I don't have time to watch at home.
i have had my slingbox since the day it was released i love it , as far as the app i find that it works very well, the quality is not bad im very impressed at this point al though i wish it did support HDMI out so i could watch on my projector but hopefully CM will be able to release Full HDMI out on his next release. other than that it is worth the price. only flaw i find is i wish there was a channel guide that was built into the app that would adapt to what provider you are using for cable or sat. other than that very beautiful app and is a must have!!!
I agree with you ^
Sent from my Evo!
I actually just got an older Slingbox AV (no HD hookups) just before Thanksgiving so I could fool around with it while at my parents' for the holiday. I was worried it would suck over 3G since I can only get Time Warner Cable at my home and the upload is a pitiful .5Mbit. I was pleasantly surprised at how watchable it was using my Evo and my original eeePC over the internet. I kind of want to try a Slingbox HD now just so I can fully utilize the screen on the Evo. The Zoom/Aspect ration options are a little lacking and I can't get a letterboxed video to take up the entire screen, but SD signals still look great.
It's definitely not Youtube quality as someone said, but I think that mostly has to do with 1)not having an HD slingbox and 2)not having the upload bandwidth from home to send out a higher quality stream.
Just got mine today. Love it, used it all day at work on 3G and the quality was amazing.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
I have a slingplayer pro and on the 3g network it streams directv perfect with a good signal... if you do not have good internet it will suck giant donkey balls though
i had the slingbox solo and it was clutch. didn't even try the regular av cables, went a bought the hd composite cables.
it definitely depends on the connection you have. If you set it to "auto" from your PC, then you will get poor video when you have weak reception, but if you have good signal all day, you can set it to "better" or "best" quality and have no real issue.
best investment ever. I did rid it cause my gf at home would have to watch whatever i was watching when i was working. saving for an HD ($300) cuz i believe you can watch seperate channels with it.
Related
Hi all... just a couple of quick questions...
1) What is the audio quality of the HD2 like compared to the Ipod or Touch Diamond? I have both, and I can certainly tell the difference between the two when playing mp3 files, but there is an even bigger difference when playing videos. The Ipod always wins...
2) What's the range like when using a wifi router? My Diamond likes to be about 2 foot away when surfing the web over wifi - any further and she just refuses. Is the any HD2 better?
If I do get this device, my main uses for it will be mainly for video (due to the screen size) and a very close second, music, as I would like to lose the ipod altogether!
I am a heavy WM user, so I would love this to be the one-for-all product!
Thanks all, your honest views appreciated.
In all honesty, WiFi range is pretty good.
WiFi
Mine is currently connected with aprox 50% signal about 40-50 metres away from my router, but i guess that also come down to how good the router is as well.
Audio
Audio through the external speaker can be a bit "tinny" if i am honest. Having said that, though ear phones the quality is a lot better and nothing to be complained about. I don't currently have my ipod with me at the moment so i cant compare the two side by side but the HD2 does sound pretty nice, even on low volumes. The HD2 does come with Audio Booster - An equalizer to adjust the sound to how you want it. I personally haven't played around with it much (the equalizer) seems to be on pretty good settings as default for me, but its obv nice to have the option there to tinker if you wanted to.
Video
Personally i love the video playback on movies on this phone. I can happily sit there and watch a movie in a very decent resolution for a phone. The best thing is because of the screen size you won't find yourself squinting trying to figure out what if going on. Playback in general is very crisp and clear.
Music
The music player built into HTC Sence in my opinion is a little simplistic. Not as many options as i would have liked to have seen but it does make it simple to use and navigate around your music.
I believe HTC HD2 is meant to be guaranteed to take any Mirco SDcard upto (and including 16gb) not sure about 32gb+.
**Disclaimer**
Don't really know why I'm doing this, but my response was as per my opinion and personal user experience.
Use this info as a guide not fact.
Timmzy89 said:
**Disclaimer**
Don't really know why I'm doing this, but my response was as per my opinion and personal user experience.
Use this info as a guide not fact.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL.. I like the disclaimer bit
Wifi.. works very good.. I dont see any reason why you would be any more than 15-20 mts from the router.. and Timmzy is right.. it very much depends on the quality of the router as well.
Music/ Video.. no worries
Get the phone.. its kick ass
Thanks for the info guys.
My laptop works in the garden, streaming via the router, some 10 metres away no problem. But my diamond is a pig on wifi! Not sure if it's anything to do with the roms I've installed, but you have to sit next to the router when using my Diamond.
Video quality is better on Diamond than on Ipod, but the audio quality is better when watching the films. Not a big issue really, but I'll have a another go at ripping my films to get them sounding better on the phone.
Cheers
Using the Netflix App on the Focus.
Wi-Fi:
Let me say how very very pleased I am!! I used it last night and felt the opposite, was to impatient. When you first start a movie it may look horrible, very very blocky. But slowly over the next 1-3 minutes the picture quality will continue to get better and better till it looks, well... perfect. The audio is sinked perfect. It looks HD to me.
1-3 bars on AT&T 3G: (inside house no Wi-Fi activated)
Same end results, just took 3-6 minutes to reach full video quality. It didn't regress any at all after it reached an apparent HD state in video quality. Audio sinked perfect from the second it starts showing video.
This was a selling point for me, with this beautiful SAMOLED screen. I'm sold!!!
That's good to know. The quality doesn't really need to be better than 480p though, since that's the display resolution of all WP7 phones.
I'll probably go with the 2GB/month service and it seems 2 movies is all I can watch a month on the phone over 3G assuming I don't access the internet too much when outside.
I didn't even find netflix in the marketplace, thanks for making me grab it! Stoked.
Netflix Video Quality
I have only tried NETFLIX via 3g in my home, I am not even sure how many bars I am getting, but I never have reception issues there. I can't compare on WiFi because my network is hidden for now.
Anyway, my image quality is good, but not great. The frustrating part of it is that there are moments (long moments) of stunning quality. This seems to indicate to me that the issue is buffering and not the phone screen quality.
I'll keep messing around when I have time. The picture is definitely good enough to watch a movie with, but obviously nowhere near the potential of this amazing screen.
Oh and the whole buffering, acquiring license time mentioned earlier was nowhere near 6 minutes.
Was running last night and today, avgr 2 -3 bars , I am really happy with the quality of the picture, the que time is not bad as well.
Only complaint is the my bluetooth speakers will work with Netflix or Iheart radio. They do work with the Media play.
There would appear to be quite a video quality difference when streaming via WiFi rather than 3G. I suppose that should have been expected, but the difference was far more apparent than I would have guessed it would be. Maybe eventually there will be a different level of buffer offered for the 3G option.
Also, I have noticed that the video quality gets better about a minute into playback. Maybe this is the buffer getting up to speed, but on both streaming modes, playback improves steadily over the first minute until a good quality is achieved (spectacular in the case of WiFi).
Lots of experimenting now and I absolutely agree with the OP. The software seems to thrive off of a less than a minute of playback with WiFi to get a stunning screen quality and about a minute or so more to achieve exceptional quality via 3G.
At first I was underwhelmed by 3G playback but it really gets sharp after a few minutes.
Very impressive.
I agree. It looks very well even over 3G.
So I have defiantly noticed poor video quality I've tried a 720p video h.264 lord of the rings encode quality looks decent but gets so pixilatee all the time no matter what video player I use, also tried normal 480p no lag or pixilation, but quality looks sorta poor. And the grid touch is very noticiable.
Am I the only one? Or are there others seeing this... I love this tablet so much over other android and for the price its awesome. But no ips display messes with me lol.
Sent from my A500 using XDA Premium App
I have noticed the quality isn't as good as say my Iphone 3GS, Macbook Pro ( non ips screen).Apparantly it uses an AUO panel which aren't too bad; they're used in some Samsung panels but aren't as good as the one sony/samsung make.
Maybe someone with some technical knowledge here could answer it better.I am just agreeing with you. The a500 is a 6bit panel, bit disappointed in that, I was expecting 8bit.
The screen is the only disappointment I have
Sent from my A500 using XDA Premium App
I have to agree with the screen issues. Video looks completely washed out. I tested streaming through my wife's iPad and my Acer. Needless to say, for $450, it's not worth it.
I've done the whole "the screen is not so bad" thing with the gTablet but that was a much cheaper investment. This thing is $50 from the Samsung 10.1, the Toshiba Regaza 10.1 inch, and an iPad 2.
I abhor the Apple iOS but I'm hoping they open things up a bit in June. I think I'll take this Acer back next week and just wait until then all these new June tablets are released. I don't think Acer can release an update to improve the quality of the screen ala Toshiba's Resolution + tech in their tablet.
Word of advice...take micro and SD cards with video on them to the store with you so you can test these things out. Maybe a flash drive too. I spent hours looking at videos and researching to make sure this tablet would be a nice purchase. Even after owning the tablet a full day, I was happy...until I played some video with it. I'm not talking high def content. I tried watching wrestling and some soccer videos on there but the quality saddens me. Why not stick a better screen on and charge me more?
Although I see what you do when I look at mine... the pictures I look at are almost as good as my Epic SuperAMOLED phone and I thought my phone was great... so, if the pictures are great/really good and the video not so much... I think tweaking will be done to deliver better quality... this thing was rushed out and so was honeycomb... I'll give it time because I know it can only get better... besides if all you're doing is video then maybe you just need a dvd player or an archos 70 250gig I heard those screens are nice... good luck.
I wish it was that easy. I blog on my tablet which is why I was leaning towards the Asus. I game on there and that's a mixed bag on here. I do like the cameras and the flash on here.
I'd just like a tablet to do everything well. Perhaps they can fix the video quality. I'm just wondering if we'll ever get that. I've heard from 3 people on this forum that Acer's customer support sucks. They've tried to charge them each time they've called.
Hopefully we'll get some answers soon. I'm trying to hold onto it until after Google's I/O conference next week which could shed some light on any problems Honeycomb may be causing.
Just glad I kept my receipt had for about 1 week and few days but will wait and see, hopefully they will shed some light.
Sent from my A500 using XDA Premium App
The main reason I bought a tablet in the first place was because I'm a producer and I wanted something I could easily tote around as a digital portfolio for pitches -MacBook Pro isn't quite as sexy in a meeting now that the tabs are on the market. The iPad has been extremely popular with commercial agencies, but I wanted something with an HDMI output w/o having to purchase an adapter (an additional $39) and a full size USB port w/o having to purchase a camera "kit" (an additional $29) -yep, I'm cheap like that.
Anyway, imagine how upset I was when I tried to play an mp4 on the A500 and got an error message stating that the video could not be played on "this device".
Here's what I found (search via google -can't post links yet):
"3 Surprising Things About Video On Android Tablets"
And from the Android Developer's site:
"Android Supported Media Formats"
What worked for me:
• Download the latest version of 'Handbrake'
• Go to 'Preferences'>'General' and under 'Output files:' uncheck 'Use iPod /iTunes friendly (.m4v) file extension for MP4'. Close the preferences window.
• Output Settings: Normal (Default) this is the 'Baseline Profile'
• Format: MP4 file this is the container
• Video Codec: H.264 (x264)
• Under 'Quality:', 'Constant quality:' should be selected with an RF Value of 19-20 for SD and 21-22 for HD
• Go to the 'Advanced' tab and under 'Encoding'/'Maximum B-Frames:' select '0' from the dropdown menu
• Leave all other settings as they are (incl. Audio; AAC is fine) for your first attempt
Feel free to play around with the settings as you will, but don't expect a whole lot of freedom.
Hope that helps!
goalweiser said:
I wish it was that easy. I blog on my tablet which is why I was leaning towards the Asus. I game on there and that's a mixed bag on here. I do like the cameras and the flash on here.
I'd just like a tablet to do everything well. Perhaps they can fix the video quality. I'm just wondering if we'll ever get that. I've heard from 3 people on this forum that Acer's customer support sucks. They've tried to charge them each time they've called.
Hopefully we'll get some answers soon. I'm trying to hold onto it until after Google's I/O conference next week which could shed some light on any problems Honeycomb may be causing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd say just take it back now. If things improve you can always buy it again as it's actually in stock.
Here's what I wrote on the whirlpool forums
So anyway, I've been testing out the screen, comparing it with my macbook pro(non ips screen) with the exact same video.I found that my macbook featured better blacks and less pixelation.One thing I noticed is the blacks on the iconia were too bright.So I checked in settings and I had the brightness on auto.
I turned it all the way down ( turned off auto brightness in settings) and tried the videos again, playing both in sync and let me say there was a huge difference now.Blacks appeared much better, and all that pixelation ( which was highlighted more with the brightness on higher) was gone! It is on par with my macbook!
The image is still fairly bright as well, it doesn't look all dark now that the brightness is turned down which is great!.
Give it a ago.
Just thought I shared a video of how AWESOME video and sound quality is of the ATRIX video camera at 720. This is of the band ANKLA that visited Puerto Rico last night.
youtu.be/UBDY3SauqHg?hd=1
Atrix video looks good on 720p @ 30fps until you move camera from a static position and start to pan. Very evident in your video, and videos I have done myself. The jitter is very bad when you move the Atrix around, even if done slowly. Also, movement very close to the phone will look like Age of Conan running on a Pentium 4 with everything set on high.
Audio came out really good which is surprising for a phone.
yay for non-Apple Products!
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20068404-1/apple-patent-suggests-infrared-sensors-for-iphone/
Techcruncher said:
yay for non-Apple Products!
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20068404-1/apple-patent-suggests-infrared-sensors-for-iphone/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very interesting!
Beamed in from WinBorg 4G via XDA Premium app
Techcruncher said:
yay for non-Apple Products!
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20068404-1/apple-patent-suggests-infrared-sensors-for-iphone/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
More control of your device that you own without your permission.
I think its sad that they're going to these lengths, people record it for personal memory and its not going to be massive sellable quality so whats the problem?
I must say though, that video quality is amazing albeit a little bit of jitter here and there.
I tried Hangouts, Skype and Viber and was thoroughly disappointed with the quality. Opposed to Facetime, the sound was delayed preventing a normal conversation, and the picture was extremely pixelated. This in spite of having a good 4g signal and later a strong wi-fi signal.
Is the fault somehow on my side or is the Android videocalls seriously lacking behind Facetime? If the latter, why?!? What holy grail did Apple discover to make video calling so smooth and what prevents android from adopting this technology?
Facetime uses H265 on newer devices, this allows double the quality on the same connection. Wait till Duo by Google comes out in the Summer. The Verge had a chance to use it and they've said it is the quickest video chat app they've ever seen, better than Facetime
As far as I understand H265 is only supported on iphone 6 and up. Whenever I use facetime on my iphone 5, it is smooth as butter and never any audio delay.
So even before H265, apple must have used a technology which never was embraced by any android developers. I just wonder why.
Well - seems there is hope with Duo. Fingers crossed or I will have to keep my iphone just for facetime.
You can also try Tango, which has good (not best) quality when you have a good connection.
I get excellent video quality with Skype but it works a bit different than Facetime. The skype video call will start pixelated and will get better over time. After about 1 minute you should see it improves significantly. Remember that both sides of the convo needs to have good connectivity speed.
Sent from my Pixel C using Tapatalk
I find Viber to be pretty good, they all have good and bad moments, when Viber does't work well, I try Skype, when that doesn't work, Facebook Messenger, one of the 3 always seems to come through. Not ideal, but, for the price of free, can't really complain.
Try Tango. worked for me in the past. Or use snapchat's video calling feature. reception sux sometimes.