Annoyance with Windows Media Player

[GoldKey]

Been watching more movies lately on my Dell. Given my day, I often have 15 minutes here and there that I can watch. So over a day or so, I watch the whole movie. Problem, with WMP, when I pause a movie and turn off the device and then restart the device, the movie is still loaded in WMP, but it has gone back to the start. Even if I remember the exact time on the counter I stopped, I don't find the slider precise enough to get there. Anyone else experienced this annoyance and found a workaround?

[davidspalding]

Yeah, try PocketTV or something other than WMP. WMP sucks in this regard....

[GoldKey]

I've ripped and converted about 25 of my DVD's to .wmv files using Windows Movie Maker and Super DVD ripper. Unless I am doing something wrong, I can't get Pocket TV to play this file type.

[MoelBrain]

PPC2003 with WMP9 allows you to turn it off and start watching it again in the same place.

[GoldKey]

Thanks MoelBrain, must be another one of those little user enhancements that make the whole experience better that Ed was talking about yesterday.

[mattchapin]

Actually, Moelbrain, I have tried both a Toshiba E755 and an Ipaq 2215 and with Windows Media Player 9 in PocketPC 2003, if you pause a media file (audio or video) which is stored on the CF card, it will only maintain your position in the media file as long as you keep the unit continuously powered on. Power off --> Back to beginning of file. You may also get a funny error message, or return to the beginning of your playlist, depending on the circumstances.

If the media file is stored internally, then you can power off the unit and not lose your place.

I've heard that this is due to the time it takes to "re-acquire" the CF card when the unit is powered back on... during this brief process, any application that attempts to access the CF card will generate an error message.

I hope there's a way around this. Maybe reformatting the card with larger clusters? I've heard that produces faster access times. Or maybe pocketpc application programmers need to write their code to account for this defect in the OS?

If anyone has any information on this, I'd love to hear it! I'm no expert, just recalling what I've read on the subject.

:-( Matt

[GoldKey]

Yeah, there still must be something that can be done. I can't very well move the file to internal storage unless it was a REALLY short movie. I almost ordered the 2003 update today just to get this feature. The only thing that held me up was the post about it possibly slowing down the Axim. Can anyone else confirm or disprove that 2003 fixes this problem?