Vulkano Blast: Max Video Rate Not Working

Bryon Gaskin me@mail.com	Jan 11 (8 days ago)
to support

This is broken and does not work.  The player constantly tries to connect at the most available bandwith.

Already check the Vulkano Community Forums. This has been going on at least a year based on the forums and it doesn't appear Monsoon support staff has provided a fix yet, or at least it doesn't appear to be posted.

I have done the following:

Uninstalled the software, then reinstalled the software

Reset the unit and left it unplugged

Reran the setup

The response better be something better than we are looking into the issue, because the issue has been going on for more than a year.  Got my Amazon.com review ready, just waiting on your response.

Vulkano Support support@monsoonmultimedia.com	Jan 11 (8 days ago)
to Bryon

Hi Bryon,

Thank you for contacting Monsoon Support.

What is broken?

What make and model is your Laptop?

What is the OS version on it?

Thank you for choosing Monsoon Multimedia. 

Monsoon Support
            1-866-937-4282      
09:00 PST to 21:00 PST
Monday to Saturday   
support@monsoonmultimedia.com
http://www.myvulkano.com/support.html

From: me@mail.com [mailto:me@mail.com] On Behalf Of Bryon Gaskin
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2012 9:37 AM
To: support@monsoonmultimedia.com
Subject: Vulkano PC Software for Blast - Max Streaming Speed

Bryon Gaskin me@mail.com	Jan 17 (2 days ago)
to Vulkano

Broken: When you set the max video rate, it uses all available bandwidth

This happens on all machines I run the player on includling

#1 Machine: MSI U230

WIndows 7 2GB RAM 320 GB HD

#2 Gateway Desktop

Windows Vista 3 GB RAM 2TB HD

#3 HP Mini 1033NR

Windows XP 1 GB RAM 32 GB HD

I have done a hard rest of the Vulkano Blast and reran the setup.

I have verified that I am operating on the latest firmware

I have verified that the PC software is up to date

Thanks

Vulkano Support support@monsoonmultimedia.com	Jan 17 (2 days ago)
to Bryon

Hi Bryon,

Thank you for contacting Monsoon Support.

What do you mean by saying it uses all the available bandwidth. With Maximum Bitrate in PC Player can only go upto a Maximum of 4 mbps not anymore.

Thank you for choosing Monsoon Multimedia. 

Monsoon Support
            1-866-937-4282      
09:00 PST to 21:00 PST
Monday to Saturday   
support@monsoonmultimedia.com
http://www.myvulkano.com/support.html

From: me@mail.com [mailto:me@mail.com] On Behalf Of Bryon Gaskin
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 1:03 AM
To: Vulkano Support
Subject: Re: Vulkano PC Software for Blast - Max Streaming Speed

Bryon Gaskin me@mail.com	Jan 17 (2 days ago)
to Vulkano

For instance.

In Local viewing, if I set the resolution to default and set the max bandwidth at 700 (which appears to be the lowest), it still uses between 1.8 and 2.3

In Remote viewing if I set it to 500kbs and default it still uses 1mb or higher

In other words it seems like either the player or the device itself is ignoring the input parameters

Vulkano Support support@monsoonmultimedia.com	Jan 18 (1 day ago)
to Bryon

Hi Bryon,

Thank you for contacting Monsoon Support.

This is a known issue with the player settings. We are working on it to rectify it.

Thank you for choosing Monsoon Multimedia. 

Monsoon Support
            1-866-937-4282      
09:00 PST to 21:00 PST
Monday to Saturday   
support@monsoonmultimedia.com
http://www.myvulkano.com/support.html

From: me@mail.com [mailto:me@mail.com] On Behalf Of Bryon Gaskin
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 9:34 AM

Nexus One Gingerbread 2.3 Android OTA released

Got mine March 1, 2011
http://www.bryongaskin.net/virtual/reviews/Nexus%20One%202.3%20Gingerbread%20B.JPG

Sanyo Easy Street NVM-4370 4.3'' Portable GPS/TURD Navigator with FM Transmitter and Text-to-Speech

Product: Sanyo Easy Street NVM-4370 4.3'' Portable GPS Navigator with FM Transmitter and Text-to-Speech
Buyer Beware: Know what you are getting into: I wish it was possible to give a producet a 0 rating Cons: FM transmitter is terrible Speaker is terrible There is absolutely no support on the web for this product. You cannot download drivers, software, or manuals . You have to exit navigation mode to do anything else, like listen to music, view pictures, or change any settings such as adjusting the brightness. The maps are on the CD ROM, my CD ROM was defective, and kept receiving data read errors on every PC in my house when I tried to read from the CD ROM. MUSIC: There is not playlist or auto add. You can only play the files in one folder, if you have multiple folders you cannot go to the top level folder and play all of the files in the sub folders...so using it as a music player is not really a viable option, unless you have all of your music in one single folder and almost no desktop music player (i.e. windows media player, itunes) arranges music files into a single folder Video Player: is ok if you can figure which mp4 video files it will play, because it won't play most of them...don't bother looking in the instructions for details because you won't find them. Just like the music player you will have to have all of your videos in a single folder if you want to be able to have anything similar to a playlist. This doesn't represent as big a problem as the audio player as long as you are watching TV shows or movies because they are longer so you are trying to find a new track every 3 or 4 minutes. Navigation Screen: The maps are little plain, pretty plain, there isn't a lot of difference between the 2D maps and the 3D maps. You won't find anything for trips like you find on the manufacture's devices like GARMIN, so there is no Odometer, Tripometer, or Speedometer. That is a pretty depressing point for me Bluetooth connected pretty easy on my AT&T Tilt phone, but was unable to use the contacts function via bluetooth; also the SMS messages function does not work either. Pros: It has video It has audio Navigation works pretty well. It is pretty easy to use, but you need to spend some time getting to know the setup. Voice is clear and pronounces most street names pretty well, although the speaker is so poor it is hard to hear a highway speeds. Overall: I would not recommend this product, it's a shame because it has a lot of features but none of them work well enough to be a selling point. Really disappointing is the fact the speaker is so poor and that the FM transmitter is pretty much worthless because that is something that should have been pretty obvious during product testing. If Sanyo comes out with a firmware/software update, I might change my recommendation; until then I would navigate away from this GPS. Reviewer Background: *34 year old male *Masters Degree *10 + years in computer electronics industry *Previous GPS owner UPDATE: After 3 days the unit suddenly stopped working. It will power on with a "SANYO" logo and that is it, did all of the resets that the manual called for. Nothing. Tried calling customer support----unable to get through. Sanyo has a very simple phone tree that gives you two options. 1 for if you purchased walmart cameras and 2. for all other Sanyo products, when you press 2, it starts the phone tree all over again. Update 2: Finally got in touch with the Sanyo Helpless Desk, told the them all of the troubleshooting I did and the pretty much told me to take it back where i got it. STAY AWAY FROM THIS PRODUCT !!!!

If are unfortunate enough to own this little turd and don't have the manual, you can download them from my website: http://www.bryongaskin.net/misc/Reviews/Sayno_4370/

Insignia NS-DV2G Video Formats Hacks using SUPER ©

Best Buy sells a brand of MP3 (among other electronics) called Insignia. I have the Insignia NS-DV2G MP3, WMA, Video Pla yer, Radio, etc player. The unit comes with ArcSoft Media encoder, but anyone who has this device knows that the ArcSoft software is slow and limited in what it will encode.
This blog entry is not a recommendation for people to go out and buy the insignia player, it is intended for those who have already purchased it and want to know what other video formats they can use.

Situation: I have windows vista machine with Windows Media Center and a TV tuner card. The problem is that the Windows Media Center Encodes to DVR-MS format. Many people use MCEBuddy to do the conversion automatically, but to date I have not been able to find a format that works. So I looked elsewhere and found an app called SUPER ©. ( http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html)

Here is the general range for what what I tried and got to work on the Insigina NS-DV2G.
I used FFMPEG as the encoder
XVID as the Codec
Video rates from 56kbs to 728kbs
Audio rates from 64kbs to 128kbs
I used a constant 15fps (frames per second)
Video sizes from 320x240 to 240x176
I have included some links to some converted files:
Screenshot of a sample SUPER © configuration that works on my Insignia device.

Original_File Original.mpg -The original unmodified file.
320x240  528 video 64 audio 15 fps
320x240  64video 56 audio 15fps
320x240 240 video 96 audio 15fps 
320x240 768v ido 96 a udio 15fps
SUPER_C_Insigina_setup  Screenshot of a sample SUPER © configuration that works on my Insignia device.

Side Note: On some systems, you may not be able to transfer the files directly to the unit, some XP machines will tell you that it is a viable format. I have one XP machine that it works on and another XP machine it does not; my Vista machine has not problem. Until you get it figured out, I would transfer the videos to a MicroSD card then insert it into the player.
Let me know if this helps you.
Thanks
Bryon Gaskin