PocketNow Reviews Conduits Pocket Player 2

[Brad Adrian]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=reviews&id=266' target='_blank'>http://www.pocketnow.com/index.php?...=reviews&id=266</a><br /><br /></div>Do you listen to music on your Pocket PC? Are you searching for a different player than the built-in Windows Media Player? If so, PocketNow's review of the new Conduits Pocket Player 2 is "required reading."<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/adrian/pocketplayer.gif" /><br /><br />Scott does an excellent job describing all of Pocket Player's capabilities, from building playlists to adjusting the equalizer. I've always liked the applications that Conduits creates, but I'll let you read the PocketNow article to see if Scott agrees.<br /><br />You can grab a free demo or full registered version (for $14.95) of Pocket Player <a href="http://www.handango.com/brainstore/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&productId=79548">here</a>.

[szamot]

I love this app simply because the buttons are big enough to touch them with your fingers which is very usefull if you are walking or driving, and do not have your buttons mapped. I used to use PocketMusic but this one has me all charmed.

Great job.

[isilver]

This is definately a must get. One feature that doesn't seem to be mentioned is that it saves your settings which I know is something that Windows Media Player does not do. No need to reset the mapped buttons each time it opens or set it to shuffle the music. Conduits even remembers what song you were last listening to in the playlist.

Conduits uses a real randomizer for music. If you turn shuffle on Conduits you may get any song. When Windows Media Player is set to shuffle it will always shuffle the music in the same fasion. You will always get the same songs in the same order.

I don't know what updates they have done to the Windows Media Player with PPC 2003 but since I don't have that OS I am going to stick with this Conduits player.

[dgroover]

Its been over a week since I tried to install it on my Ipaq 3950. It will not install at all, not even the cab file on the device. I will get an email from Conduits about every four or five days wanting me to try something else with no luck. I'd pass on this one. :cry:

[xymantix]

Honestly, I hate it when people say things like "Maybe its just me, but I always wonder how much the skinning ability is really going to be utilized by its users." 'Maybe it's just me', but the skinning is a deal breaker for me. Don't find the layout intuitive? Are the button labels confusing? Are the buttons too small or too hard to see? All of these problems and more can be solved by skinning. You're given the power to create the interface that's right for you - even down to customized polygon tap areas. I wish more people would realized that skinning allows you to customize the interface - not just add pretty graphics.

[Jason Patterson]

Thanks everyone for the kind words of support so far. We have actually released Pocket Player 2.11 today (free upgrade to 2.0 users), which features a WMA equalizer and many bugfixes and improvements over the original 2.0.

Dgroover: we're definitely not sure why it's not installing to your device. We haven't heard any other reports like yours. As far as our support response goes, apart from not replying on Saturday/Sunday, we have stayed in constant contact (1 business day) as we do with all of our customers. We'd like to suggest to try clearing out anything in your \Windows\AppMgr\Install folder, and then soft resetting. That might do it. Also, try the installer and/or CAB file from our new 2.11 version.

xymantix: good insight on skinning engines. With our engine, as you say, you can certainly define the look of the interface as well as the button placement (we bundle a couple of layouts with our player, and support the winamp skin layout too).

Thanks again!

[Jason Dunn]

Its been over a week since I tried to install it on my Ipaq 3950. It will not install at all, not even the cab file on the device. I will get an email from Conduits about every four or five days wanting me to try something else with no luck. I'd pass on this one. :cry:

If it works for everyone other than you, it's probably your device, and not the software, right? ;-) Might be time for a hard reset and to start over from scratch.

[Johan]

I love this app simply because the buttons are big enough to touch them with your fingers which is very usefull if you are walking or driving, and do not have your buttons mapped. I used to use PocketMusic but this one has me all charmed.

Apart from the skin with large buttons, what else can't you find i Pocket Music (commercial package)?

[szamot]

I love this app simply because the buttons are big enough to touch them with your fingers which is very usefull if you are walking or driving, and do not have your buttons mapped. I used to use PocketMusic but this one has me all charmed.

Apart from the skin with large buttons, what else can't you find i Pocket Music (commercial package)?

don't get me wrong I like PocketMusic simply becasue I could have my favorite skin on it, on some skins however it was hard to navigate with the stylus, but I am the kind of a guy who likes the latest and this one fit the bill rather nicely.

[droppedd]

You're given the power to create the interface that's right for you - even down to customized polygon tap areas. I wish more people would realized that skinning allows you to customize the interface - not just add pretty graphics.

Not necessarily true. Winamp 2, for example, is only "pretty graphics" for skins - all buttons are identically located on all skins. Winamp3 skins are completely customizable, but "skinnable" does not automatically mean "functionally customizable."

PocketMusic supports Winamp2 skins, which means no bigger buttons are even possible that way :cry:. I'd love PocketMusic a lot more if it let you use it double-size in landscape (without the playlist in that view, of course). Now THAT would be nice.

[juni]

I've been working all week on a skin for this, but why did they have to make the script file so complicated?? Argh! :crazyeyes:

[disconnected]

I don't play music much on my desktop, so I'm pretty new to the concept of playlists. Unlike the reviewer, I don't find any of this intuitive -- it's probably a generational thing. :oops:

Anyway, I have several CDs (or parts thereof) copied to my storage card, one CD per folder, with the folder name being the name of the album as created by the CD ripper I use (I think it gets this from the internet?). Is there any way to automatically generate a playlist for each folder when I select it, having the same name as the folder?

[Oliver T]

Has anybody else problems playing in the background when reading in MS reader ? I set the priority to highest, the buffer to keep the complete ogg file in memory, but still it stutters sporadically when reading ebooks in ms reader. I'm using a 3970 and nothing else is active apart those two apps. Other than that it's a great application !

Cheers,

Oliver

[dhettel]

Have you downloaded the New MS Reader?

Thanks
David

[Jason Patterson]

Juni: Could you private message me, or email [email protected]? We have a skin SDK we're about to release and it should help in your efforts.

Disconnected: certainly -- basically, you can go two ways with this. You could use the Local Content playlist, which is like using no playlist at all -- it simply shows all the content you have on your device at a given time. Alternatively, you could go into the Options (Advanced) and enable the "Use Open Folder instead of Open File" option, and then on the main skin, whenever you want to play an individual folder, tap the Open button, and point it at the folder. To jump back to the Local Content playlist, tap-and-hold on the playlist and pick "Open Local Content" (or tap the Playlist button and use the playlist picker in the upper-left).

Oliver: we'll certainly look into these matters. What's the bitrate of your Ogg file? Instead of increasing the Input Buffer (which basically only helps Microdrive users with battery life), increase the output buffer to about 5s. That should give it plenty of head room.

[Oliver T]

Hoho, success ! I uninstalled 2.0 and installed 2.11 which was released today. No more jumping in reader ;-)