REVIEW: CorePlayer, the successor to TCPMP, is finally out!

[Menneisyys]

CorePlayer, the long-awaited, commercial successor to the well-known multimedia player TCPMP, has just been released.

TCPMP has (rightfully!) won the Multimedia / Video category of the Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine's Best Software Awards last and this year.



Thanks to BetaBoy, I’ve received a test version so I had the chance to thoroughly test it.

Availability

It’s available here (direct link) and is compatible with WM2003 devices and above. It, officially, costs $24.99, but it’s supposed to have a $5 rebate for AximSite (and, probably, Pocket PC Thoughts) forum members too (go register yourself ASAP ).

Compared to TCPMP,

Changes on the interface level

The GUI, currently, is very similar to that of TCPMP (but, later, will be completely changed - the old GUI is still present because of a bug in the new, which the Core folks are just fixing). This means (at least for a while) you won't need to re-learn everything as can be seen for example here (Settings in main menu), here (file selector) and here (video settings screen - compare this to the screenshots here).

Changes on the underlying engine level

The good

A plethora (and I really mean this! Not even I have had, up to now, the chance to test all of them - will later elaborate on them more thoroughly) of new codecs, which means a lot of new formats to play.

Note that, unfortunately, “exotic” formats like RealOne are (still?) not supported. This isn’t a major problem, however, given that the format of RealOne files are kept in secret very strictly.

Midi support (please see the Midi Bible for more information), as has been promised, has indeed been added. I’ve thoroughly tested the midi module, the quality of instruments and found them to be of very good quality. Of course, for example the piano in ultimate.mid (please DO see the just-linked article if you don’t know what I’m referring to) doesn’t sound so excellent as the custom patch set published here - it definitely exhibits some compression / downsampling effects. However, this is pretty understandable, given that the application only takes some 1.3 Mbytes storage memory, of which, at most, some hundred kilobytes may be taken by the (compressed) Midi instruments themselves.

Other than that, I have no complaints with the Midi quality at all - it sounds MUCH better than HTC's own midi library coming with all PPC Phone Edition devices and I haven't run into a single problem with any of my test Midi files.

The bad

Currently, it has no AVRCP support at all. This applies to both WM5 (which was also the case with TCPMP) and WM2003SE. TCPMP supports the latter OS – CorePlayer, it seems, doesn’t. Hope this will be fixed really soon (along with, preferably, adding AVRCP support for WM5 too). (Note that you’ll see remarks stating CorePlayer supports AVRCP if you install additional, operating system-level software. This is not really the case - currently, it's not possible to make it work. You'll need to wait for the bugfix version.)

Also, it seems it’s not possible to use “old” TCPMP codecs. For example, CorePlayer doesn’t support Speex files (see the Sound Recording Bible for more info on this format) by default. By installing the “old”, TCPMP-specific Speex codec, this problem hasn’t gone away (unlike with TCPMP, of course).

Verdict

Go for this app if you’re serious multimedia user. This application (and its author) certainly deserves paying for and I don’t think the above-mentioned problems (which will only affect few people – for example, only those with Bluetooth stereo headphones) will be only fixed in the distant future.

I really hope, however, that some advanced sound functionality will be also added - gapping, industry-strength reverb DSP's (see the case of 40iPlay), in addition to, of course, AVRCP.

Recommended links

Just Another Mobile Monday’s great review

The AximSite thread

UPDATE (later the same day): I recommend this PPCT thread too. for some additional info.[/b]

[Menneisyys]

CorePlayer, the long-awaited, commercial successor to the well-known multimedia player TCPMP, has just been released.

TCPMP has (rightfully!) won the Multimedia / Video category of the Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine's Best Software Awards last and this year.



Thanks to BetaBoy, I’ve received a test version so I had the chance to thoroughly test it.

Availability

It’s available here (direct link) and is compatible with WM2003 devices and above. It, officially, costs $24.99, but it’s supposed to have a $5 rebate for AximSite (and, probably, Pocket PC Thoughts) forum members too (go register yourself ASAP ).

Compared to TCPMP,

Changes on the interface level

The GUI, currently, is very similar to that of TCPMP (but, later, will be completely changed - the old GUI is still present because of a bug in the new, which the Core folks are just fixing). This means (at least for a while) you won't need to re-learn everything as can be seen for example here (Settings in main menu), here (file selector) and here (video settings screen - compare this to the screenshots here).

Changes on the underlying engine level

The good

A plethora (and I really mean this! Not even I have had, up to now, the chance to test all of them - will later elaborate on them more thoroughly) of new codecs, which means a lot of new formats to play.

Note that, unfortunately, “exotic” formats like RealOne are (still?) not supported. This isn’t a major problem, however, given that the format of RealOne files are kept in secret very strictly.

Midi support (please see the Midi Bible for more information), as has been promised, has indeed been added. I’ve thoroughly tested the midi module, the quality of instruments and found them to be of very good quality. Of course, for example the piano in ultimate.mid (please DO see the just-linked article if you don’t know what I’m referring to) doesn’t sound so excellent as the custom patch set published here - it definitely exhibits some compression / downsampling effects. However, this is pretty understandable, given that the application only takes some 1.3 Mbytes storage memory, of which, at most, some hundred kilobytes may be taken by the (compressed) Midi instruments themselves.

Other than that, I have no complaints with the Midi quality at all - it sounds MUCH better than HTC's own midi library coming with all PPC Phone Edition devices and I haven't run into a single problem with any of my test Midi files.

The bad

Currently, it has no AVRCP support at all. This applies to both WM5 (which was also the case with TCPMP) and WM2003SE. TCPMP supports the latter OS – CorePlayer, it seems, doesn’t. Hope this will be fixed really soon (along with, preferably, adding AVRCP support for WM5 too). (Note that you’ll see remarks stating CorePlayer supports AVRCP if you install additional, operating system-level software. This is not really the case - currently, it's not possible to make it work. You'll need to wait for the bugfix version.)

Also, it seems it’s not possible to use “old” TCPMP codecs. For example, CorePlayer doesn’t support Speex files (see the Sound Recording Bible for more info on this format) by default. By installing the “old”, TCPMP-specific Speex codec, this problem hasn’t gone away (unlike with TCPMP, of course).

Verdict

Go for this app if you’re serious multimedia user. This application (and its author) certainly deserves paying for and I don’t think the above-mentioned problems (which will only affect few people – for example, only those with Bluetooth stereo headphones) will be only fixed in the distant future.

I really hope, however, that some advanced sound functionality will be also added - gapping, industry-strength reverb DSP's (see the case of 40iPlay), in addition to, of course, AVRCP.

Recommended links

Just Another Mobile Monday’s great review

The AximSite thread

UPDATE (later the same day): I recommend this PPCT thread too. for some additional info.[/b]

[haesslich]

It's definitely not feature complete... but it has the one thing I needed, which TCPMP didn't - working h.264 support that doesn't render one frame out of fifty. What I'm waiting for myself is what's supposed to come in the future... but at least I know it's coming, which is more than I can say for some developers.