Sunday, January 24, 2010

Request to Nokia for next video device, AVI and DIVX

Hello all.

It's been a while since I posted anything. I can tell you what's been happening.

First of all, new Nokia devices provide better support for Flash videos, which in turn has meant that you can watch videos from a variety of sources in the internet. This means for me that I spend less time converting and uploading, as all I have to do is point to the Flash video site that I want and watch the videos. There are some downsides of course. I need a good WLAN connection. I need to have access to charging (as WLAN streaming of Flash videos eats out your power in a very short time), and I need to be willing to put up with low quality videos.

So here's what I would like to request that we get in the next Nokia video powerhouse (i.e. N96 replacement for this).



  1.  Built-in support for AVI and DIVX containers and DIVX and XVID codecs. This is already built into the N900 so getting it to a phone shouldn't be an issue. This is LONG DUE. The baseline should be to support 720x576 (DVD quality) resolution and 3 Mbps, at least.
  2. Smart support for non standard resolutions. Many videos you find are not in "standard" resolutions like qcif or qvga or nHD. The device should be smart and play the file anyways and scale or crop as necessary.
  3. Capability to do Video Playlists. Again this is long overdue as this has been requested for a long time. And third party apps like CorePlayer have been able to do this for years
  4. Ability to navigate by FOLDER in the Video App. Seems like a no-brainer, yet it has never been included
  5. Full H264 compatibility. None of that baseline profile only. It should support Main Profile, Simple Profile and Spark versions of H264. 
  6. Stereo Microphone for video recording. This was in N93 and N93i and needs to come back. 
  7.  Auto-Focus in video recording. None of that infinite focus (ok, N86 has this but this needs to come to more models)
  8. WMV at high resolutions (VGA and beyond) and higher bitrates. WMV only plays QVGA and low bitrates
  9. YouTube HD support. Only regular version YouTube are currently supported and the YouTube application available only converts video to QVGA resolution even though I have the N97 or N900
  10. Improved audio support. AC3, simulated 5.1 through headphones, SPDIF audio out, this could be done in the 3.5mm connector. A good tie-in accessory like a BOSE or Logitech 5.1 small speaker system would be nice.
 Other things that I would like to see but that are not so critical IMHO are:
-  Get ROXIO or NERO or FFMPEG to do the conversion software, AND include a DVD ripper tool (blueray recommeded). At least get the portable video version to work with these devices. I have many gripes with the Nokia conversion tools, maybe I'll do a post about the new OVI suite conversion.

- HDMI out. The VGA TV-out cable is showing its age already and is bad that it has lower resolution than the screen of the N900.

- Better/return uPNP support. It was very annoying that the N97 and N900 doesn't include uPNP. At least I can connect the USB cable to my PS3 and watch the videos that way...

- Video Store. Why doesn't Nokia sell/rent videos?, seems like a no-brainer. Videos in the OVI store are really underwhelming

- Better picture and video controls (contrast, hue, brightness, sharpness, zoom, frame by frame)

- Better integration with video podcasts and videos taken by the camera. Right now they get all mixed up and they're difficult to navigate.

What do you guys think?, do you agree?, disagree?, did I miss something?

Share your thoughts in the comments. Until next time, see you out there...

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