Audio & Video Players

[lynch]

I just became a Windows Smartphone (Dash) user a few weeks ago after years with Palm (most recently the 700p).

The built-in Windows Media Player is pretty weak and Coreplayer is not that great for the price you pay. A couple things that bug me are:

- can't jump ahead in WMP by time chunks (10 seconds, 30 seconds, etc)
- No bookmarking abilities in either player
- No digital countdown timer in Coreplayer
- some m4v videos (like Daily Nut from TechTV) don't play

I always thought Windows Smartphone was ahead of the game versus Palm and for the most part I believe it, but when it comes to mobile media, I am very disappointed in my experience so far.

Can anyone shed some light on addressing these issues? Is there a better option out there or is this what everyone else is living with too?

[GSmith]

The only list of media players is for the Pocket PC (http://www.feederreader.com//mediachart.html). The listed players/companies may offer Smartphone versions of their software for you to try. I've been threatening to add a "Smartphone" column to the chart to indicate which are available for the Smartphone, but haven't gotten enough demand to do so.

If I remember correctly TechTV uses H.264 encoding, and players that play that encoding on the Smartphone are very rare (for an explanation of MP4 and all its varieties, see http://mobilesmith.blogspot.com/2006/08/mpeg4-overview.html )

That said, CorePlayer is the only available player for Smartphone or Pocket PC able to play H.264 encoded videos with decent performance. TechTV is pretty tough on a 600MHz Pocket PC, playback of TechTV might still have problems on a lesser device, especially 210MHz Smartphone. Unfortunately, CorePlayer does not offer any sort of trial at this time.

Greg Smith
Author, FeederReader - Windows Mobile news, blogs, audio, video, podcasts downloaded direct to your Smartphone or Pocket PC
www.FeederReader.com - Download on the Road

[lynch]

Thanks for the info Greg.

Man, I really hope someone makes a decent player for this platform. Coreplayer is probably the best option out there I guess.

[Mike Temporale]

I can't comment on the encoding that's supported, but Conduits has a pretty nice player.

http://www.conduits.com/products/player/

[GSmith]

Conduits mention neither MP4 nor H.264 on their page for Pocket Player. If it doesn't support either, then it is unlikely to play TechTV.

It's possible that they simply don't mention those, though. If you try it, please report what you find out regarding codec support!

Greg Smith
Author, FeederReader - Windows Mobile news, blogs, audio, video, podcasts downloaded direct to your Smartphone or Pocket PC
www.FeederReader.com - Download on the Road

[Jerry Raia]

Coreplayer is probably the best option out there I guess.

The nice thing about Coreplayer is it will play practically any file type out there.

[lynch]

Yeah, I've got Coreplayer and I can see that it is probably the best option out there for WM5, but compared to other platforms, I think it falls short.

I can't speak for PPC because I have not used it in many years, but coming from the Palm OS world (Treo 700p), I figured that I would be taking a step up as far as media options are concerned. Sad to say, but the free TCPMP on the Palm platform performed much better than the $20 Coreplayer on my Dash. Now I'm not sure if it was because of the stronger processor on the Palm or what, but I never had a problem playing ANY file on my Palm.

Like I said, I still have problems playing some M4V files. I am thinking it has to do with some sort of missing codec, but I can't figure it out. Oh well, I would just be happy with a bookmarking option!