JVC Announces Media-Centric Pocket PCs

An anonymous reader writes "infoSync World writes about two new high-end Pocket PC models from JVC, the MP-PV131 and MP-PV331. Running on Windows Mobile 2003, the Pocket PCs boast 128 MB SDRAM, built-in Wi-Fi and MPEG4 video and audio streaming and capture capabilities. The new devices are also equipped with software for use along with JVC camcorders. The new models will be available in the U.S. in September at $499.95 US and $599.95 US respectively"

Comments

It goes without saying

[mao che minh]

I would imagine that almost all future "high end" PDAs and Pocket PCs will be heavily media-centric - considering that most already are (the biggest selling points that marketers tend to focus on when advertising their newest hand-held is MP3 playback, image veiwing and manipulation, digital photography, and video capture and playback). Afterall, the PDA has long since evolved past a simple calculator and phone book. I always assumed that many average users upgrade to a Pocket PC for more power, power which is usually required to drive digital media (sure, you can play MP3s on a PDA, but high end media and their associated tools tend to require more power then a low end Sony Clie).

Too expensive

[Graspee_Leemoor]

Is it just me, or is the price of PDAs creeping up and up?

It doesn't affect me because I stopped using PDAs some time ago because of issues with battery life. I'd sooner trust my notes, addresses etc. to paper these days than an electronic device- and I'm a geek!

graspee

Re:Too expensive

[rice_web]

Well, when the specs of PDAs aren't "creeping up and up" but rather increasing exponentially, it takes time for the prices to settle. The fact that nearly all the chips are coming from Intel can't help lower prices any.

This, and a lack of demand in the handheld market has kept prices high. Everybody already has a Palm--a IIIxe or older--and most everyone feels that they have enough.

Re:Too expensive

[rice_web]

Just blame the current state of deflation (ummm.... yeah) and tell the Fed to screw off.

Re:Too expensive

[Shadow99_1]

This could be another area where AMD could take on Intel since they own Alchemy & make chips designed for use in PDA's, but Intel has a head start right now... Maybe Palm should invest in some AMD made chips for their next series...?

Re:Too expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the price of Pocket PCs is dropping.

The price on Palm OS devices, however, is increasing because they are only now playing catch-up to the Pocket PC with faster processors, more RAM, colour displays, etc.

Re:Too expensive

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Belive it or not, Pocket PC prices have been falling steadily over the last few years. The JVC device costs less that $500 and includes 802.11b and several card slots, but a first generation iPaq cost upwards of $550 before you bought the expansion sled. To spend that kind of money on a Pocket PC now, you'd need to buy a Phone Edition version, and even that's getting pretty hard.

This is because of the economics of the device market more than anything else. Customers will pay a premium for useful features like 802.11b, but the BOM cost is heavily driven by the screen, the battery, and the CPU. It's more profitable to take a sloppy but reliable reference design and simply slap a few premium features on it than it is to do the extensive optimization of circuit board layout and power supply to make a profit at the low end.

Re:Too expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree. It seems that the mobile PC world has taken over and seems to be ignoring battery life like they did with laptops and just packing more and more functionality into them.

In some ways this is good but frankly, I'd rather have battery life over spec any day. I used to get over 3-4 weeks usage out of a set of batteries in my old psion series 3 and that was cutting edge at the time so why can't they do that now?

Also, is it just me or is this the ugliest PDA ever produced?!

j.

Good one, mod parent +1 Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

You should write jokes for Spiderman comics. That was pretty clever.

Re:Good one, mod parent +1 Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

You should write jokes for Spiderman comics. That was pretty clever.

I did ... until an Indian writer stole my job :(

I smell a smash hit.

[rice_web]

It works with JVC cameras and boasts WiFi, which means that small television stations can now act like the pros. Doing live broadcasts that require many angles--like sporting events--requires cameras with expensive antennas, etc. Now, these small stations simply add this $500 device and they're good to go.

Re:I smell a smash hit.

[rco3]

I smell something less savory.

Even consumer DV cameras use 25 Mbit/s video streams. You might (might!) get one channel of video over an 802.11g link. To do multiple angles means multiple access points - that's a separate ethernet run over to the access point, which has to be fairly close to the camera... and trust me: even relatively inexpensive camera cables are more durable than Ethernet.

This is all assuming that the Pocket PC is capable of actually taking the DV stream in and firing it back out over WiFi - presumably 802.11b, which can't handle the datastream anyway.

I'm betting (having been there, thanks) that very few small TV stations are willing to trust multicamera setups to DV and Windows of any stripe.

It's a nice thought, though. Maybe in 5 or 10 years, OK?

Re:I smell a smash hit.

[rice_web]

Well of course, a typical camera goes at about 10MBytes a second, right? (though those video editing machines require upwards of 30) But.... that's overkill.

I'm in the cable advertising business. My father started the business two decades ago, and I've been working for him. The cable spots that he runs in most of his markets are MPEG-1, taking 30 seconds of commercial footage into a 10MB file. That's 2.6Mbits a second, much less than you've said above. Plus, the quality is more than acceptable.

Re:I smell a smash hit.

[rco3]

Ah, advertising. Now it all makes sense.

"a typical camera goes at about 10MBytes a second, right?"

Wrong. 25 Mbit/sec is the rate at which consumer camcorders transfer video over Firewire. That's a little over 3 MBytes/sec. Pro DV formats (DVCPro, etc.) are 50 Mbit/s (6+ MBytes/s). 802.11b is 11 Mbit/s, which includes all the overhead and so your actal data throughput is considerably smaller.

Second, consumer cameras do NOT allow you to transcode on the fly, and so they CANNOT spit out video data at lower rates. When you run your MPEG-1 spots, those have been transcoded by a standalone PC (probably) to a lower bitrate, and a different encoding method.

You're now asking a PocketPC 2003 handheld to do real-time, on the fly video transcoding. It doesn't have the horsepower, and it's not stable enough for a production environment. Plus, you've got to have some way of switching between cameras for live events, which means DEcoding the data at the receiving end - figure on a PC per camera. If you're not going to switch live, then simply sticking a DV tape in each camera and doing everything in post is much simpler and more reliable.

Third, "more than acceptable" quality is fine if you're doing cable advertising. It looks like shit when you're doing live production. Looking "not bad, considering" doesn't get you return gigs.

So, to sum up:

Video bitrate is too high for WiFi.

PocketPC can't transcode in realtime.

Transmitted video over WiFi has to end up in a form that can be switched.

Simply putting tapes in the camcorders is MUCH simpler if you don't need to switch live anyway.

You might consider changing your .sig.

Re:I smell a smash hit.

[rice_web]

We have a machine that does the conversion, yes.

It's an old 233MHz machine, and it's done at 1:1.

Granted, it does have a PCI card that handles most of the work, and a sizeable hard drive. However, why couldn't this be done on a PocketPC? I'm guessing it would only take some software.

Re:I smell a smash hit.

[rco3]

"However, why couldn't this be done on a PocketPC? I'm guessing it would only take some software."

The JVC MP-PV331 performs MPEG-4 capture. It does not specify resolution or bitrate. I personally would be (very) surprised to find that it was 640x480 at a decent data rate, but let's assume that it is.

The reason that this idea is not yet ready for prime time (literally!) is that it's still cheaper, easier, more reliable, and of higher quality to run coax instead of being wireless.

rice_web, I've done literally hundreds of live sporting events for cable, including baseball, hockey, football, basketball, sportfishing, boxing, and more. I've produced, directed, done Audio1 and Audio 2, graphics, instant replay, and (most often) been truck engineer. EVERY camera we use, on every remote production truck I've worked on, was connected via copper wire. This includes cameras on the sidelines of football, under the goals in basketball, etc, where you'd think wireless would be great. Why copper? Because it works. Optical fiber would work, too, but it's more expensive and the cables are more fragile.

We started off using a bundle of RG-59 cables, tie-wrapped together, connected to Betacams without tapes in 'em and running off of batteries, for our sideline cameras. This is roughly analogous to the level of production you're talking about - cheap, nasty, and less than reliable. Why a bundle?

Because you have to have several signals: Video from camera to video switcher; genlock (video sync) from switcher to camera; two-way intercom from switcher operator to cameraman, and back; audio from camera microphone to audio mixer.

Now, using an MPEG-4 stream over wireless means that you can replace the video from camera and audio from camera with a wireless link. You can avoid using the genlock return if you use a switcher with built-in timebase corrector (and the consumer DV cams can't take genlock, anyway). You can use a wireless system like FRS radios to communicate back and forth to the camera people.

What you lose is: Quality - the wireless 802.11b link will NOT be as reliable as a piece of copper coax, and so you'll get dropouts AND you have to decode the video signal at the receiving end to get a signal that your TBC-enabled switcher can handle. This assumes that the encoding PocketPC can sustain realtime encoding for the length of time that the camera is going to be "up" which strikes me as unlikely, and you have to assume that the decoding machine at the other end does the same. Software crashes, delays due to re-transmission of dropped packets, etc. are a killer - now the various cameras are showing events that happened at different times. The switcher with TBC isn't likely to be very high-quality, either, but that's spitting in the ocean at this point.

Note, I still don't think you'll get full-size, full-speed video with any kind of reasonable quality over this wireless link - don't count on more than 5 Mbit/s, which is about 50:1 compression. *You* may think of that as broadcast quality - but it isn't. Local cable ad quality, maybe.

Using FRS for your communications is workable, if no-one else in the area is on the frequency you want to use and your production can stand your cameramen saying"What?!" all the time when the crowd gets loud. Which it will. But you have to communicate with cameramen, unless you set up all static shots. Can't do a game like that.

And, you will be faced with the knowledge that for less money, you could have had more quality and more reliability.

Commercial wireless camera systems are OK, if you can spare another crewmember to follow the camera guy around pointing the transmitting antenna back to the receiving antenna ALL THE TIME. Batteries get heavy, though. Pulling a cable is usually easier.

A decent truck, with real cameras and real cables, can be had for a couple of grand a day or less, and turn out real broadcast quality video. You've got to pay crew either way, so why skimp on

Re:I smell a smash hit.

[rice_web]

"Now, if you've got other applications in mind, where you can stand less-than-perfect video and reliability, you're absolutely right - using this PDA and a DV cam is great"

Well I was initially thinking web cams, where this would actually be an improvement in quality over many of the terrible cams out there. But who cares about web cams?

But, I was also thinking of live broadcasts of basketball games for over the internet broadcasts. I live in North Dakota, and we take quite well to minor league basketball. This past season I was hoping to rig up a few cameras to setup that would give fans a great way to watch the games (perhaps broadcast at 300 - 500Kbps), and this solution struck me as perfect. As you pointed out, quality doesn't really matter here, so it'd be perfect.

Also, I'd like to point out that though MPEG-1 has sufficed for the commercials, we've recently switched over to MPEG-2 (as well as a new digital system. We were sending tapes to the markets, but are now using broadband connections and digital transfers.)

Meh

[SHEENmaster]

All PDA development seems to be geared toward media and organization.

Some of us (geeks/coders) just want a portable UNIX system. I wish the Debian/Zaurus port wasn't abandoned. X11 on such a thing would kick some serious ass.

Anyways, if you want more than a gameboy/organizer, check out the Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. The 5600 really skimps on RAM, so ignore it.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

X11 sucks on PDA since it make it usable ( meaning run some apps) you would have to install various toolkits which is really stupid considering the size of memory on these devices.
I mean, it is bad enough without having motif, gtk, qt and some other .so libraries around ....

Re:Meh

[mao che minh]

How economically feasible is it to sell a decent PDA with a portable Unix OS and develop Unix drivers for it's hardware, and then write and/or port applications to it? How much of these could you hope to sell? This is what the open source community is for: if you desire a small niche, take it upon yourself to develop it - or even better, find the rest of that small niche and develop it together.

As a side note, the intricities of X11 are not well suited to a PDA. It just simply isn't "light" enough.

Re:Meh

[MonMotha]

Apparently it's economically feasable to sell a PDA with WinCE (pronounce like prince) on it and develop linux to run on the side!

A check out handhelds.org for info on that one. Yes, you can run linux on Compaq, pardon me, HP, iPAQs. Yes it runs pretty well. Oh, and yes we run X11 just fine thank you (and my X server itself is about 800-900kB, not too shabby).

If X11 isn't for you, you can of course run OPIE (basically an opensource fork of QPE, which is what runs on the Zaurus). Still works great.

Oh, and as for feasability, take a look at the Zaurus. They still make them, don't they?

MPEG-4 or WM9

[Anonymous Coward]

A media-centric handheld based on PocketPC 2003 featuring MPEG-4 instead of Windows Media 9? Or is the author just perpetuating the old MSconception that Windows Media is synonymous with MPEG-4?

Re:MPEG-4 or WM9

[qorkfiend]

MPEG-4 is not a player, it's a standard that many video compression codecs (AVI, ASF) are based off of. These things have "[the] latest Microsoft Windows Media Player...", which is 9, I would guess.

In addition, they use JVC's AV player, with AVI and ASF (which was developed by MS, btw) MPEG-4 support. Looks like JVC's got the MSconception straight, if they're using a non-MS media player and at least one non-MS MPEG-4 codec.

Re:MPEG-4 or WM9

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent post was not about the player, but about the article (and perhaps JVC) possibly misrepresenting a Microsoft format as MPEG-4.
One more time - AVI, ASF, WMV, etc etc are *NOT* standards compliant MPEG-4 codecs or file formats. Microsoft, by referring to their early ASF codecs as "MS MPEG-4" before the true MPEG-4 standard was ratified, created a climate of misinformation and confusion that has carried on to the present.
From the MPEG-4 Industry Forum http://www.m4if.org/

"MPEG-4 is an ISO/IEC standard developed by MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group), the committee that also developed the Emmy Award winning standards known as MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. These standards made interactive video on CD-ROM, DVD and Digital Television possible. MPEG-4 is the result of another international effort involving hundreds of researchers and engineers from all over the world. MPEG-4, with formal as its ISO/IEC designation 'ISO/IEC 14496', was finalized in October 1998 and became an International Standard in the first months of 1999. The fully backward compatible extensions under the title of MPEG-4 Version 2 were frozen at the end of 1999, to acquire the formal International Standard Status early in 2000. Several extensions were added since and work on some specific work-items work is still in progress.
"The MP4 file format is designed to contain the media information of an MPEG-4 presentation in a flexible, extensible format which facilitates interchange, management, editing, and presentation of the media. This presentation may be ï½localï½ to the system containing the presentation, or may be via a network or other stream delivery mechanism (a TransMux). The file format is designed to be independent of any particular delivery protocol while enabling efficient support for delivery in general. The design is based on the QuickTimeï½ format from Apple Computer Inc.

Note that this does not include AVI, ASF, WMV, original DivX, Real, or any other media framework, codec, or file format. The point is not that true MPEG-4 is necessarily superior to any of those, but its value as an industry standard is diluted when people casually refer to the others (especially MS formats) as "MPEG-4" when they are not.

Of course

[JanusFury]

Of course, the battery will only last an hour if you do anything intensive like that.

I don't see any reason to buy a PDA if the battery only lasts a few hours under heavy load, and that's what I've seen of most PDAs these days. I remember when people would run their PDAs on AA batteries and they didn't need to replace them more than once a month.

Re:Of course

[Qacker]

A small battery pack for the Zaurus can be made with 4 AA batteries. It lasts about 8 hours and spare ones are easy to get/buy/recharge. Yea most users don't want to build something and if you mess up you can fry the boards inside the Z but if done right external battery packs work great.

When will the CE line end?

[arth1]

The differences from old Windows CE aren't that much, except for added multimedia functions, wireless functions and CPU and memory speed.
The loser, now as with earlier new PDA OS versions, is battery life.

When will they do something about this? When they find out that MPEG4 is only useful if the battery actually last through a long movie?

epensive but extremely mobile

[sukottoX]

Features that both JVC iO Pocket PCs share include the JVC AV player that supports MP3, WAV and Ogg Vorbis compressed audio files, as well as AVI (MPEG4) and ASF (MPEG4) video files.

Other shared features of the two models include 128 MB of SDRAM, 32 MB of Flash ROM, a CompactFlash Type II expansion slot, an SDIO capable SD/MMC Card expansion slot, a 16-bit (65,536 colours) 3.5" transflective TFT display, a USB client port and a non-exchangeable 1100 mAh Lithium Polymer battery.

Sure, they're expensive, but this would be a great little toy to take on a bus or a short trip where a laptop would be cumbersome. (not to mention the bathroom at work) ;-)

Re:epensive but extremely mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to take a video player with you into the bathroom at work? Why?

Oh, GROSS!!

Re:epensive but extremely mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

At least he's not taking a video RECORDER into the bathroom at work.

ratemypoo.com might end up with video...

A cheap PC can do the same

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, a 233mhz Pentium system can "drive" most digital media. It doesn't require much power to play back an avi file. Ergo, an expensive Pocket PC isn't required.

Convienence

[mao che minh]

Yes, they (cheap PCs) can. But, that cheap 233mhz system also utilizes and IDE drive, a PCI bus with a PCI video card with at least 16MB of memory, a large operating system complete with at least 200MB of files, and a myriad of drivers and programs. A simple low-end PDA doesn't have the luxury of these things. Pocket PCs or "high-end" PDAs like the $400+ Sony Clies have all kinds of innovations that can. These innovations cost money.

Besides, you can't lug a cheap 233mhz Pentium system around in your pocket. You pay for convienence.

Before you ask about OGG

[roseblood]

Features that both JVC iO Pocket PCs share include the JVC AV player that supports MP3, WAV and Ogg Vorbis compressed audio files, as well as AVI (MPEG4) and ASF (MPEG4) video files.

Another Name Change?

[quandrum]

So, yeah... Windows Mobile 2003?

What happened to PocketPC?

What happened to WinCE?

Is the Microsoft mobile platform so disliked they have to change the name every-time they release a new version? Just an observation.

Re:Ooooh Goodie

[Anonymous Coward]

jobs, indians? if you take a look at some of their government-granted benefits you'd be surprised they actually need to work.

Dangerous

[mao che minh]

While it may sound like a good idea (and a magnificent way to spend a lunch break), I wouldn't suggest using your PDA to download "adult media" at work, and especially then decide to make use of it in the restroom.

Next time you beat off, focus for a second and think about all of the audible sounds that you are eminating in your pud-pounding fury. Now imagine how those sounds will fill an echo-riddled restroom.

Re:Dangerous

[Scutter]

Next time you beat off, focus for a second and think about all of the audible sounds that you are eminating in your pud-pounding fury. Now imagine how those sounds will fill an echo-riddled restroom.

Yeah, completely aside from that, you know, "spanking in public" thing...

Huh?

[mao che minh]

This is Slashdot, who here would ever ask about OGG? Everyone is too concerned about whether or not it runs Linux, or imagining the implications of running these in a Beowulf driven cluster.

D@mnit,

[Hawthorne01]

This is what Sony's PDA's should have. While I lust in my heart after Sony's top-end models, the abilty to control and playback movies from one of their camcorders would be great.

Funny, I'm not at all excited....

[King_TJ]

Seriously, unless it's just me, I sense a general malaise about the whole PDA thing. Companies keep launching the "next greatest thing in pocket PCs", but I just don't see mass numbers of people adopting/using them.

Basically, they still feel like "toys for the man who has everything" and "nifty prizes to win in a contest" more than "must have" items.

I'm still using a Kyocera 6035 combo cellphone/PalmPilot, and I really don't find myself needing such things as "128 megs. of RAM" or streaming video in it. I simply keep a few important addresses and phone numbers in it, use an applet every once in a blue moon that turns the phone into an alarm clock, and regularly read news items on it via "AvantGo" software.

As people keep saying (but the manufacturers don't seem to be listening), long battery life is more useful than thousands of colors and tons of storage space. When I need a computer, I want a full-size keyboard to type on and a screen large enough to read easily. I'll deal with the extra size of a slim laptop. When I don't, I just want something with the basics in it - and no extra flash.

Re:Funny, I'm not at all excited....

[Billly Gates]

Agreed.

What is great about simple Palms is great batter life and reliability.

I need an alarm, TODO list, pim, calander, and maybe a game like Tetris. Thats it.

PocketPC's alarm system is not reliable, the battery life is limited, pocket word/excell really suck( especially without a keyboard).

You also have to ask yourself how much video's and mp3's could you fit in a pda?

It supports dvd playback. WOOAA. But how can you play a dvd on it? You probably need a big bulky external device.

The newer handsprings have video, color, and audio support, internet browsing, extra, and have all the apps.

If you need a pda and I mean pda, not a laptop then a Palm is a good buy.

If you need all the features described above then maybe a full laptop might be better suited.

Long live Palm.

Re:Funny, I'm not at all excited....

[benzapp]

Hmm... I don't think you have thought about this completely.

What is great about simple Palms is great batter life and reliability.

Lets see, can you really let your cell phone go more than a day or two without charging? I didn't think so. Today's PocketPC's have lithium ion batteries. They last easily 6 hours a day, more than you could ever possibly go through. The newest do 10 hours even with high load (like active wifi) If it is a problem, just get an extra battery.

I need an alarm, TODO list, pim, calander, and maybe a game like Tetris. Thats it.

What if you need more? A graphing calculator? Outlook integration? Access? Money? A graphing calculator? Or a financial calculator? You won't see a perfect clone of an HP 12C that any idiot could use on the Palm.

And games... Try playing Sim City 2000 or Age of Empires on a palm.

It supports dvd playback. WOOAA. But how can you play a dvd on it? You probably need a big bulky external device.

What planet are you on? When people talk about watching movies on their PDA's they are referring to DivX! Really, downsampling your 700 meg movie into a 250 megabyte movie at 320x240 with 64kbps audio is not a big deal. I would hardly call a compactflash card a bulky device. And, you may not find it too interesting but some of us take public transportation to work and it is much more convenient than using a laptop.

The newer handsprings have video, color, and audio support, internet browsing, extra, and have all the apps.

I have never seen anyone watch a movie on a palm.

If you need all the features described above then maybe a full laptop might be better suited.

Laptop = big, PDA = small. I can't use a laptop on the subway with ease, a PDA I can.

Check out those prices

[Pettifogger]

Did anyone else notice that these prices are creeping awfully close to that of a laptop? I know they're bigger, but laptops are getting thinner and are usually fully-fledged computers. If I wanted to watch movies and do heavy media applications, I'd much rather have a laptop.

I don't have a PDA (I still keep a spiral bound small calendar, nothing I've seen beats it so far, though I keep hoping) but if I did, it'd be more for scheduling/calendar and keeping track of phone numbers.

Re:Check out those prices

[Billly Gates]

This is all marketware by Microsoft in order to kill Palm.

I agree. If you do professional video editiing, an Apple Powerboor or Ibook is a much better buy.

Come on guys. You need storage and not a 64 meg stick to do video editing.

I pefer palms because they are best at what they are designed to do. That is act like a pda.

The apps are great too, including the browser for the color handsprings, free vnc, ssh, and vpn clients, etc. Try that with a pocket pc?

The most important thing is battery life though and I am sure these dvd playing large Apple Newtons, grrr I mean pocket pc's have shitty battery life if you try watch mpegs all day with them.

Re:Check out those prices

[Quarters]

Come on guys. You need storage and not a 64 meg stick to do video editing.

The article talks about using the JVC Io's USB port to control certain JVC USB equipped camcorders. It doesn't mention *anything* about using the Io as storage.

I'm interested in this. Even if the Io can do something as simple as read my JVC DV camcorder's timecode and give me the ability to log tape as I go, that would rock. Especially if the logging software stored the In-Out points as a standard format that any NLE could read in. Even for my amateur video work that would save me a *lot* of time.

Re:Check out those prices

[Aldurn]

I am sure these dvd playing large Apple Newtons, grrr I mean pocket pc's have shitty battery life if you try watch mpegs all day with

I've successfully run the following on my desktop with the Newton unplugged running a webserver with a wireless card and the backlight on:
while true; do wget http://newton.my.tld/; done
Six hours later, the sucker died. My Jornada dies after an hour just being on :)

What about DRM?

[AtariAmarok]

What about DRM (better called DRD = Digital Rights Denial) in these devices?

Is it going to come to the point where you don't have digital rights on devices promoted as being "media oriented"?

Re:Ooooh Goodie

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I wish those Indians would quit rubbing it in our faces how rich they are. When are we Americans going to get our share? Where's the justice?

WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT, MAN?

Re:Greetings,

[Anonymous Coward]

send pigs, pleeeeeeeeez?

i'd like to see...

[scotty777]

A cheap machine ($200-$250)
NO video (adds expense)
MP3 player
802.11g
-- easy ad hoc connection mode with nearby friends
-- IM / IRC ad hoc over the 802.11
-- email via any open 802.11 WAPs
-- share tunes (like with Kazaa), ad hoc over the 802.11
-- simple PK crypto for "private" IM conversations
Java on board (so apps/games can readily be written)
small keyboard (like on palm titanium)

Is that hardware price point impossible for the features?

Re:i'd like to see...

[DmitriA]

Apparently we won't see 802.11g on PocketPCs for sometime yet. CompactFlash simply can't handle those types of speeds :-(

Re:i'd like to see...

[hankaholic]

Bah. Drop the 802.11g (use b instead -- g devices will talk to b hardware), use a DSP for the MP3 decoding, so the core CPU requirements can be less demanding (and the DSP can be powered off by the core OS when not in use).

Forget Java also -- with a slow CPU, I'd think that GC delays would suck. Palm OS is easy to code for, and you can use free tools (GCC, etc.).

With the switch to 802.11b and using a DSP instead of a battery-sucking CPU, I'd say that price sounds reasonable.

(Basically, you're left with a Palm V with a keyboard and a DSP...)

Too little too late.

[Ricin]

Really, these devices are from before the .com burst. Things are different now and not just in marketing requirements.

And that's not bad. It keeps our beloved reasonably unencumbered and much-choice i386 ATX "open" PC architecture alive somewhat longer.

What do people want, and how much are they going to pay for it. If most people don't want it in the first place unless free...

Yes, but...

[lpret]

You're almost comparing apples to oranges. That PDA that ran on 2 AA batteries for 4 weeks had:

• 4 shades of black
• 4 Mhz processor
• Had Address book, Notes, Calendar, To-do list, calculator.

Now, my Toshiba e740 with the extended battery has:

• Color screen capable of full-screen video
• 400 Mhz processor
• Address book, Notes, Calendar, To-do list, graphing calculator, universal remote, e-mail, full web browsing (with Javascript), and two expansion slots for hardware or up to 1 GB each of memory.
• I stream and control audio wirelessly from my computer to my e740 which I can then listen to whenever I'm connected to the internet.
• The battery lasts 11 hours of constant wifi usage

Now, these are two completely different beasts and the one concession that has to be made is battery life. Everything else is much better in the new handhelds.

Re:Yes, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

4 Mhz processor
That's 16MHz, dumbass.

Re:Yes, but...

[Nogami_Saeko]

Good points!

I recently dumped my Handspring and moved to a Sony Ericsson P800. I was expecting the move to a much higher-powered (and power hungry) device that needed recharging every 2-3 days to be a real pain, but it's not a problem.

I just drop it in the sync cradle when I get home and it's topped up within 15-20 min. No problem. I've got a USB charger to use at work if necessary, but I've never had to so-far.

I'm waiting for the new splashpower battery charging technology which uses the pad to wirelessly charge any device put on top of it. Should be very handy!

N.

Re:Yes, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't say it was a Palm, did he?

Re:Yes, but...

[coopaq]

You're almost comparing apples to oranges. That PDA that ran on 2 AA batteries for 4 weeks...

You are correct. People aren't seeing the whole picture
There are three types of people on this board:

1.) My pen and paper dosen't crash.
2.) My Palm has better battery life.
3.) My PC is in my pocket and I will recharge it.

Re:Ooooh Goodie

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Unemployment checks you mean? No, Indian Government doesn't give those.

memory?

[SHEENmaster]

My zaurus has 64mb of ram, 256mb of SD, 128mb of CF, and 32mb of internal flash. Don't tell me that can't hold the necessary libraries.

Hell, the Agenda VR3 fit X11 and FLTK into its pitiful amount of ram and storage.

WinCE is like asbestos

[gotr00t]

I think it had something to do with the fact that WinCE had a really bad connotation to it, becuase literally, devices that used WinCE 2 and before were just useless, horrid devices, IMO. I have a WinCE 2.0 Pocket PC (Sharp Mobilon 4600), and though the hardware is good, the software renders it almost useless. It is now only slow, but the features are all superflous and don't work well. Pocket word was a joke, excel was far too slow, powerpoint could only view files, the movie player could only play like 0.1% of MPEG1 movies. The list of compatible software, even at its peak, was very short... etc.

Though I heard that WinCE 3.0 was a major improvement, it was probably renamed because people kept thinking that it, once again, would be some overrated product that was low in features and software. Then, Microsoft just took CE 3.0, slapped a few new features on to it, and called it PocketPC . I think that they changed they name ONCE AGAIN to give attention all its ".NET" and other overhyped features.

Re:WinCE is like asbestos

[Repugnant_Shit]

"WinCE" is the name of the Microsoft's real-time, embedded OS. "PocketPC" is the name of WinCE 3 with all the userland apps like a media player, ebook reader, pocket word, etc. I don't know what the hell "Windows Mobile" or whatever is. I just call it all CE :)

Re:WinCE is like asbestos

[Chanc_Gorkon]

The other poster has it mostly correct. Windows CE has gone nowhere. It's still here. What they have now done is developed more userland stuff to make a PocketPC work like it should. The core is still Windows CE, it's just customized to work in a portrait format. PLUS the prices aren't creeping up on the devices that most users use. The Dell and HP 1910 are the most popular ones and they are in the 300 dollar range. The Toshiba(the WiFi one) and iPaqs are for the Power PocketPC user. The reason your seeing these high end ones is that folks like me who LOVE Pocket PC would love to have those features. If my e740 had just a couple things (either integrated keyboard or a better browser....which 2003 has) I would not necessarily need a laptop when I go on a business trip. Next thing I want is bettter MP3 player support (as in manage my MP3 Player with the PPC and also using the HD features with the PPC too). If Creative or Apple came out with this! :)

WiFi Bangbus Anyone??

[niko9]

I see this as great way for all those laid off .com peeps to start a new career in the hi-tech-mobile-entertainment profession. ;o)

what can they do about it?

[cloudless.net]

Windows CE already has adequate power management features. Decoding audio/video is a processor-intensive task, and the 16-bit high-resolution color display requires battery power. There isn't much Microsoft can do about it. It is up to the hardware manufacturer to put a bigger battery there.

Try that with a Pocket PC? Sure...

[cloudless.net]

The apps are great too, including the browser for the color handsprings, free vnc, ssh, and vpn clients, etc. Try that with a pocket pc?

For Pocket PC:
Web broser - Pocket Internet Explorer
Remote Access - VNC, Terminal Service Client
Remote shell - SSH, telnet

Best of all, unlike the ancient single-tasking Palm OS, Pocket PC allows you to run all of them at the same time.

How cute.

[TheSHAD0W]

Small enough to fit in your pocket.

Unfortunately, you'll have to fill all your other pockets with batteries... *snicker*

One thing missing

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it me or do all PDAs suffer from one common problem: storage space deficiency. These things all have a lot of gadgets and "innovative" features, but until you can store stuff on it they'll always be "companions" to real PCs. Either the IPOD needs more PDA features or the PDAs need IPOD's hard drive.

Learn to use your PDA

[bnet41]

I think most people would benefit from the use of a PDA, if they were taught how to use it. People try to use a PDA as a replacement for their planners, and thats fine. The bad part is they don't learn how a PDA can make that task so much easier. Once you learn to sync it up to your computer, and services like Yahoo! then you can begin to use the real power of these devices. I think the apps that ship with most PDA's are a bad representation of whats out there. With the addition of a simple Wi-Fi card, I can check e-mail, browse the web, or even do something to a remote server, and all I need is a hotspot, which seem to be more and more prevelant. I think this JVC device is a step in the right direction. I really hope that pda's take off even more, because they can be a really great tool.

obligatory DRM

[Lord_Dweomer]

soooo........handy little new media device.....what do you think the odds are its gonna have DRM on it? Better yet....since we're now reaching the point where new devices aren't necessarily new, just miniaturizations of existing technology.....how easy do you think it would be for M$ for example to just say "yup, here's the new small computer that does EVERYTHING......(except play your pirated files because of the DRM on it).....take it or leave it.

I'm gonna go wrap myself in tinfoil now.

HD based PDAs?

[FlamingLaird]

I keep waiting for someone to come out with a PDA based around the same toshiba harddrives Apple uses in the iPod (or similar HD... I'm too lazy to google and see if one exists). Apple's proven that they can eliminate most shock and battery life problems inherent in a harddrive by aggressive caching and spinning down the drive, what's stopping someone developing a PDA around the drive? And it really wouldn't bother me too much if Apple came out with a PDA, at least the UI won't suck... and that's getting more important as I age and the old video game muscle starts to spasm...

Honeslty, I can't see myself dropping $500 on a new PDA until It can store 15 gigs of mp3s AND act as a cell phone. Since I'm carrying a PDA, iPod, and phone anyway, there's little point in replacing my venerable old Palm III until I can replace the other devices as well.

Re:HD based PDAs?

[ThePeices]

The main problem is cost, size, weight, and probably battery life. Sure, a small toshiba HDD will give you tons of space, but the physical size and weight of the HDD alone would be a put off. Then theres the added cost (though youll save on not having to buy FLASH based cards, but they are cheap compared to a 1.8" HDD anyway). Pocket PC PDA's are expensive enough, an added HDD would make it avaliable only to the financially endowed.

Hmmmmm

[Sevn]

Pocket PCs boast 128 MB SDRAM, built-in Wi-Fi and MPEG4 video and audio streaming and capture capabilities. The new devices are also equipped with software...

We are rapidly approaching a handheld porn creation studio!

Re:Hmmmmm

[mrfunky405]

Your sig kicks ass.

OpenZaurus

[SHEENmaster]

also uses Opie. I prefer it over QPE, but I'd still rather have a distro based upon X11.

When I'm done with my latest project, I might take some time to for OZ for X11 use.

I doubt I could stand an iPAQ. A unix box w/out a keyboard is basphemous!

Re:OpenZaurus

[Realistic_Dragon]

I'm fairly sure that there is an X11 server for OZ. At the very least there is an arm-ipkg of X11, because I had it installed on my iPaq (w/familiar) before I got my Zaurus.

BTW You can forward the OZ screen to your desktop as well as X11 apps...

Re:OpenZaurus

[Anonymous Coward]

The OZ X11 Server is a kludge, involving a fragile merge of vnc, qtopia/OPIE and X11, to get around the fact qtopia thinks it alone owns the display. It would be much nicer to NOT run OPIE/OZ, and put pure X11/familiar on the Zaurus, but there's no pre-built ROM images of that configuration.

More overpriced toys . . . yawn.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can get a whole PC for $200 and even that is too much since it doesn't come with a monitor.
It seems there's an endless supply of these easily breakable toys with questionable functionality. MS PocketPC 2003? In fact, I've used it and I found it totally lacking. The hardwriting thing is an absolute joke. The built-in phone and MP3 player and a few games are the only interesting parts, but they can be had elsewhere much cheaper and, in my opinion, better quality. Those little gizmos crash as much as XP and XP crashes all the time under real world conditions. But don't get me wrong, in the end, it's often the weirdo third party add-on hardware that causes the crashes so I'm not blaming any particular party for being incompetent, I'm just stating what I've observed and what I can't see changing in the near future. For a toy, the Pocket PC is so-so, but for practical purposes I can just wait till I get home or to the office. I think a lot of people actually need a break from the PCs in the course of a day rather than a smaller screen to stare at. If you need to take a note, a piece of paper does a great job. If it's too much hassle to key in your paper note later you have to wonder if it was really that important to take the note in the first place.
These gizmos are targeted at the business name card crowd and the market is pretty well saturated. That's not to mention the fact that those ranks are still being pared down week by week. Last year the analysts predicted 50% growth as Joe Schmoe discovered how useful and valuable they were and jealously hoarded them up. The first half of 2003 witnessed flat and often declining sales at most of the top tier OEMs. Sorry, these things suck.

Comprehensive coverage of PPC 2003 found here

[mrklin]

Pocket PC Thoughts - great site maintained by Jason Dunn and team.

professional editing? are you guys kidding?

[emg178]

These things obviously aren't designed to do professional editing. they are designed to take movie clips along on plane rides and such w/o lugging a laptop. Put a hard disk into it like the archos players, and you have a usefull movie watching platform that fits in a large pocket. Put a good organizer into the archos player, which will probably come, and I'll buy it.

Thanky you!

[scotty777]

The thing I like about g is the guard intervals that were added. Those really improve clutter rejection, which would be a boon indooors (schools, office buildings, shopping malls). The thing would be like a walkie talkie/cell phone without the cell phone charges.

I'm curious why you would switch back to b. I think the b chip makers are all switching to g, aren't they? They get better capability out of the same silicon real estate, don't they?

GCC is fine. As a long-time C programmer, I can handle that. I'm thinking though, that in any app I write, I'd want to run on Macs, Linux, Windows, Palm, etc, as well as maybe on phones. Porting isn't just a pain, and a waste of time. It also invariably gens feature mismatches. That is bothersome for the users. In addition, you and I might get higher performance from C, but would everybody do their garbage collection right? And stay "in bounds"?

The DSP part sounds exactly right. I'm wondering whether there's a cheap chip for doing some crypto?

Re:Thanky you!

[hankaholic]

I don't know much about g, other than that it's supposedly backwards-compatible. I do think that for a low-powered device with modest amounts of storage, ultra-high bandwidth shouldn't be a major concern. Even if storage runs as high as 256MB, a fully-utilized 11MB wireless connection could back up the handheld's entire store in just a few minutes, and with a USB dock (cradle) you could transfer all of the data pretty quickly. I'd think that the wireless would more be used for instant messages and the occasional data transfer, but I doubt you'd miss the extra bandwidth much.

That said, if you've never perused Palm's information on their handhelds, it's actually pretty interesting.

For instance, the OS does not include a busy-wait cursor. Apps aren't meant to make the user wait. (Okay, it may not seem like much, but seeing that in platform docs makes me giddy).

I remember reading something about how the Palm processor was designed for low-power operation. Basically, any hardware that isn't being used is shut off.

Broad-level design and philosophy overview: http://www.palmos.com/dev/start/intro.html

Neat quotes from this link include "requiring a user to spend an extra 30 seconds to find the information they need most often is... cumbersome on a handheld when that is the only thing they are going to do before they turn it off", "consider providing a way for users to enter data on the desktop and providing a conduit that downloads this information to the device", "the processing speed of a Palm Powered handheld ranges from 16MHz to 33MHz. They simply aren't designed to perform the same type of processing as a desktop PC. Users of handhelds do not expect to stare at an hourglass waiting for the next screen to appear", "Users depend on being able to use their device without needing to worry about whether or not it is charged up", and "users are not expected to upgrade their operating system as much as they would on a desktop computer."

More specific docs: http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/docs/

You have a point regarding writing portable code. However, I think that the UI would have to be highly redesigned to make a desktop app work on a Palm.

Early Palm screens are 160x160, and later revisions use 320x320. It's specifically backwards-compatible in such a way that low-res apps work flawlessly on high-res screens. High-res Palm apps usually don't display more on the screen at once, but what they do display looks better.

Palm design is a bit different than general design. It's well-suited to a handheld, but not well-suited for general usage. For instance, you don't interact with files -- there's no filesystem heirarchy. What an app does is create a database and manage records (of arbitrary length) using the Palm OS API. For instance, the address book has a single database which stores all contacts. Each record in a database is marked as clean (unmodified) or dirty. When you sync ("HotSync") the Palm with the desktop system, all dirty records are synchronized between handheld and desktop.

If you want to write a Palm app with a desktop counterpart, it's best to follow their suggestions:

The handheld features a processor that is significantly slower than the processors on most desktop computers. Because of this, PalmSource encourages developers to write applications for Palm Powered handhelds that off-load processor-intensive tasks to the desktop computer. Specifically, handhelds are intended for applications such as the following:

â portable data entry
â portable data viewing
â remote transactions

Applications that perform the following operations are considered more suitable for the desktop computer's processing power:

â high volume data entry
â backing up data
â printing
â configuration
â data storage

Most of the work you'll do on a hand-held device is pretty lightweight compared to the work you'd do on a desktop app. Fortunately, they make it

Re: you're an exception, I think....

[King_TJ]

I'm not about to argue with what you find useful about a newer PocketPC. If you actually take the time to encode movies to compressed DivX format and write them to smartcards, so you can then watch them while taking public transportation - then good for you. Enjoy!

I already have a PDA version of Quicken on my Palm phone. I can jot in purchases and sync them into my full version of Quicken later. I have Outlook integration too, if I want to set that up. I even have pocket spreadsheets and a Word document viewer for Palm. I've never really needed a financial calculator app on my PDA, but I'm 99% sure they exist. (There are tons of calculator applets available as freeware or shareware off sites like tucows.)

My point was, *most* people aren't chomping at the bit to buy these new PocketPC PDAs. They're pricy (major problem if it gets stolen, lost, or broken), and ultimately, the features they have that Palm PDAs lack are mostly just multimedia features. Anything multimedia, I write off as unnecessary in my PDA.