New firmware announced, release maybe at May, 4th

[PhishStyx]

Originally Posted by amgoforth

Can I ask what kind and how large a pdf file. I am very interested in PDF files on the Digital Reader.

I can't be sure whether he's exaggerating or not, but if I was having that kind of issue, I would've opened a trouble ticket & gotten iRex to do something about it when it first happened, not spent weeks complaining about it everywhere.

But maybe that's just me.

[ThR]

Originally Posted by E.M.

Any one knows when this new firmware will be out????????

No, sorry. Karel only said, that testing will not take too long... Whatever this means...

[flowoeB]

Originally Posted by amgoforth

I wrote this while i had to wait 3 minutes for a PDF page turn on my DR1000...

Can I ask what kind and how large a pdf file. I am very interested in PDF files on the Digital Reader.

it was Elektrospieler Ausgabe 4

it's a file with much gfx and text and much transparency - i think the transparency is the bigest problem for the 1000s

and i know it was 3 minutes because i have sleepmod start at 3 min and it went to sleep right after the page turn...

[myprecious]

That's strange - I've tested my device (I set it to go to sleep mode after 10 seconds) - and it always goes to sleep mode 10 seconds after turning a page, no matter how long it takes to turn the page.

[RobbieClarken]

Originally Posted by flowoeB

it was Elektrospieler Ausgabe 4

it's a file with much gfx and text and much transparency - i think the transparency is the bigest problem for the 1000s

and i know it was 3 minutes because i have sleepmod start at 3 min and it went to sleep right after the page turn...

That looks a really nice gaming magazine. I wish it were in English!

I tried skipping through the magazine as fast as the DR1000 allows and I didn't encounter any 3 minute page turns. Out of 50 page turns, the average time taken was 30 seconds with a standard deviation of 17 seconds. I tried running Acrobat's PDF Optimizer (with compatibility set to "Acrobat 4.0 and later") to see what effect this would have. That reduced the average page turn time to 22 seconds (and the standard deviation to 12 seconds). The longest I had to wait for a page turn was 61 seconds. This could probably be reduced by optimising the graphics for the DR1000 resolution but I'm not sure how to do this.

When I flicked through the un-optimised document at a normal speed ("reading" each page for 15 seconds), the pre-rendering was usually fast enough that page turns only took ~2.4 seconds.

[flowoeB]

@myprecious: i had some crashes when the sleeptime was set so it was shorter than a pageturn. so i don't think the reader does always wait for the page turn to finish before going to sleep mode

@epiphany: sometimes it happens that when i touch the button to turn a page the reader doesnt respond for 1 minute and more then displays a 'please wait' message and takes about 1-2 minutes to display the next page. this happens randomly but doesn't happen with documents optimised for '4.0 or higher'

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by amgoforth

Can I ask what kind and how large a pdf file. I am very interested in PDF files on the Digital Reader.

Generally, it has to do with the specific content on a page and how much work the DR needs to do in order to render it to fit it's native resolution, not so much the overall file size. You can have very large PDFs that are simple text which will have quick page turns. You can have a very small PDF with complex/large images, and it'll end up being very slow.

Note, when I say "images" I'm talking about the format that the data is stored inside the PDF file, which doesn't necessarily imply "pictures". A plain text document can actually be stored inside the PDF where each page is an image file, rather than stored as text characters (PDF is funny that way). Generally this occurs if you have a PDF that was scanned, but not OCR'd. So, even plain text pages can be slow to turn if the data is actually stored inside the PDF has a high resolution "image".

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by flowoeB

@epiphany: sometimes it happens that when i touch the button to turn a page the reader doesnt respond for 1 minute and more then displays a 'please wait' message and takes about 1-2 minutes to display the next page. this happens randomly but doesn't happen with documents optimised for '4.0 or higher'

Have you contacted their tech support?

[Grimulkan]

Originally Posted by flowoeB

@myprecious: i had some crashes when the sleeptime was set so it was shorter than a pageturn. so i don't think the reader does always wait for the page turn to finish before going to sleep mode

I have my sleep timer set to 30 seconds, and it indeed "went to sleep" during a page turn with your test pdf! Very strange.

The test pdf took 35 seconds to load (assuming that the viewer wasn't already running) and thereafter random (non-sequential) page jumps took 15-45 seconds. I never experienced any 3 minute delays.

I then optimized the pdf by rasterizing it into another pdf and reduced the dpi, colors etc. to match the DR. This file took 22 seconds to load and 6-12 seconds for a random page jump. One can also "explode" the pdf into a bunch of jpeg images and put this into a folder on the DR - the DR picks up the images in the folder and automatically arranges them as "pages", so your viewing experience is near identical. In this case, the viewer takes 12 seconds to start up and 4-6 seconds to jump to a random page.

I view several super-large pdf files (such as scanned documents from Internet Archives or Google books) and I find that it is best to view them using the last method, although you sacrifice full text search.

[flowoeB]

@Shaggy: no, i didn't because i saw the same effect when the device was introduced in a german product demonstration so i think it's normal to happen from time to time. and as i said: the problems totaly depend on the pdf files i use - as long as i optimize them for 4.0 and above i don't have problems - but i do have pdf files where the user password is set so i can't alter them... (and sometimes i don't have the 'strength' to boot up windows on my mac to decrypt an encrypted pdf )

@grimulkan: i set the sleeptime manualy (in the ini file) to 360 seconds because i have problems with the wacom stopping to work and double refreshes at page turns - now it drains the battery again very fast but at least i can use it as a reader

[jjgonche]

Originally Posted by flowoeB

(and sometimes i don't have the 'strength' to boot up windows on my mac to decrypt an encrypted pdf )

Hi flowoeB,

If you have a Mac you are fortunate, very fortunate in fact, just open any encrypted pdf with ColorSync and save it, using "Save as" option. The new saved pdf file will be unencrypted.

I hope this trick will help you.


Cheers,
jjgonche.

[pthwaite]

Alternatively, (on the MAC again) open it in Preview and "save as" and you can choose a variety of options. The reduce file size can do wonders too.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by flowoeB

@Shaggy: no, i didn't because i saw the same effect when the device was introduced in a german product demonstration so i think it's normal to happen from time to time.

It sounds pretty unusual if you're getting 3 minute page turns when others are not having nearly as much of a problem with the same PDF file. Maybe some of the behavior of your device that you are complaining so much about is due to a hardware problem that can be corrected. I don't see how it would hurt to at least ask them.

[flowoeB]

@jjgonche / pthwaite: thx for the tips!

@shaggy: as soon as i find a way to reproduce the error i will. I'm reading several hundret pages a day but i can't find a pattern (except that I think it only happens with pdf file created with indesign) i'm still pretty shure this isn't a hardware problem

[flowoeB]

anybody heard something new about the update? eg. which year it will be released?