View Poll Results: Do you want AC3 Support

Voters
124. You may not vote on this poll
  • YES - Yeah

    108 87.10%
  • No - I'm happy with MP3

    16 12.90%
  1. samab's Avatar
    1. What do you think is mobile content ? Does giving a tablet which supports 1080p you want 3gp playing on them ? Whats the point when most content of 720p and 1080p is AC3 and DTS.
    2. Most companies has paid for licensing not sure why RIM can't , thats why its called competition
    3. battery life on playbook is good enough so can last a movie atleast bring the support.
    (1) If you want DOWNLOADABLE content then NONE of these contents with 720p and 1080p comes with AC3 and DTS. Even "HD" is kind of "fake" HD when you talk about bit rate. Compare the video quality of a bluray movie with a HD movie downloaded from netflix or itunes --- and there is a huge difference in terms of picture quality because the bit rate is massively larger in the bluray content.

    (2) NONE of the handset/tablet makers paid for AC3 licensing (they including RIM all paid for AAC licensing). And Dice Player certainly didn't.

    (3) If you want just a little portable movie viewer then just buy a portable dvd player with LCD screen.
    05-31-12 10:33 AM
  2. samab's Avatar
    Native ac3 support is not needed and RIM does not have to shell out licensing money for this. What we need on the Playbook are proper video players which are available on Android and iOS operating systems that can decode pretty much everything. WatchMore is the first app of that kind available through the AppWorld. My hat is off to the developer for coming up with this. Hopefully, in future, he will be able to update the app to play the videos instantaneously. I will purchase the app and support the cause since he is the pioneer of this movement.
    He is not a pioneer, he is just some guy who grab ffmpeg open source project like dice player and not paid any licensing fee to anyone.

    Anyone can download ffmpeg and do the converting of their movie files themselves. It doesn't take much time because the video part is not touched at all. The only thing holding people back from using ffmpeg is that you have to use command line because there is no UI. But there are a ton of open source ffmpeg UI front ends available.

    If you want to support anyone, support ffmpeg directly.
    05-31-12 10:42 AM
  3. CountOfGamble's Avatar
    He is not a pioneer, he is just some guy who grab ffmpeg open source project like dice player and not paid any licensing fee to anyone.

    Anyone can download ffmpeg and do the converting of their movie files themselves. It doesn't take much time because the video part is not touched at all. The only thing holding people back from using ffmpeg is that you have to use command line because there is no UI. But there are a ton of open source ffmpeg UI front ends available.

    If you want to support anyone, support ffmpeg directly.
    He is a pioneer in terms of offering the very first standalone video player, available in the AppWorld, that can somewhat run ac3. He took the time to make the app. Instead of bashing people on the forums perhaps you should have done it. I don't want to convert anything. Period. I wan't to put my movie on the Playbook and watch it. It is true that it doesn't take much time to convert audio. I am doing it now, but it is a nuisance nevertheless.
    05-31-12 12:38 PM
  4. samab's Avatar
    He is a pioneer in terms of offering the very first standalone video player, available in the AppWorld, that can somewhat run ac3. He took the time to make the app. Instead of bashing people on the forums perhaps you should have done it. I don't want to convert anything. Period. I wan't to put my movie on the Playbook and watch it. It is true that it doesn't take much time to convert audio. I am doing it now, but it is a nuisance nevertheless.
    But that's precisely what the app is doing --- it is converting the ac3 audio into aac video.

    Whether you press the "play" button in WatchMore to convert, or use the command line in ffmpeg to convert or you press the "convert" button in a ffmpeg front-end to convert --- you are still converting the movie file.

    And you can do that with ffmpeg on a pc for 1/7 of the time that watchmore uses --- because the hardware in the pc is much faster than the hardware in the Playbook.

    At least Dice Player posted the ffmpeg source code on their website, which WatchMore hasn't done.
    05-31-12 12:55 PM
  5. dinjo_jo's Avatar
    So did anyone bought Watch more ? I wanted a trial app to test before purchasing
    06-15-12 02:44 AM
  6. z_scorpio_z's Avatar
    01-29-13 09:35 PM
  7. unical's Avatar
    QMplayer from BlackBerry World shows me movies fine even with ac3 audio..
    03-21-13 07:36 PM
  8. Wongsky's Avatar
    As I said it earlier, NO mobile audio chipset can handle ac3 in hardware --- so even if you can download some sort of 3rd party app that will decode ac3, it would be a software decode only. You are going to get unacceptable performance and unacceptable battery life.

    Video playback woes: 720p mkv - h.264 w/ AC3 audio

    So there is NO point of getting ac3 decode from 3rd party software either.
    Pretty sure my Nokia N8 from late 2010 supports AC3 audio...
    03-22-13 05:01 AM
  9. blueberrymerry's Avatar
    Yup, Nokia Symbian^3 handsets had AC3 support which was licensed from Dolby. Blackberry could do the same, it's then just a matter of writing drivers that pass the AC3 signal to the underlying audio hardware on the SoC.
    03-22-13 06:23 AM
  10. Wongsky's Avatar
    Yup, Nokia Symbian^3 handsets had AC3 support which was licensed from Dolby. Blackberry could do the same, it's then just a matter of writing drivers that pass the AC3 signal to the underlying audio hardware on the SoC.
    To my mind, what makes the difference is HDMI out - if a device supports that, there's a reasonable chance people will make some use of it as a media player to displays with HDMI inputs - then that sets the context for AC3 support. Both my Nokia N8 and PlayBook have HDMI outs.

    My 2 Android tablets do, too - but can't remember if I ever checked whether they support native AC3 decoding, or not. I use MX player on them, rather than the native video player, I've got a feeling that does AC3 decoding.
    03-22-13 09:26 AM
  11. blueberrymerry's Avatar
    MX Player does AC3 decoding in software. Despite how old the thing is, it's pretty funny how powerful the Playbook's OMAP SoC is - I can play 720p and 1080p videos with AC3 in Kalemsoft Player smoothly, whereas my Tegra2-based Android tablet with the same clock speed chokes on high bitrate 720p stuff, let alone 1080p.

    I don't know of any Android tablets that do hardware AC3 decoding though. Sony stuff maybe? The HDMI out on the Playbook is amazing... I just installed the Plex DLNA server on my laptop and I'm now happily streaming videos to the big TV using Kalemsoft on the Playbook.

    Hey, this is turning into an ad for Kalemsoft
    03-22-13 09:55 AM
  12. Wongsky's Avatar
    MX Player does AC3 decoding in software. Despite how old the thing is, it's pretty funny how powerful the Playbook's OMAP SoC is - I can play 720p and 1080p videos with AC3 in Kalemsoft Player smoothly, whereas my Tegra2-based Android tablet with the same clock speed chokes on high bitrate 720p stuff, let alone 1080p.
    Tru dat.

    I have the same experience with a Tegra 2 tablet, running MX player, using hw acceleration. That the PlayBook can do it, and from the era it hailed from, is a decent claim to performance - at least audio / video performance.
    I don't know of any Android tablets that do hardware AC3 decoding though. Sony stuff maybe? The HDMI out on the Playbook is amazing... I just installed the Plex DLNA server on my laptop and I'm now happily streaming videos to the big TV using Kalemsoft on the Playbook.

    Hey, this is turning into an ad for Kalemsoft
    Haven't yet bought it - 'cos truth be told, haven't actually broke my duck in paying for any PlayBook apps, yet...

    That, and I'm happy to use something like avidemux or freemake to convert AC3 audio if needs be.
    03-22-13 10:05 AM
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