Well, I have something here that might be interesting to many users of this forum.
Since several people asked me about the booting speed and pageturn speed of the STAReBOOK I thought I'd take a little video of the device in action. To spice things up a bit I added the Iliad as a comparison.

The things I did:

I put both devices on the couch, switched completely off (no standby).

I then switched the camera on, picked up the Iliad and turned it on, then turned the STAReBOOK on (I could do that without picking it up since the powerbutton is on the top).
Then I selected the "Last read book" on both devices (it's actually the same book in both cases, file-sizes are also about the same, around 900K and both books are at roughly the same page (hard to be sure since the screensize-difference makes the pages different as well).

I then flipped forward 3 Pages (please note that I did not press the page-forward button on the STAReBOOK properly the first time and had to repeat (you can see the device lighting up the green LED but not flipping pages), I did not want to do the whole recording again just because of that) and then flipped back three pages and shut both devices down again (Iliad first again).

Three things to note:
1) The quality is bad, but I don't have any better equipment and I guess you can see all that is neccessary.

2) I could actually finish the whole procedure on the STAReBOOK before the Iliad was even done booting despite the fact that I missed the "Page-forward" button at the first try and the Iliad was switched on several seconds before the STAReBOOK. Of course the Iliad has a lot more to load, but it is also a lot more powerful where the Hardware is concerned.

3) The books were both loaded from SD card. Both cards were 1GB, the one in the Iliad was a Sandsik Extreme II, the one in the STAReBOOK was a simple Kingston with no speedrating provided (it was 7.90€, so I guess it's not spectacular)

The File is in .avi format, I compressed it down from 29MB to 1.xMB using the XVID codec.

Thanks, but my Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player doesn't recognize your .avi format.

Please don't say I must use RealPlayer!

Interesting video. Seems to be iPod like graphics for the opening and closing splash screens on the STAReBOOK. It is revealing that you were able to turn on, select the last book, advance 3 pages, and go backward on the STAReBOOK all before the Iliad had completed its boot up process.

{Edit: No problems with the video format, just expanded and ran. (WinXP)}

Delphi, you probably need to install a video codec. Try getting a codec pack like Cole2k from a shareware site.

Commander, does the screen look like it refreshes faster? I'm interested in this more than improved computing speed.

the starebook movies, created by rhh888.

http://www.baizhan.com.cn/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=65617

I could not figure out how to play the video. It seems that one has to buy a program that can read RAR files.

No purchase necessary.

I use IZArc, which is a fantastic freeware program for Windows...
http://www.izarc.org/index.html

It handles all kinds of archives, including rar files.

And for a free cross platform media player that doesn't require any separate codecs to be messed with, try VLC.. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

I've found it to be great, and can be a lifesaver. For example, a buddy was headed overseas and had a bunch of video files, but couldn't play them or get the codecs to work on his laptop. In 5 mins I had him download VLC and he was watching the videos with no problem, just in time for his flight. Simple and easy.

I usually just use winrar for rar files.

Well, I have something here that might be interesting to many users of this forum.
Since several people asked me about the booting speed and pageturn speed of the STAReBOOK I thought I'd take a little video of the device in action. To spice things up a bit I added the Iliad as a comparison.


Impressive... But how long does it take to convert content to a format the STAReBook can read...?

@jaed

it takes about as long as it takes to make a pdf for the Iliad, but the results are a lot worse on the STAReBOOK at the moment.
staretek contacted me today to say that they will solve this and other issues with a software update. They gave me a timeframe of 30-45 days for completition...

@jaed

it takes about as long as it takes to make a pdf for the Iliad, but the results are a lot worse on the STAReBOOK at the moment.
staretek contacted me today to say that they will solve this and other issues with a software update. They gave me a timeframe of 30-45 days for completition...

It reads pdfs as well...? Might be worth looking into... :cool:

Nice video.

Although it is a bit hard to see due to the quality of the video but to me it seemed that the white of the display was a lot whiter on the iLiad than on the Starebook and gave a better/sharper contrast.

Can you confirm that CommanderROR ?

Btw can you try to put both devices next to each other and turn a page simultaneous, to give a better perception like I did with the video of the sony/iliad.

and my last request :wink: Is it possible to load a comic on both and zoom on the images to check quality and do the same page turn test.

That would be great and if you need a comic to test with i can give you one :happy2:

Thank you CommanderROR for a great video.

Now let me talk about the startup time.

Sigh ...

I can not understand it.
I really can't.

My recent "ebook reader" is in the terms of computing history only one step above the wooden abacus - Cassiopeia A-20, and my oldest "e-reader" is Cassiopeia A-11 (featuring Windows CE 1.0! and a whooping 4MB of combined memory (Yes. Program memory PLUS memory for all my documents)). To illustrate the age and technical features of both machines I will just say, that both machines have a slot for a memory card - PCMCIA sized memory card.

Yet, it takes less than ONE SECOND for those venerable machines to go from the "Off" state to the place where you last stopped reading.

Even a complete hard reboot to factory defaults takes less than it takes Starebook to start.

I simply fail to comprehend why a simple start of StarEbook takes freakin' 30 seconds. And I will not even start talking about the Iliad.

People take an almost instant switching on for pocket computers for granted. I was very deeply shocked when I learned (some time ago) that it takes more than 45 seconds for Iliad to boot. You do not need to load hundreds of megabytes from a slow harddisk like you do on PCs.

@jaed

The STAReBOOK does not support PDF, what I saidis that it takes about the sma eamount of time to create a PDF file (from whatever source) for the Iliad as it takes to create a .stk file for the STAReBOOK. The .stk creation is probaby a bit faster since there a no options to set at the moment, but that also means the results are quite often rather ugly.

@mill0r

The contrast is pretty much identical on both devices, I think the different frame-color makes the difference here. The Iliad has a black fram so the screen looks whiter, the STAReBOOK has a white frame so the screen looks more grey.

I can do a comic test if you like (and if the cames still works...it was about to give up yesterday...) and try the page-turning parallel, but I won't even attempt to do a quality-control zoom...there is absolutely no sense in doing that since the camera image-quality is so disgusting...

If you send me a nice comic file (PDF for the Iliad, formatted to 12x15cm) and .jpg files in 800x600 resolution for the STAReBOOK (or you can make a comic-stk with the eRead software if you like) then I'll gladly try it out for you.

Just attach the files to your next post and i'll download them or send them to Roland.Rohde@mobileread.com

@kacir
I agree about the boot-times. However, since the STAReBOOK does not need to be turned off to preserve power, I don't reboot it. It has been running without pause (apart from the restart fro the video) and no recharging has been done for 2 Days now with lots of playing around as well, and the battery is still almost full although I did not even "train" the battery yet, so it should not have full capacity yet.

@kacir
I agree about the boot-times. However, since the STAReBOOK does not need to be turned off to preserve power, I don't reboot it. It has been running without pause (apart from the restart fro the video) and no recharging has been done for 2 Days now with lots of playing around as well, and the battery is still almost full although I did not even "train" the battery yet, so it should not have full capacity yet.
If it can run for two weeks without being switched off, then the (cca) 30 second boot time is of absolutely no concern here.

When STAReBOOK solves problems with
- ugly monospaced fonts
- hideous linewrapping system
- creation of .stk files
it will be
THE perfect solution for many of us.

There are a lot of people that do not care about fancy features, or pdf documents and only want to read [plain text] books on their readers.

I'll try to find out about the battery life. Right now that's difficult since I have played around with the device so much, but once it runs out of juice for the first time and has to be recharged I'll try to do a more realistic test with just reading involved.
I'm looking forward to seeing how well this device can perform.

The new and improved software should arrive in 30-45 days according to Staretek and I guess we'll all still be around to see whether they can keep that promise... ;)

I must say, if only StarEbook managed to render HTML straight away, it would start to look like a real option to me, even though I think the price is still a bit high.

So a big thank you to all early adopters here! :)

Roland, if you also post your films on Youtube, nobody needs obscure video players to watch them, only a webbrowser with Flash.

Seems to me the Baen reader folks might like to see this. They'll be using different reader software, but the hardware is (as far as we know) the same, so boot times, etc. will probably be similar.

Excellent video CommanderROR!

To my eye though the difference in screen speed can be written off to iRex still doing the silly 1 second sleep in their screen update daemon. If you take that 1 second sleep out I believe the units will have nearly identical update speeds.

Maybe this video will embarrass them into taking the sleep out.

Seems to me the Baen reader folks might like to see this. They'll be using different reader software, but the hardware is (as far as we know) the same, so boot times, etc. will probably be similar.
Hopefully Baen can get them to move the 5 way navigator to the left a bit.

But probably not though, the molds/circuit board lay outs are expensive to re-do, oh well!

Man, that is *nice.*

What're you doing with the STAReBOOK again after you're done with it? :happy2:

(Kidding, of course.)

I can tell you what I'm doing...I'm using it to read books.

I really hope this device will let me retire my Iliad. If the formatting problems can be solved, then I'm pretty sure it can.
I'll keep my Iliad as a backup device, and I'll probabyl use it fr travelling since I don't have a proper protection option for the STAReBOOK yet, but apart from that I fully plan to make this my primary reading device, despite the smaller screen. It's all about easy of use...

@Scotty1024

I agree, that's where the difference comes from. You can see, that the Iliad reacts to the keypress with a slight delay while the STAReBOOK turns the page immediately.

I'll see about uploading to youtube.com

Could you use something other than 'rar' format? That seems to be a private format with no free decompressor (unless you agree to be zapped by adverts).

[Why compress it anyway? It won't gain any useful compression -- it just adds an extra step...]

Thanks!

@ lexico: The video can be seen by the two freeware programs linked to near the begining of the thread. One was linked by yunhid and the other by Bob Russell.

@ yunhid and Bob Russell: thanks for the help.

I was able to watch your .wmv file. The more I see of the StarEBook, the more I like what I see.

I had assumes that everybody uses VLC player and winrar these days...but apparently I was mistaken...:-)

I'll add the file again as .zip, I can't add it as .avi file since the forum does not allow that.

Youtube is now working again and I uploaded it there as well.

Go here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJfDek9FGjo

@ lexico: The video can be seen by the two freeware programs linked to near the begining of the thread. One was linked by yunhid and the other by Bob Russell.


Sorry -- but the only reason for wrapping anything up in a RAR file is to sell more adverts. It adds another step -- and more bytes -- to the file being distributed. Hardly in the spirit of MobileRead!

lex

@lexico

I don't knwo what you are talking about.
I use WinRAR and it does not throw ads at you, it's shareware but can be used without registering forever (it just reminds you to register after a while, but that does not really worry me).
The reason for wrapping the file in a RAr archive was that mobileread.com does not allow posting of .avi attachments.

Now the file is on youtube and you can wathc it there if you like.

I really hope this device will let me retire my Iliad. If the formatting problems can be solved, then I'm pretty sure it can.

If they need help there are several of us around here that know how to layout text. Some of us even know how to create a PDF viewer for a Mono 2 screen. :D

Well the buzz kill for me on the device is the lack of a suspend/resume mode.

The only thing prying the Sony Reader out of my fingers is something that matches the Sony for suspend/resume speed.

@Scotty1024

The STAReBOOK should be able to do suspend/resume no problem. I assume it does something like that between pageturns anyway becaseu I just leave it on at all times and the battery is still not empty which would sugggest that the powersaving must use something along those lines.
Maybe they can still improve on that and give the user an option to blank the screen after a set period of time and go into deep-sleep without making it neccessary to reboot.

If you would like ot offer your help developing a PDF viewer for the STAReBOOK you might want to contact Staretek directly. They are a lot more responsive than iRex I think, but I'm not sure how they think about releasing their sources and stuff...but since their device runs on Linux it should be easy to adapt one or several of your apps for the device. Why don't you just contact them? I'll PM my contact addresses to you.

i have contacted the starebook company , and asked them to open their sdk for i want to develop the pdf viewer on starebook, but they reject me, so i have to develop the pdftojpg program on pc.it's why the pdftojpg born reason.
maybe you can persuade them to open their SDK.

@Scotty1024

I talked to the Staretek guys and they said they would like to evaluatel your PDf viewer and would "warmly welcome you to contact them".

So feel free to do so, I've sent their contact info your way.

If you decide to join in and help them along with additional viewers, we might just have the ideal device here for those of us who sre looking for a "reading only" solution.

... maybe you can persuade them to open their SDK.
We might be unable to persuade them to publish their SDK, but as far as I understand they have build their system on Linux. So they have to publish full source codes for all software under GPL licence they are distributing. Including their patches and all information necessary for building the SW. And at least the Linux kernel they use is under GPL. I also think they use lots of other GNU utilities. Like busybox, and many other esential pieces of SW.

They might have developed some programs from the scratch - like the program used for displaying the text. I do not think that a GNU utility could make line wrapping in .sdk files in such a stupid way ;-)

When you purchase the STAReBOOK reader you can demand the source for GPL-ed software on their device. And they have to provide the source to you. They might ask for a reasonable handling fee (cost of media, burning itself, postage, ...) but they can't ask the money for the code itself. And once you have the source, You can do anything with it - according the GPL.

The reason for wrapping the file in a RAr archive was that mobileread.com does not allow posting of .avi attachments.
Sorry about that. It does now! ;)

When you purchase the STAReBOOK reader you can demand the source for GPL-ed software on their device. And they have to provide the source to you. They might ask for a reasonable handling fee (cost of media, burning itself, postage, ...) but they can't ask the money for the code itself. And once you have the source, You can do anything with it - according the GPL.
They wouldn't be the first company to ignore our demands to publish the Linux sources.

Even Sony, who released the sources, didn't take GPL serious, or they would have made it possible for us to recompile and reflash the firmware.

So far I haven't got a reply on the source-code question, but they seem to at least be considering it since I did not get an "ignore" or a "no" but received a reply to my other question (concerning Scotty) and a "I will reply to your other questions in another mail".

So maybe there is hope that this will go slightly better than the iRex deal did...:-)
I hope Scotty will contact them and they can get some kind of deal going so that we get more than .stk files on the device.

I must really say again that the device works great, something I had not really expected, and the only thing holding it back right now is the lack of a proper file-format (be that improved .stk or pdf, rtf and others)

Thanks commander. I would agree: I brought the derevice in HOng KOng and have been used for a week. So far, I would say I like this dervice for "reading only" due to the "long lasting" power (compare with my ilad) but I would love to have pdf or htlm format as well!!! Of course, I like my ilad as well for other functions but I won't use it for reading during my trip!

hmmm

Having discovered this thread, I nearly jumped for joy at the idea of my perfect ereader, however the format problem kills it for me, i am wondering how its going to compare to the elusive upcoming astaks?