News · 28 Sep 2011 · MTW Editorial Team
One little feature that most Windows Phone (and iOS) users are usually not aware of is that videos transferred to the handsets via the Zune client are all re-encoded in WVGA (or close to this) especially when they have a higher resolution. This is done so that the user never encounters a situation where a video isn’t played back properly or at a sub-par frame rate because of a dodging encoding codec or resolution (the first generation QSD8250 Snapdragon SOC only supported the following HD formats MPEG-4 Simple Profile Up to 30fps @720p 10Mbps / H.264 High Profile v3.0 Up to 30fps @720p (1280×720) 10Mbps). The only 720P videos that where ever played back on a current Windows Phone 7 handsets are the ones shot by the camera, transferred to the phone with the USB mas storage trick or via the Skydrive trick.
I decided to take a look at the current codecs supported in Mango and noticed that Microsoft has finally updated the list with support for 720P HD video playback at 30fps for the new MSM8255 and MSM7230 powered handsets only. Here’s the list of codecs that are listed with “Some Windows Phone 7.5 devices support 1280 x 720 pixels at 30 fps”:
– MPEG-4 Part 10 (MPEG-4 AVC, H.264) Level 3.0 / 3.1 – High Profile
– MPEG-4 Part 10 (MPEG-4 AVC, H.264) Level 3.0 / 3.1 – Main Profile
– MPEG-4 Part 10 (MPEG-4 AVC, H.264) Level 3.0 / 3.1 – Baseline Profile
Now, what I would really like to know if if the Zune Client will detect the new Mango handsets and no longer re-encode videos to WVGA resolution or if things aren’t going to change on this front. This is definitely not a huge deal for most of us but with DLNA support on most handset this can really be interesting given that WVGA video can look like total crap on a big screen HDTV.
source: Microsoft
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