I’ve just posted the following update for my generic iPhone 3G vs. 3G S article. I post it as a separate thread because many of you may need info on how non-native videos can be played back. I review and compare all the three Cydia-based (jailbreaking necessary!) solutions for this: yxFlash, mPlayer and VLC. As you’ll see, you’ll want to go for the former two and, at least for video playback, completely forget VLC. The article: With yxFlash (current, tested version: 2.0.0-1), one of the Cydia-based alternative media players on the iPhone, my thorough power consumption tests have resulted in the following: - I’ve measured playing back 320*240 WMV3, 15 fps (with WMA2 22kHz stereo sound) about two times better battery life (under exactly the same circumstances: airplane mode, minimal backlight with auto switched off). 3G: 0.31%/min, 3G S: 0.155%/min. - 624x352 1046 Kbps XVID playback is much better (no frame freezes for 1-2 seconds with very quickly changing scenes and often stuttering audio – on the 3G S, I’ve encountered stuttering audio very-very rarely) than on the 3G. Nevertheless, it still isn’t very good; I’d say it’s around 12-15 fps. (The test video 624x352 XviD at 1046 Kbps video; VBR MPEG1 Audio layer 3 129 Kbps 48 KHz audio [Pushing Daisies S01E01 Pie-lette; pushing.daisies.101.hdtv.xvid-xor.avi). Interestingly, the battery use of XviD playback is higher on the 3G S than on the 3G. (0.40%/min vs. 0.28%/min.) NOTE: non-baseline-encoded H.264 files can’t be played back on the 3G. On the 3G S, they can. Just give a try to the files HERE (320-wide videos) and HERE (640-wide ones). Please see THIS for more info on H.264. Also note that the MKV container isn’t supported by yxFlash; that is, you won’t be able to play back a lot of HD videos. Also note that I’ve directly compared yxFlash to the current (2.1.0) VLC4iphone version. I’ve only found one advantage of the latter: the ability to play back MKV files. (Nevertheless, as most MKV files are HD videos, this advantage is pretty much non-existent as VLC is completely unable to play them back with any usable FPS and with sound similar to the original.) It, otherwise, was much worse (much worse audio quality and a LOT of dropped frames) at playing back the test XVID file (see above). In addition, it was completely unable to play back the WMV file. Finally, MPlayer version 2009.06.23.1 was also unable to play back my WMV file (it immediately crashes [on the 3G] or just doesn’t display anything [on the 3G S]). The XVID file, on the other hand, was played back far better than under yxFlash (much less stuttering, delivering 24 fps almost all the time) on the 3G S. On the 3G, the playback was also considerably better – but the sound stuttered pretty frequently, depending on the content. The power consumption of mPlayer (while playing back the XviD test video) has also turned out to be considerably better than with yxFlash: 0.21%/minute for the 3G S and 0.15%/minute for the 3G. BTW, still speaking of yxFlash, while it is able to play back online WMV clips (just make sure you tap their URL’s from inside the built-in – pretty basic – Web browser), it’s not able to do the same to streamed WMV contents. This is certainly bad news as the vast majority of current TV streams use WMV (see for example WWITV). I’ve tested this with several streams: in addition to the WWITV ones, for example with THIS. This leaves you with far fewer streams than on some competing platforms; for example, Windows Mobile. There isn’t any kind of streaming support in VLC or mPlayer, unfortunately. All in all, whenever you can, try converting your non-MP4 files into the native format of the iPhone. The 3G S can play it back much-much better (and with much less power usage) than any other non-native format. The difference is considerably less pronounced with the 3G; for example, it consumes more power when playing back 480*320 2 Mbps baseline MP4 videos than the XviD test video. Nevertheless, at least it doesn’t stutter when playing back its native format. You can only hope the CorePlayer folks do release CorePlayer for the Cydia. It’ll surely be much better than anything else. In the meantime, however, get yxFlash for WMV (note that it costs $10; the trial version only allows for playing back stuff for a minute), including Web-based ones and mPlayer for XviD playback.
