Poll: Did HTC mishandle the video driver controversy?
By Evan Blass 
posted January 23rd 2008 9:45AM
posted January 23rd 2008 9:45AM
We think it's time for the Engadget community at large to weigh in on this snowballing controversy: what (if anything) should HTC have done differently in order to maintain the proactive, customer-friendly image that it has up to this point been known for?
| Nothing, quit whining: they never advertised video acceleration when pitching the devices in question | |
|---|---|
| At least tell me on the box that a known feature of this chipset isn't supported, geez! | |
| Drivers should have been built right in; don't they have some great developers over there, anyway? | |
| Once everyone started complaining, free or very cheap drivers should have been immediately whipped up | |
| Um, why should I care about a minor issue affecting a few phone geeks? |
The people who bought the device PAYED for that ATI Imageon chip, they have the right to be able to use it.
Sure it does. It might make sense for manufacturers of individual chips (like CPUs) to include features that they can disable and sell as low-end models. But to include a chip on a circuit board and not use it is ludicrous. Even if they don't want to redesign the board, they can usually just leave out the chip if it won't be used on a given model. Chips cost money, and no company would overlook such a simple way of reducing their costs, especially if it doesn't mean a price-drop (i.e., all that saved money goes straight to their profit).
I completely understand what you're saying: it wasn't advertised, so, as far as they're concerned, it never did nor will it ever exist on the devices.
Here, Dave from the linked EngadgetMobile articulated the issue:
"Sorry, when it takes my screen LITERALLY 1.5 seconds to switch from horizontal to landscape when i open the keyboard, there is DEFINITELY something wrong with the video drivers. HTC is making this sound like all we are bitching about is ATI Imageon support, but what we want is a directdraw fix so our displays dont suck ass."
I agree with IraqiGeek on this one.
Anyone who buys a new car but it is not loaded has fallen into the same situation. All base model cars are completely wired and ready to go for the more expensive equipment. Especially cars now with completely computer based electronic systems.
@kjb434...
that reasoning is completely flawed. If you owned this phone you would realize that a good analogy would be like buying a car and then finding out the tires are flat and cant be inflated or replaced. Sure, you can still drive the car, but not very far at all.
I don't understand why the parent comment was graded down; it was pretty spot on and not horribly inflamatory even if it did say something people don't want to hear. If they don't advertise a feature, if they don't try to sell that feature, they aren't liable for not including it. The chipsets used by most iPods support hardware WMA decoding, should apple have provided WMA support? I don't think anyone could successfully argue that.
Most companies by existing chipsets that provide the majority of features that they hope for at the lowest price. If it includes features they don't intend to use they don't go and ask for a custom setup from the chip provider, nor do they typically go back and rework the design docs for the product they are making. They just don't use the features they don't want.
There are a couple considerations that the average gadget head here isn't considering. First, WM is not exactly the same thing as the desktop windows. THey can't just put a driver up for download and have everything work. They are going to need to push out a new OS with the driver baked in, via image update, which isn't exactly practical. Further, maybe there is a damn good reason they didn't enable it this round. THe battery life of the touch isn't exactly amazing without the support for the chip; enabling full use of the video chipset is likely to eat up all that much more power. Considering it is ATI, maybe the WM reference drivers provided either suck or don't exist, which would require HTC, who isn't exactly in the video driver writing market, to create the drivers.
Bullshit @ Dave
This is like a car being advertised as ipod compatible, but they don't provide the ipod. The car works just fine, but all you can listen to is the radio or CD player.
I'm done with this whole thing. At first I cared, but all this whining has soured my views on this and my Kaiser works just fine for me. Just waiting on WM 6.1 now. Back to XDA.
"They are going to need to push out a new OS with the driver baked in, via image update, which isn't exactly practical. Further, maybe there is a damn good reason they didn't enable it this round. THe battery life of the touch isn't exactly amazing without the support for the chip; enabling full use of the video chipset is likely to eat up all that much more power."
HTC releases new ROMs yearly, so that isn't an issue, and is, by ALL means, "practical." And, as far as battery life, the dedicated chip would require less energy because the main processor would not have to work as hard as a specialized piece of electronics would. You have a point that maybe there's a good reason, but where is that reason?
I've got to side with IraqiGeek, too. While providing the drivers after the fact definitely would earn HTC some (apparently much needed) good will, I don't think it's a crime that the drivers aren't there. This is certainly not an offense worth suing over.
Furthermore, phones can be demoed before buying. If you were so impulsive that you bought the phone before ever trying one in a store, you have to accept the risk that you might not like the phone. Caveat emptor.
fyreblazer: BS! Then you're saying it's okay to ship Vista without Nvidia drivers, getting the latest dual core/8800GT sweetness that only runs in safe mode, or going back to PIO mode for our hard drives instead of DMA.
You see IraqGeek here in America we have the right to EXPECT AND DEMAND THAT A PRODUCT WORKS PROPERLY. ITS CALLED "FAIR BUSINESS PRACTICES" & "DOING BUSINESS IN A GODLY WAY" .. TRY TO GET USE TO THE NEW FOUND FREEDOMS YOU HAVE NOW THAT WE HAVE LIBERATED YOU!
http://www.htcclassaction.org/misadvertising.php
We were jibbed. Bastards.
Humm, they always do this kind of crap, my HTC Trinity has crappy touchscreen drivers(I believe Hermes has the same problem), if you tap the screen continuously the cpu usage rises up to 43% or something, noticeable in 3d-intensive games.
HTC couldn't care less about the quality of their roms/drivers, they'll sell well anyways.
All I can say is that when a phone company starts telling me that I should "upgrade to future products in order to take advantage of..." something that should have been offered in the first place, I quit. Let them go bankrupt if that's the way they want to play...
Sorry, IraqiGeek. You don't know the issue at hand. From HTC's TyTN II product page:
"Communicating on the go is easier than ever with an innovative, ergonomic LCD design that positions the touch screen perfectly for reading and creating e-mails, using applications, or even just playing games."
Read that last little bit. I think you need to research before you comment.
http://www.htc.com/product/03-product_tytn_II.htm
IraqiGeek:
Since you don't own a Tilt or a Polaris, I don't really think you have any sort of credibility with regards to weighing in on this issue. If you owned a TyTn II or Polaris you would realize that we as owners ARE NOT BITCHING ABOUT THE ATI IMAGEON drivers! We are bitching about the LACK OF DIRECTDRAW DRIVERS that make these phones come to a screeching halt. HTC has just decided to run with the ATI Imageon story because they feel it is their best chance at damage control and making us, the consumers, look like whiney kids that want to play 3d games on our devices, which is NOT THE CASE.
IraqiGeek, you want to talk "promises"? How about GPS capability and the fact that the same drivers deteriorate TomTom performance and even basic file browsing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIJWAu6IRe4
Stop making it look like this is a problem only kids who want to play games experience. As a graphic designer I used to use a number of graphics apps (VS Painter etc) for quick doodles on the go, all without a hitch on my Eten M600. I also preferred using Picsel browser for my day to day browsing. Yes,once in awhile I'd want to fire up a "designed for windows mobile" game like Skyforce. NONE OF THEM runs as they should (ie: optimally) on the Tilt. When people have shelled out more than 500 to 700 dollars for a product you advertise as running on an advanced chip capable of all these things and fail to implement them you owe your loyal customer-base an explanation. By pushing and touting the graphics and communications capabilities of the Q chip they IMPLIED that these new devices were capable of all this and as such was the reason many of us bought them. By your same argument they should then have listed in the spec-sheet that the drivers were being omitted so customers could have made an informed purchase decision. This was a classic bait-and-switch. As far as I'm concerned I hope Eten is listening. Eten, your devices are beautiful...just up the RAM to 128MB and you have a loyal user. I'm done with HTC.
That's a different issue. I have a Hermes, and know what you are talking about.
Do I want a better graphics driver? Sure I do. But I don't think anyone has the right to complain about the lack of drivers for the Imageon hardware. The complaints about performance in games and the like are simply wrong. HTC never advertised the devices in question as anything but business oriented devices.
If HTC had advertised any media/gaming capabilities in any of the devices in question, than yes they should have made those drivers to begin with. But they just didn't.
I am an enthusiastic first buyer of Tytn II (ATT Tilt), and VERY disappointed would be a mild word to describe my experience with it. You cant record video properly (only ghosts), pictures suck (because of slow rendering), cant play videos at a good resolution, and it is pretty sluggish generally.
Because of this experience, I will never buy/recommend HTC phones to anybody (I get a lot of 'what should I buy' questions from friends and colleagues).
Thank you engadget for this publicity. FU HTC.
I wonder if you really have the the TyneII.
I have one and the camera and video capabilities are awesome.
I don't see everyone trying to sue Apple because they released the iphone with more barricades to its full potential. Many phones the first started including GPS circuitry didn't allow the user to use it. It was only there for the carriers to locate the phone.
@ kjb434
"I have one and the camera and video capabilities are awesome."
Are you serious? Dude, I average 2.3 FPS for regular photo shots in any light other than direct sunlight. What type of phone do you possess, because it obviously isn't an HTC TyTN II.
Try editing your registry on the phone,
HKLM\Software\HTC\Camera\Common
and set EnableFrameRateInfo to '1'
...Are you serious, kjb434?
ya kjb434 is obviously either a fanboy or an HTC troll because the camera in the TyTn II sucks major ass...takes literally 3 seconds from the time you press the camera button to focus and actually take a picture...
Hey, Dave, try these tips:
HKLM\Software\HTC\Camera\Captparam
Change CapKeyDelayTime to desired time (in miliseconds)
Change EnableCapKeyDelay to '0'
If running the Q-Mobile ROM, you shouldn't have to edit those. Other ROMs may require you to.
HTC has obviously missed the point -- this is not about people who expect to watch HD movies like they're sitting at home in their home theatre. This is about the fact that switching screen orientation, taking a picture, and just generally navigating around the UI takes forever. This has nothing to do with being a media player. The lack of drivers makes every function of the phone more difficult to use.
My first question would be why did they not include drivers for the ATI chip? Were they trying to extend battery life? Would it adversely affect the operation of the device (make things slower, etc.)?
Or is it 'cause they wanted to market the graphics feature for a more expensive upgrade unit, but still use the same hardware - thus saving some money and bilking the loyal customer base.
If the former, I don't have THAT big of a problem with their decision (although they could still offer the driver with caveats).
If the latter, man that would be messed up! That's the kind of crap that made me stop buying I-Mate stuff.
Hooray capitalism!
The price of a product is what the market is willing to support. If HTC can charge X for a phone with lower graphics functionality and X + Y for a phone with better graphics, and the market willingly pays it, the market is working as it should.
It seems to me that this functionality wasn't advertised as being part of the price. The consumer struck a deal with HTC to pay for a product with certain features. Now the consumer finds that a feature it may have thought was included (in reality it seems to me a bunch of people figured out this functionality was missing only after the fact and didn't actually purchase the phone with the expectation of advanced graphics) was not included in the purchase price. Tough. HTC didn't hide anything from you.
Should they be nice and give the drivers? Yea. Is that how a capitalistic economy/society works? Heck no! This is what drives innovation and improvement. HTC will lose a lot of loyal customers when another company comes along and builds a better mousetrap -- a similar phone with lower price and the better graphics.
Caveat Emptor!
That's just it, they DID advertise the unit as utilizing the Qualcomm MSM 7200 series chipset. One of the publicized features of this chipset is hardware video rendering. So yes, they absofuckinglutely did "promise" that it would contain this functionality. The phone has a hardware video accelerator chip that is crippled by the lack of a driver. A reasonable person when purchasing an item of this nature would reasonably assume software support for *all* advertised hardware. What if they put a camera in the phone but omitted the drivers and software for it? Caveat emptor huh? How's about "false advertising"?
Furthermore, issue is not just "playing video" in the sense of playing a pre-rendered avi or whatever. The issue is that there is no directdraw video driver for *rendering video.* This has an effect every single time a pixel drawn to the screen. The CPU has to do all the damn work rather than offloading it onto the specialized video rendering chip that is sitting right there waiting to be used. For simple operations the CPU is more than enough to render so it isn't as noticable (except that it eats into battery life.) Have you ever used your PC in 640x480 mode without a video driver installed? That's exactly what this is like.
A good way to see the problem is to try to use the camera on the Tilt. The viewfinder is a slideshow, mine has literally 1000ms lag between frames. The viewfinder on my old Blackjack? Smooth as silk. This is a shame because the camera on the tilt takes nice photos, but it is essentially unusable because the viewfinder is so slow.
In short, this isn't just about playing "high resolution" videos (who the fuck considers 320x240 to be "high resolution"?) on the device, this is about rendering pixels to the screen of the device, regardless of the source. It affects the UI, the camera, battery life, and yes, playing video files.
@An_asshole
Where exactly is the false advertising? HTC advertised that their phone came with chip X. You then went out and found a document published by someone else that said "hey, chip X can do hardware acceleration." Then you assume (ass out of u and me) that because chip X can hardware accelerate the phone HTC is advertising must hardware accelerate. You don't bother to do any research or ask anyone, you just assume based on a third party document that the first party product must perform in exactly the same was as the third party document says it should. In my book that isn't very smart.
In fact, did HTC even advertise the hardware acceleration portion of the chip or just the general chipset? Answer: general chipset and not the specific portion.
No, not all reasonable people would assume this functionality because 95% of the population doesn't have a clue what kind of chip is inside their phone to start with, let alone the chipset and extended functionality.
HTC never told you that you were getting hardware acceleration, in fact they never even implied it, you assumed it and your assumption was wrong. Tough. Next time, ask.
And honestly why is this even an issue on a "high level" tech blog like Engadget? We all know how often electronics companies cripple a device that could run faster/do more/whatever in order to segment the market and make more money. Again, while that is a bad PR move and maybe not the best for your company in the long run, it is capitalism.
As I said in another post on here, if it is so bad that it is like running a 640x480 monitor, why didn't you discover this in testing out the device or during your first 30 days of ownership? You had every opportunity to return a device that clearly does not meet your personal expectations.
Hi Jason
it's quite common today that several functions are baked into one chip, like the MSM7x00 series. But often you have to buy a license to use the different functions. So that when HTC bought the chip and licenses for the MSM7x00 chips, it doesn't surprise me that they didn't buy the right to use the Ati Imageon functions in it.
But still, this has nothing to do with video drivers as such, but with the DirectDraw capabilities. I've been testing different WM based phones for the better part of 1 1/2 years now. And I can tell you, the TyTN II renders and updates the picture slower than my grandma with arthrities can draw! It's in a _big_ way a productivity killer.
Htc fix this issue already....Do right by the consumers who have spent their hard earned bucks on your product. My best friend has a Tilt with PointUI on it and it sux. I have a Hermes with PointUI and its awesome. I just got my W2 and was thinking about droppin some cash on the Tilt but after this fiasco...I'm holding off.
Stop thinking this is just about VIDEO PLAYBACK. It's about the overall responsiveness of the unit. Think having an ATi card in your PC, but using the Intel Integrated Drivers. Yeah, it's THAT bad.
You forgot to mention trying to play Crysis with it
That is seriously the best analogy that has been used thus far. I've taken business law classes, and to be honest, you simply can't imply that a product is better than a previous one, support that implication by showing that it has a much better chipset to power it - and then here's the final thing, make it SLOWER than its predecessor because you're using a crappy driver/none @ all. You're basically building up a product, and baiting the customer to make a switch to the upgrade, when in all reality in terms of performance, its a downgrade. I'm going to contact my business law professor today and ask him how solid the case would be because he's done quite a few of torts and consumer class action suits. Jesus shit with the people on this board, i dont know why anyone would support a big company anyways. But seriously looks @ the VERY FIRST PARAGRAPH on their page describing their product
"More powerful than any mobile communications device you've seen before, the HTC TyTN II takes global connectivity to the next level."
If i see that i'm expecting a huge upgrade over my old HTC Kaiser which is 2 generations old. And if you just look at the language use, theres no assumptions being made, so dont even think about saying that. They are CLEARLY saying its more powerful than any mobile handset on the market, and if its not more powerful than a device thats 2 generations old because they're intentionally crippling it, thats a HUGE problem
Stay away from HTC. I will not buy any product from HTC. HTC Kaiser is the last one.
In my case, I just sold my AT&T Tilt (fortunately for what I paid) and purchased an iPhone instead. I grew very weary of the crappy performance of the Tilt (i.e. HTC Kaiser) with it's consistently low FPS, frequent screen lock-ups, etc. I truly expected a LOT more from a phone that was supposed to be the holy Mecca of Windows Mobile devices.
The only phones mentioned are the Tytyn II and the Touch Cruise, so why does it show the regular Touch in the photo? Is the normal Touch effected by this(Sprint)?
The Sprint Touch (HTC Vogue) is indeed one of the effected devices. It has the Qualcomm 7500 Chipset.
Wow, I was planning on getting THREE AT&T Tilts for me and my fam when my contract was up in March... I'm glad I learned about this now. Hopefully there will be a fix for it by then. Also, isn't there a way for programmers to make their own drivers to utilize the hardware? I remember a compsci friend of mine saying he could write his own drivers.
Which means you're talking about a GSM Touch which doesn't use either of the qualcomm chipsets. The only Touch that uses the Qualcom MSM 7x00 series is the CDMA Touch aka Vogue.
The CDMA version doesn't have WiFi