Does rockbox support 256 bit backgrounds?

[Slerped2005]

I'm very good at making themes, used to make them for pocket pcs, but I must know, does rockbox support this?  I can make my theme look just like it nromally would, and this would free up tons of battery life...

[Slerped2005]

I mean 256 color...

The ipod video is another beast, but for a pciture as small as the Ipod nano, 256 colors is perfectly fine.  And you'll free up about an hour of battery life too...

[Febs]

How did you come up with that battery life figure?

[Llorean]

1) What does screen size have to do with color depth?
2) What leads you to believe that a lower color depth backdrop would improve battery life, let alone gives you evidence enough to be able to estimate how much it would improve battery life on the Nano?

[Slerped2005]

I was just guessing, it could be anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour...

But i've seen an improved battery life when working on themes for Pocket PCs, and using 256 color backdrops instead of 24 bit...

And obviously, the smaller the screen size, the easier it is to make less colors :-P

EDIT:  The 'improved' battery life on the Pocket PCs was like 15 minutes  but they only last about 3-5 hours, I'm wondering how much of an improvement it would give an Ipod...

EDIT2:  After thinking about it, it's a 320x240 PPC versus a 172x132 (correct?) Ipod.  It may save a WHOPPING 15 minutes of battery life..........

[Llorean]

On a smaller screen, why would it be easier to use 256 colors? If I use a simple gradient backdrop, or even many photos, you need more than 8-bit depth to be able to not see banding or color loss.

As for battery life, the fact that it gets you more on a pocket PC shouldn't in any way suggest that it will have the same effect here. Do you know, from a program algorithm perspective, what Windows PocketPC 2003 does to handle loading and displaying backdrop displays? What about Rockbox? Are they the same?

[Slerped2005]

I wasn't saying 8 bit depth, I just meant to use a 256 color background to save on loading the background itself...

Rockbox would still use 24 bit mode, but the background would be 256 color...

But anyways, you can forget this, for now.  Even if it worked, I doubt that saving 15 minutes of battery life should be 'high priority'...

[Llorean]

The file is 8-bit. I was saying that you need more depth than 8-bits in the file. *sigh*

And just as a point of information: The backdrops in Rockbox are stored at the native framebuffer resolution, which means that even if it supported loading 256 color ones, they'd be adjusted to 16-bit color on the iPods. There's really no efficiency to be gained by using lower-color images on Rockbox because the depth adjustment for backdrops *should* only be done once. The fact that Windows PocketPC gains battery life frankly concerns me, as it seems rather strange.

[Slerped2005]

Hum.  Well thanks for this info.

And that problem may not exist anymore, the VGA ppcs and the new versions of windows mobile are far more efficient at doing what they do...

Windows mobile 2002 (Which I did most of my themes on) was about as efficient as.. Windows 98 ...  Funny, looked like it too.

[travishayes89]

Windows mobile 2002 (Which I did most of my themes on) was about as efficient as.. Windows 98 ...  Funny, looked like it too.