Looking for cheap pda to use with GBPvr

[sub]

Not really, but I have once or twice. There is functionality in GB-PVR to automatically convert recordings to a PSP compliant format.

[mian]

I use my Palm TX (~250$ new) and a gig SD card to watch specially converted xvids (autoGK) all the time, I've never messed with streaming though (but in theory, mmplayer palmside and vlc pc-side would do it). And watching it outdoors is pretty much out, because even on max brightness, you can't see the screen all that well. Actually, my laptop's screen is the same way.

[dgeezer]

I have an HP Ipaq rx3100, I think thats the correct model number, that I have watched a few videos on. I reencoded a several videos for my daughter so that she could watch them while we're traveling. The playback was decent enough and the sound was very good. However, now she always uses my laptop.

It has bluetooth and 802.11b but I was never able to get it to stream audio or video, however I didn't try very hard.

I built a pedestal mount for my laptop in my truck and I haven't pulled the pda out of the drawer for over a year. High speed internet thru my cellphone is hard to beat.

[psycik]

I just bought a k-jam and are going to try re-encoded xvids and wmvs for windows mobile 5.

Was going to have a look at the streaming as well, hoping I can get the streaming form gbpvr to work into tcpmp - not sure if tcpmp and vlc will "play nice"

[fuzzweed]

I've tried a few of the above ideas and would rate them like this....

1) PSP is great for truly portable video watching, but of course you do have to reencode the video. I just leave GBPVR setup to convert and then copy across the previous days recordings for watching on the train to work.
2) PDA's (WinMob) are sluggish battery hungry wastes of time.
3) Lap tops are getting cheaper all the time and really are the best bet for home roaming (patio, garden etc.) And battery life isn't really an issue if you dump the CD for a second battery. The GBPVR client set up (search the wiki/forums) is very nearly as good as GBPVR itself now - a bit flakey over wireless for live TV IMO, but otherwise pretty good for recorded shows, music etc..

[Pilot]

BOOK WARNING!

I'm really big on portable video, and so are most members of my family. I have a Palm Tungsten|C for a PDA, and with its 400mhz processor it is more than capable of smoothly playing video at 320x240 resolution (which would be considered fullscreen for a 320x320 screen). I did have a Palm T|X, but due to Palm going off the deep end with their stretched OS and new non-volatile file system, they've also managed to make their new Palms rather incompatible with older Palm apps, so the T|X and I didn't last together very long before going back to the wonderfully stable Tungsten|C. That being said, the T|X has a 480x320 screen and a relatively fast processor (in the +300mhz range), so it can play a pretty descent video resolution at 30fps without issue.

Both of my teenage children have Video iPods. Personally, I think they're relatively worthless devices. We're getting barely enough battery life out of them to be able to watch a 2-hour movie, which isn't really an enjoyable experience with the tiny screen. It is 320x240 resolution (similar to my Palm Tungsten|C at 320x320), but the screen is so much smaller in size that watching a video on it isn't much more than a novelty. I guess it was the next step for Apple to take after the iPod Photo, but... In answer to the horrible battery life (for video only -- when used only for audio the battery life is superb), we purchased two of THESE. It's a AA battery pack made my Belkin. It's usually around $50 everywhere, but you can pick them up for only $25 at BestBuy.com (most BestBuy brick-n-mortar stores do not stock them). What's great about this over other external batteries is that this device does NOT charge the iPod battery -- it closes the connection to the internal iPod battery, allowing you to run your iPod device solely on 4 disposable or rechargeable AA batteries. This gives you an additional 6 hours of battery life for video and 15 hours of battery life for audio beyond that of the internal battery. So, for a long plane ride or car trip or whatever, you can just keep feeding it AA batteries, saving our internal battery for later. The caveat? You have something slightly larger than 4 AA batteries stuck to the back of your otherwise ultra slim Video iPod, making a Palm with a couple of 4GB SD cards look very appealing.

Before the Video iPod, my teenage son had a Creative Labs Zen Personal Media Center (PMC). THIS is a nice video device. It has an excellent battery life, great sound, the display is like 4" at 320x240 resolution, and it's running Microsoft Personal Media Center software, so naturally it syncs well with Windows MCE for TV shows and syncs with Windows Media Player for video and audio files. Since he moved on (I say "moved down") to a Video iPod for the sake of being cool instead of going with what works the best, I have his Zen PMC now. I'm going to try to do get GBPVR to automatically convert my shows to WMV and see how I make out with that. Otherwise, just using a quick PDA conversion app (like Makayama, PQDVD, PocketDivxEncoder, or Omniquiti Lathe) and Windows Media Player takes care of converting it from AVI/DivX to WMV during the sync process. I really like this device, and think it's a shame that Creative Labs has moved away from PMCs and instead started copying the Video iPod formfactor. The Zen PMC was a much superior product.

Taking portable video one step further into geekdom, I also bought the Makayama video converter/player for TomTom. This allows me to use my TomTom Go 700 GPS/Nav system as a mini video player. It has a 2.5gb hard drive on it, which is less than 1/2 full with all the maps of North America on it, so that gives me enough space for three 2-hour movies at least. Unlike the tiny little speaker on PDAs, the TomTom basically looks like a home theatre tweeter with a 3.5" video screen on the front. The sound coming out of it is awesome, and the video isn't too shabby either. In fact, whatever portable device you use, I highly recommend the Makayama converter apps (http://www.Makayama.com) over any other app. They make apps for the PSP, Palm, PocketPC, TomTom, and even several smartphones. They are reportedly coming out with something soon for streaming video to your phone via your PC "anywhere in the world". Anyway, they're conversion quality is superb while the process is very simple (couple of clicks of a mouse) and it's much faster than any other app I've tried (and I've pretty much tried them all).

I do have video streaming capabilities using my Palm Tungsten|C and MMPlayer, but that just seems like a lot of trouble to go to for me, and then I find myself looking at my two MediaMVPs and thinking...I could just use one of those on a small TV out on the porch...done!

See, you're not as weird as you might have thought for wanting portable video. Some people take it to the excess, for sure! THIS is what happens when Sub gets GBPVR running so smoothly for me that I get bored. If GBPVR would break down more often, I may not have so much time on my hands to investigate such geeky things.

[fuzzweed]

BOOK WARNING!

LOL!!!

[Pilot]

Yeah, well...I jinxed myself. I said that I had time to type books on unrelated topics because my GBPVR install is running perfect -- not anymore! Now I'm getting wrong start/stop times (ignored buffer) and the last five minutes of some of my shows is in fast-forward speed. Hating it.

The WAF is at an all-time low since the wife missed the last five minutes of one of her shows...after watching 55 minutes of it...ugh!

[Mysteryman]

I do have video streaming capabilities using my Palm Tungsten|C and MMPlayer

Can I ask how your battery life and wireless range is with this solution? I've done some mobile video and wireless connection (but not both at the same time) on several PDAs and had really poor battery life with all of them. Wi-fi cards are power hungry and add bulk. Color backlit screens and highly compressed video draw significant juice in my experience.

[JonnyCam]

I use an mpack p800 for my portable video - plays xvid / divx flawlessly, and has ACs3 pass through to an optical SPDIF port.

It plays WMV, but only V9 - and it plays MPG1 & 2 - the only drawback is that it cant handle ffd / rwd in mpegs (works fine in avi)
The battery lasts about 4 hours on it's 320x240 screen. Plays videos at 30 fps.

The service from this company is quite bad - for tech support, they have stopped developing firmware, but if you can get one cheap - go for it - only issue is the lack of connectivity for streaming, but with it's 40GB HDD, it's not so much of a problem.