Michael: For the first time in a Palm OS Treo, I feel that finally, Palm has included a good bundle of multimedia software. Included out of the box: A 1.3 mega pixel camera and camcorder, (same as the 700w's).. plus a picture viewer/slideshow application, a voice memo application, built in streaming video from Web, SprintTV, and a personal version of the much lauded PocketTunes MP3 player. For all of these applications, Palm has created an attractive user interface that eschews the normal Palm OS generic window for custom gradients in the title bar, as well as big, rounded, easy to press buttons.
The 1.3 mega pixel camera is excellent cell phone camera quality and produces sharp, clear, colorful photos. The camera interface is functionally unchanged from previous Treos, but is skinned to be more colorful. I like the new skins, as they take advantage of both the Treo's great screen resolution and high bit color. JPEG images are taken at 1280x1024, 640x480 or 320x240 sizes, chosen via a preferences menu. Each image at high resolution takes approximately 250 KB of memory, so a memory card is highly recommended. The camcorder takes videos in a slightly higher resolution .3g2 videos than on the 650 (352x288 vs. 320x240), at 14 fps. The quality is slightly better than that on the 650.
Palm tweaked the photo viewer interface yet again in the 700p, and gave it the multimedia look and simplified menus. Still present are the options to create an audio caption, rotate images, and draw on images. Albums are shown more intuitively as a stack of photos, instead of as a category drop down. Photo rendering is dramatically faster in the new viewer software; gone are the agonizingly long waits for the latest photo from your camera to display. A new slideshow feature includes cross-fades between photos to make for a more appealing show. Overall, the Pics & Videos app is dramatically improved.
The voice memo app is a long overdue standard feature for the PalmOS Treo line (for the 650 many different third party version are available). Again, the application uses Palm's new multimedia look. It records in a custom Palm format that you can share with other Palm devices with voice memo, in a MMS/picture mail message.
Included with the Treo is an application called SprintTV. For an extra monthly fee, Treo users can watch some streaming TV channels, such as NBC Mobile News, ESPN, and The Weather Channel. The service is powered by MobiTV. Unfortunately, Sprint would have been better off including MobiTV instead. The user interface of SprintTV is poor, and the video quality, on the same channels, is worse than MobiTV, due to different source encodings for the different services. If you want mobile TV on your Treo, I would never subscribe to SprintTV, and instead pay the extra $2 for MobiTV. (And better yet, soon, hopefully, SlingMedia will release a Palm client to allow you to watch your own TV streamed to your Treo).
Harv: Sigh. SprintTV. When I first read about it, I had high hopes. Curses, foiled again. Or fooled again? I could talk about what's wrong with it all day. I'll try not to. With a $25.00 a month "unlimited PowerVision" data plan like I have, you do NOT get all the SprintTV channels. They give you some samples � teasers, movie trailers, some rock videos, a little bit of this and that. But if you want to watch The Weather Channel, it's $4.95 a month. A live news channel? $6.95 a month. And on and on. If you opted to pay for every SprintTV channel, you'd practically spend as much in a month as a Slingbox costs.
And that brilliant drool-inducing new $200.00 gizmo connects to your home digital cable or satellite box or TiVO, and your router, so you can watch ALL of your home channels on any broadband-connected desktop or laptop (or the 700w) from any where in the world. With NO fees of any kind. With a remote control on screen.
Unfortunately, as this is written, not on a Treo 700p screen. Currently, the Slingbox only supports Windows and Windows Mobile. I've talked to their head honchos, and they ARE working on a PalmOS version of their software for the 700p, but it's still a few months away. I have a Slingbox sitting here in my "stuff to review" pile and when they release the PalmOS version of their Slingbox player/controller, you'll see my write-up on TreoCentral. It is one VERY cool product. SprintTV is simply far less "gee whiz" than it should have been, and far more expensive (if you opt to sign up for a lot of channels) than it should be. But if you want to give Sprint $4.95 a month just to watch The Weather Channel on your 700p, hey, it's your money. Me, I'll wait for the PalmOS Slingbox software and get 1000 channels off my digital cable box for free.
Michael: Finally, after not including any music player with the Treo 600 and including the horrid tiny RealPlayer with the Treo 650, Palm bundled a great MP3 player with the Treo 700p. In fact, I believe that Normsoft's PocketTunes is the best music player for Palm OS. Pocket Tunes is extremely stable and can even play in the background. Despite heavy competition, it's become the gold standard of PalmOS MP3 players, which is probably why it's now in ROM. It will play your files over the phone's tiny rear speaker, or included stereo headset. For better quality sound, as with any portable, jack into some powered speakers with a subwoofer, use some high quality headphones, or a cassette adapter or tiny FM transmitter in your car.
The version included in the 700p's ROM has the same look and feel as the other Palm multimedia applications. Register it and you'll get a code number which unlocks user interface skins. A deluxe version, available for upgrade, adds WMA support, graphic equalizers, and more features. Plus with Pocket Tunes Deluxe, you can use the Treo with all Microsoft powered music stores.
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