N900 Videos

Chippy from UMPCportal shows us the N900’s TV-out capability. He’s playing a DivX video encoded at over 4 megabits per second.

First we see the movie playing on the N900 itself, then the camera moves back to reveal the same movie playing on a 50 inch TV screen. Chippy is using the N900’s PAL output for the TV playback, although the N900 can also be switched to NTSC. Chippy describes the output as “surprisingly good” and “not embarrassing at all”.

The DivX source file is 720 x 400 pixels, at a bitrate of 4.2Mbps. The TV-out connection is composite analogue. It connects via a cable which has a 3.5mm jack at the N900 end, and three RCA plugs at the TV end (white for audio left, red for audio right and yellow for video composite).

This video, from ubergizmo, shows nothing more than the N900 playing back a Nokia promotional video. As you can see, the playback is flawless.

According to Nokia’s N900 Technical Specifications, the N900 can play back a wide variety of video files (mp4, avi, wmv and 3gp) using these codecs: H264, MPEG4, Xvid, WMV and H263.

To ensure smooth playback:

• ensure that your WiFi or 3G network is fast enough, if streaming or playing from the network
• ensure that you’re not running performance-hogging applications in the background (multi-tasking)
• ensure that the video file is a suitable resolution and frame rate for the device