How do Palm devices compare to Pocket PC’s when it comes to playing videos?

(Italian readers may want to check out the end of the article!)

I’ve bought a Palm Tungsten T|3 yesterday so that I can also write about the interoperability issues of Palm OS and Pocket PC (and to enjoy the great role-playing game Edge in Landscape mode, on the great, 480*320 screen of the device).

One of the first things I’ve done, upon an AximSite forum member request, was comparing how TCPMP, by far the best, multiplatform PDA multimedia player is able to play videos on my T3 and how this compares to my Pocket PC’s.

I’ve used the freely available and distributable (don't miss it! It's just great!) Star Wreck: in the Pirkinning (alternates: iPAQ HQ, AximSite, PPC Magazine, FirstLoox), a great, Finnish Star Track fan-movie. The T3 played it pretty OK in full screen landscape, albeit I certainly saw some lag. Nevertheless, it was OK.

When I gave a test to the May 1 Speech of two leading players of the movie (direct download here - warning, it’s Finnish only!), it was almost unwatchable because of the stuttering. The built-in TCPMP benchmark reported about 21 FPS (while, on the VGA WM2003SE Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 720, about 28), which isn’t a very good value.

Note that these videos have all been full-resolution (640*272 and 640*480) ones. With videos only 480 pixels wide (and you won’t need more because the width of the Palm HiRes+ screen is 480 pixels in Landscape), the video playback may be much smoother on Palm OS devices. Then, however, you will always end up having to reencode your movies, which is not necessarily what you want (I, for example, prefer not doing any reencoding for PDA watching purposes.)

All in all, the T|3 is on the verge of usability as a video player if you don’t explicitly convert your full-size XviD/DivX videos into a smaller, more PDA-friendly format. If you plan to plan your handheld purchase on this factor, go for Pocket PC’s instead of Palm OS devices. (And for a lot of other reasons, I’d also add :) ). Without any tricks and tweaks, Palm OS devices (at least the T|3) seem to be a bit behind new, VGA Pocket PC’s.

Note that the T|3’s having moderate video playback performance doesn’t necessarily mean all HiRes+ Palm OS devices behave the same. I haven’t looked around on, say, 1src for possible tweaks and speedup tricks.

A quick remark for Italian readers: Jimmy TV will repeat Star Wreck: in the Pirkinnning four times in June (see this) dubbed in Italian; make sure you don’t miss it :)