[Gunnyman]

I have my Bed Bath and Beyond coupon at the ready. I a little skittish because I bought the Augen POS that is at KMart. That thing is HORRIBLE. Anyway, I'm hoping the PDN is better. I'm not afraid of a little Android hacking. I have a Rooted Android Phone so I know my way around ADB. How responsive is the PDN? Anybody run Linpack on it? I like how active this community is so I know I'll have suport here. I just don't want to be let down again.Thanks in advance. BTW all the video reviews I have seen are based on the initial release which had if I recall pretty crappy firmware.I've heard the device is better now.

 

[lawman]

http://www.slatedroid.com/pandigita...iscussion/3830-arm11-optimized-dvm-w-jit.htmlHas before and after. And the 7-24 fw speeds up the processor.I am more confident in the build quality of the pdn, but remember, this is a hacked ereader, where the GT is a tablet.

 

[derelicte]

buy it. if you don't like it, return it. you have nothing to lose.

 

[bugeyed]

Can't push you into getting one, but BB&B has a very liberal return policy. The $20 rebate is about to end, so consider that. Usually you can't return an item if the UPC is missing, so keep that in mind too. I am enjoying mine, but I think I would be a bit disappointed if it wasn't on a path to be better than OOB. The support here is what is making this unit fun & I have no doubt that it will be relatively bug free soon. Then we can try 2.2 & see if that screws it up again! Anyway, I would be interested in hearing about your Augen GT experience, as I am sure Lawman would too.Cheers,kev

 

[Gunnyman]

Thanks for the input. The Augen to me was just shoddy. bad bad built quality with horrible button placement. Also the market not working out of the box and being unable to get factory reset working were huge turn offs. The touch scren response was also pretty bad. I knew it was resistive going in, but I've used much better resistive touch screens. Also they didn't disable the software's hunt for a cellular radio so battery life was just horrible.

 

[mccoy132]

I too suggest getting the PDN, especially since you know your way around Android. I didn't before (still a noob but a slightly more informed noob) and like it. Like another board member said, BBB has a very liberal return policy. My wife shops there a lot (and I tag along) and we've seen them accept stuff for returns almost all other stores would not.

 

[roebeet]

I have both (the Gentouch is going back, not the PDN). Frist off, try to price match with the Walgreens ad, when you buy - YMMV, but you might be able to get another $17 or so off and drop the price down to ~$107 after everything (coupons, PM and rebate)I agree that the Augen just feels cheap, and has some design flaws. The PDN, in comparison, is heavier but also feels more solid. Imo, the PDN touch screen is better, but again don't expect that much from a resistive screen. And battery life on the PDN is also much better, going on my experience.The cons versus the Gentouch are video playback (somewhat choppy on the PDN, depending on the file) and the WiFi issues when coming back from sleep mode.

 

[lawman]

In all fairness a few hour old patch is supposed to fix the GT screen, the weight of the PDN is owed in large part to the battery -hence longer battery life - and the GT has a dsp for video acceleration, which the PDN does not have.I have NEVER had issues with wifi. I have found when there are issues, going into settings and killing the wifi, then turning it back on fixes any such issues. Once it all shakes out, the GT will have better video than the PDN because of video acceleration. I am still looking into a GT, but with two PDNs am not sure it's worth getting, and not at all convinced the build quality is worth the extra 40 to 60 bucks.

 

[derelicte]

the sammy cpu has video accelerators, too. we just need the right player to utilize them.

 

[lawman]

sammy? Samsung? My understanding is that the GT has a separate DSP and the PDN does not, but if not, then you are most likely right that they are comparable.

 

[derelicte]

yes, sammy = samsung. I guess you need to hang out at avsforum to get that. sorry!

 

[hello-world]

[quote name='derelicte;31117]the sammy cpu has video accelerators' date=' too. we just need the right player to utilize them.[/QUOTE'] Intriguing! Could you suggest a few? I tried rockplayer, yxplayer andmeridian. Rockplayer works, sort of (VGA barely, and not at all for WVGA); yxplayer does not work at all; and I don't know how to make meridian to recognize the .MOV files on my sdcard.MANY THANKS!

 

[derelicte]

I've found the pd player to be the best, but only if you encode it correctly. I'm not entirely sure their player supports the accelerators, though.

 

[derelicte]

I have a better question:has anyone seen the samsung moment play videos? is it smooth?

 

[AJP]

I have the Samsung Moment. Between the Super Amoled screen, Android 2.1 and decent innards video plays back well. I do believe they limit playback to 30FPS, though. The biggest hindrance for me has been poor 3G signal near my home and a shortage of memory (Yes, I'm an app hog).

 

[derelicte]

thanks for the response!can you suck the player off it and try it on the novel?please?

 

[roebeet]

For MP4 encoded videos, the best I've found is mVideoPlayer. The PDN default video player actually does fairly well on widescreen videos (16:9 or 2:35) since they use less screen real estate, but it chokes on 4:3 videos as it takes up more screen space. mVideoPlayer is better with 4:3, but still not 100% smooth.I keep wondering where the problem lies - I'm thinking it's not at the app level but at either the Android OS level or possibly the kernel level. I've tried fudging around with things like the OpenGL drivers, but so far nothing I've done has worked. Not a deal breaker for me, but it would be nice to get smooth 4:3 playback like the Gentouch has.