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-- Movies on the Palm? Coming soon! (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=4656)

I just read a ZDNet article discussing movies on the Palm and Pocket PC.

"Palm?!?!" I thought? Sure enough, ActiveSky's product page lists a Palm player as "coming soon".

Though I hardly see how a movie would be entertaining on the Palm (MTIMoviePlayer could've been better, but still...), my interested is peaked.

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Trinition ([email protected])

I saw this article as well. I think that it will go a ways towards refuting the argument from the PPC crowd that the Palm can't do multimedia. While the current Visors/Palms aren't really ready for streaming video, the next wave will be and the software will be there already!

I wanted to submit this as a news topic for Visor Central to consider posting on the home page, but I couldn't find a way to submit it to them. Are they open to the ./ style of story submission?

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Trinition ([email protected])

This is clearly an added benefit to the Palm platform, but I think Palm is moving in the wrong direction. Instead of concentrating on video, they should be integrating digital audio (MP3 playback) and ebooks. These are two features that make the Pocket PC worth its weight in gold. I've used the ActiveSky player on my new Jornada, and while it is somewhat entertaining, its not very usefull. The Windows Media Player, on the other hand, is awesome, it sounds as good as a Diamond Rio or Creative Nomad! Ebooks are great as well. The MS Reader application makes text appear almost as good as print.

This is clearly the direction that Palm should be moving to. Simply put, If Palm would build an MP3 player and a *true* ebook reader into their handhels, it would kill the Pocket PC outright!

For me, that day can't come soon enough!

This if off topic for this particular thred, but why isn't there a goood e-book reader for PalmOS? Or is there? It's just software, right? Granted the 'sepcial technocology' that Microsoft uses to enhance appearances of the fonts can't be used on Palms, btu I bet with some sneaky gray-scale anti-aliasing, you could have very readable fonts on PalmOS.

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Trinition ([email protected])

Thanks for the link! You can either submit a link using the around the web, and if it is good enough, I'll make it a main news item. You can also email me any news items as well.

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James Hromadka
VisorCentral.com
Personal Website: http://www.Hromadka.com

foo,

don't forget, Palms do have e-books. See www.peanutpress.com as an example. In addition, QED, TealDoc, iSilo, AportisDoc, etc. all have e-book ability.

That just leaves MP3 and a few other enhacements lacking. Plus, Palm has it's own advantages. Then again, I think we've all pretty much covered that, so I'll stop here. I don't want to be the instigator of another Palm vs. CE debate.

How much space do these movies take up on your pocket pc? MP3's take up quite a bit and until Handspring and Palm start making devices with 64 MB+ what use will we have for an MP3 player? I don't care to listen to just one or two songs. On the other hand, streaming music, or movies (when cheap wireless access is available) would be fantastic! I think that both video and audio will be equally important once you can watch streaming media from the internet. What the Palm OS needs is a fully functional media player, like Quicktime. Hey, maybe that's what Apple and Palm are working on. Well, until there is a Palm OS version of Quicktime this Active Sky program looks pretty neat.

Video? MP3s? Aren't we missing a huge factor here...namely STORAGE?

Yea...it'd be great to have an MP3 player and full video built into the Visor, but where would you store all of this information?

I think the first obstacle is to develop affordable flash storage, and/or get the small hard-drive technologies encased into a springboard.

I'm sure that screen technology is going to be improved, and using the strong-arm processor will certainly enable better media playback, but until we can actually store this media, I don't see the use of wishing for the features yet.

The trgpro would be the best device for this use. They take flash cards, use the palm os and have a better speaker.....who knows?

Is there going to be a CompactFlash SpringBoard for the Visor?

quote:

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Originally posted by Hawkeye:
don't forget, Palms do have e-books. See www.peanutpress.com as an example. In addition, QED, TealDoc, iSilo, AportisDoc, etc. all have e-book ability.

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quote:

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Originally posted by foo fighter:
...these are technically not true ebooks. These are merely large Palm docs. The term ebook is used to describe the layer of technologies for font rendering technologies that improve text quality on an LCD display. In short, ebook technology tries to make text on a handheld device as readable as printed text. This is an area where the PalmOS falls very short! Quite frankly, there is no comparison to reading a book on a Palm as apposed to a Pocket PC. Needless to say, Palm had better come up with something, and soon!

iSilo and TealDoc are excellent readers, but it's the text quality that counts here.

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quote:

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Originally posted by foo fighter:
Hawkeye, these are technically not true ebooks. These are merely large Palm docs. The term ebook is used to describe the layer of technologies for font rendering technologies that improve text quality on an LCD display. In short, ebook technology tries to make text on a handheld device as readable as printed text. This is an area where the PalmOS falls very short! Quite frankly, there is no comparison to reading a book on a Palm as apposed to a Pocket PC. Needless to say, Palm had better come up with something, and soon!

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quote:

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The term ebook is used to describe the layer of technologies for font rendering technologies that improve text quality on an LCD display.

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The real difference is the color screen, black on white is a lot easier to see compared to black on whatever color the Visor screen is.

I've seen the color Palm at my local CompUSA and I really liked it, I'll buy Handspring's the day it comes out.

quote:

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Originally posted by Matt Nichols:
...I'll buy Handspring's the day it comes out.

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You say that this is first site to offer movie clips, and that redlight.com is the first to offer "adult" content, well, does anyone here remember the Pilot Entertainment Zone (PEZ) ?
That site had mature content. It was shut down a while ago, but was very popular while online.

also, there was a program that can play quicktime movies that are encoded for the palm (4 shades of gray). I downloaded a 5 minute clip from the simpsons, and it fit into a palm III's 2 Mb RAM, with sound !

Foo said:
"I wouldn't purchase any color Palm based device with the current pixel resolution...their aweful! The Palm IIIc display is horribly pixelated! It looks like color mosaic tiles. As the color issue stands now, the Pocket PC is far superior with a res of 320x240, while the Palm OS runs at only 160x160."

As a caveat to those reading this board who are unfamiliar with that poster, he is a Pocket PC advocate who lurks on this board trashing the Palm OS. As they say, "consider the source."

quote:

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Originally posted by SherylKing:
As a caveat to those reading this board who are unfamiliar with that poster, he is a Pocket PC advocate who lurks on this board trashing the Palm OS. As they say, "consider the source."

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