Reference Manual

HOW TO watch AVI and MP4 files on Windows, PocketPC, PalmOS and DVD players.

HOW TO stream Internet radio to your PDA.

HOW TO watch OTR HQ files.

HOW TO use the OTR Multidecoder_W98 behind a proxy.

Introduction

AVI (Audio Video Interleave) is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in 1992 as part of its Video for Windows technology.

MP4 is another (more recent) container format that has several advantages over AVI, but which is not as widely used because of licensing restrictions.

Either way, the data contained in such files is encoded, and so matching decoders for the content must be available on the playback system.

Decoders

By far the most versatile decoder software currently available is the FFMPEG package. Once installed, it can be used by all media player programs you might run on your system, including the Microsoft media players and numerous others. The package contains many different decoders, and your media player will then be able to play just about anything you download from the Internet.

FFMPEG is best installed by downloading the FFDSHOW package, as an FFMPEG installer is not generally available.

Players (Software)

While some users prefer players that support unconventional GUI interfaces (skins), others prefer players that get the job done with a minimum of overhead, such as the very versatile VLC Player. VLC uses the FFMPEG decoders per default, and it can also play Podcasts (mp4) without conversion. Another great feature of VLC is that it can download streams from the Internet and relay them to other machines on your local network.

The ultimate in simplicity is the player that Microsoft uses internally for its AVI Media Control Interface (MCI): mplay32.exe (mplayer.exe for Windows 9X). It runs on all platforms (including the ill-fated Vista platform) and does not require Windows Media Player to be installed. It can easily be started or embedded by other applications (such as NAT32).

Note that mplay32.exe is not the Windows Media Player nor does it require WMP to be installed. After you install FFMPEG, mplay32.exe will play all supported AVI formats.

Play MP4 on your PDA

PDA owners will find The Core Media Player very useful. It is available for Windows CE and Palm OS, and works just fine on the DELL Axim X50v. Note that to play MP4 files on Windows CE, you need the FFMPEG decoder and the AAC decoder from here. Some useful hints are here.

Listen to Internet radio on your PDA

Once you have The Core Media Player installed on your PDA, simply create a text file called playlist.pls with the following contents:

[playlist]
NumberOfEntries=1

File1=http://lsd.newmedia.tiscali-business.com/bb/redirect.lsc?stream=swr3/livestream.wma&content=live&media=ms
Title1=SWR3 WebRadio
Length1=-1

Version=2

The above sample playlist contains the link for the SWR3 WebRadio stream where this title is currently playing.

The format of these simple playlist files is documented here.

Internet Radio Web Applet

Here is a Web Applet sample for Internet Radio playback

Players (Hardware)

Many vendors are now marketing "Portable Media Players" that are actually just USB drives with built-in AVI or MP4 support, plus audio and video output hardware. Content is loaded from a PC via the USB connection and the device is then connected to a TV for playback. Some even include a remote control. The Apple iPod is a well-known (but expensive) example of such a device.

But before you purchase one of these, check whether your current DVD player has a USB port. Many players that can play AVI files on CD or DVD can also play the same content from a USB stick, although the first generation (pre-2008) of these players often had USB-port throughput problems. The prudent user will prepare a USB stick with test material and trial the player in-store before purchasing.

The DGTEC MiniCombo DM8501 plays AVI files from a USB stick without problems, as do the Telefunken TDV3828 DVD player/DVBT receiver, the CONIA MiniCombo C7MH920 and the AWA MiniCombo DM726. Note that the DM726 has only an analog TV Tuner, but it comes with an iPod dock and additional audio-visual inputs that let you connect your PDA audio and video outputs to the device. All of the above devices work quite well with the standard quality files downloaded from onlinetvrecorder.com, but USB throughput limitations are sometimes noticeable.

HQ Players (Hardware)

Players for the OTR HQ format (H.264, 720x576 pixels) are still rather expensive and hard to obtain (e.g. Popcorn Hour), but the following low-cost (USD $99) alternative from Western Digital is highly recommended:

The Western Digital TV HD Media Player is a small device (12.5x10x4 cm) that plays all OTR files perfectly (including the HQ formats). It has two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI and composite video outputs and is based on the Sigma Designs SMP8635LF Media Processor. The device gives very good playback quality, even for standard OTR files, and no throughput problems were encountered for any of the file formats tested. Be sure to upgrade the firmware of the device though, because the original firmware (Version 1.01.1) had several problems. WD HD TV firmware upgrade page

An OTR decoder proxy problem fix

The OTR Multidecoder_W98.EXE program does not work behind proxies that require authentication. However, it does work correctly behind proxies that do not require authentication. A simple fix for this problem is to set the program to use NAT32 as its proxy. The NAT32 proxy requires no authentication for machines listed in its Access Control List (httpd.acl), and so you would set the decoder's proxy usercode and password values to blank. The NAT32 machine then uses httpget requests to fetch the needed pages from the OTR server. The needed proxy settings for httpget are specified using the proxy command. This solution was tested with Multidecoder_W98.EXE Version 1.0.0.38 on a network that is decoupled from the Internet via a SQUID proxy and works perfectly.

See Also

FFDSHOW, The NAT32 Application, Internet Radio, Windows Media Player