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View Full Version : Control your music the Vinyl way - Pocketwerks Vinyl Review


Jordan Rosenwald
09-26-2003, 05:00 PM
Taking control of your music collection is one of the new "best things" about having a network connected Pocket PC… wait a minute. Didn’t I just write this? I did, but this time we’re talking about Pocketwerk’s Vinyl 1.0. It’s only a 1.0, but let’s see what features are inside!<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/jordan-sept03-vinyl-1.gif" /> <br /><!><br /><i>Controlling your music from your Pocket PC just hasn’t grown old on me. I think it’s one of the most ingenious uses of a network connected Pocket PC I’ve seen.</i><br /><br /><span><b>Installation – Simple as You’d Expect</b></span><br />This is exactly what you’d expect from an application that has a desktop component. The total package, as downloaded, is 1.35MB. It quickly installs on the server component on your desktop and the client piece on your Pocket PC. I even tested the uninstall on both and they worked cleanly.<br /><br /><span><b>How Does It Work? – The Server</b></span><br />Like I said above, there’s a server piece (VinylServer) and a client piece (Vinyl). The client piece, which sits on your Pocket PC, connects over Bluetooth, 802.11x or USB, to your desktop which is running the server code.<br /><br />The server piece is pretty no frills. It tells you how many songs you have, how many playlists, your IP address and what is currently playing. The Actions menu lead to options which let you set the directories your music is stored in and what engine you want to use to play the music back. Currently you have the choice of using Windows Media Playback (on every machine but limited format support) or Nullsoft Winamp 2.x Playback (greater format support, but requires that you install Winamp on your desktop). The Actions menu also gives you the ability to refresh your directory.<br /><br />The Extras menu leads to credits and copyrights, where they give some much deserved credit and thanks to all the development that went in to making this product happen. The Extras menus also has your typical About selection. With a name like Extras, I hope they have lots more planned in 2.0.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/jordan-sept03-vinyl-2.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 1: No frills server. But is there really that much more you need?</i><br /><br /><span><b>How Does It Work? – The Client</b></span><br />The client is an attractive application, which is saying a great deal since it’s essentially black and orange, not a color combination you see often in PDA applications. Access to the various screens is all through a dropdown box at the top of the screen which is initially labeled “Artist,” but changes as you move from screen to screen.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/jordan-sept03-vinyl-3.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 2: It’s orange. It’s black. Yet somehow rather attractive.</i><br /><br />Starting from the bottom up, the Settings screen gives you access to your network settings, which is nothing more than a keyboard (interestingly they don’t use the standard input methods on the Pocket PC, instead they opt for their own keyboard) and a textbox where you enter your computer’s IP or machine name. Also, under the Setting screen is the typical About screen.<br /><br />Above Settings is Playlists, which is where you can pick and manage your….wait for it….Playlists! A simple screen where it shows the track by artist and title and you can add, remove, move a track up or down, save or delete the playlist, etc.<br /><br />Next screen as we climb this ladder is the controls screen. This screen is cool for one very important reason, it shows you the album cover of what is currently playing! I don’t know why, it’s not that big a deal, but I find this extremely exciting. We all spend so much time ripping our CDs to MP3 (or Ogg, or whatever) and we lose one of the most precious things, the cover art! In any case, this is the screen where you can see what is currently playing, how long it is, play, pause, jump to previous or next track, shuffle, repeat, etc.<br /><br />The last three selections on the dropdown list are Genre, Album and Artist. It is from these screens that you sort through your music and what to play or add to your playlist. Again I’m fascinated by the use of cover art displayed next to the album information, which also shows useful information like the album’s runtime.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/jordan-sept03-vinyl-4.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 3: A view of your albums complete with art and running times.</i><br /><br /><span><b>Gotchas</b></span><br />I have one sticking point with this software so far, and that’s simply that it restricts access to your Start menu. To gain access to the rest of your PDA, it does seem that you have to close the application (not a major point since it does load quickly). Beyond that one point, there are several feature requests I can easily think of, not the least of which is some kind of visualization effect for your computer screen. However, aside from that I have no major sticking points with this software.<br /><br /><b>UPDATE:</b> Just before submitting this review I did discover a small bug in the application. It seems that any albums named the same (such as in the case of "The Greatest Hits" will appear in your album and artist list as all being part of the same album. In my case Queen, Lenny Kravitz and Stevie Ray Vaughn are all on the same album). Pocketwerks recognizes this shortcoming and is working to see if there is a way for them to resolve it.<br /><br /><span><b>Where To Buy</b></span><br />Pocketweks Vinyl can be <a href="http://www.pocketwerks.com/downloads/download.php"> downloaded from the Pocketwerk’s Web site</a> or purchased for $19.95.<br /><br /><b>UPDATE #2:</b> Just after publishing this review, Pocketwerks made their product free!<br /><br /><span><b>Specifications</b></span><br />VinylServer requires roughly 2.5 MB of space on your computer.<br />Vinyl requires 338.5 KB of space on your Pocket PC.<br /><br /><span><b>Conclusion</b></span><br />I have no idea why I’m such a sucker for pretty things bouncing across my screen in time to my music, but I am. Vinyl doesn't have that. Regardless, Pocketwerks Vinyl 1.0 is still a great piece of software for those who are looking to control their music collection from their Pocket PC. It’s lightweight, responsive, gives a good deal of information about the music you’re listening to (kudos for the album art too), and is easy to setup and run. If you’re looking to control your music as it plays through your stereo, Vinyl is a fine choice and with it's new price (free!), it becomes an even more attractive option.

patwoods
09-26-2003, 05:08 PM
In the cover art discussion, are there any AUTOMATED applications out there to harvest cover art images out there (PC/Mac/Linux/Whatever)? I have a TON of my CDs converted to mp3, but I never scanned album art for any of them. Any ideas? I would like to pull covers based on ID3 tags rather than having to go out one by one and do the dirty work... is there anything like that out there?

Jason Dunn
09-26-2003, 05:30 PM
Sure: Windows Media Player 9. :-D All you need to do is right-click and FIND ALBUM, and it will grab the meta tag info plus the album art. Be warned though that if your file names are a mess, it will have a hard time. And ideally this works best if you have each album in each folder.

EDIT: I should note that it's not fully automated. You have to tell it which of the selections it brings up is the right one, but it's pretty fast and simple. Sometimes though the album will be missing, or the file name is incorrect, and you'll end up spending more time with it than you want to. Re-tagging and organizing my music collection has turned into a year-long project for me. 8O

BugDude10
09-26-2003, 05:40 PM
Please excuse my ignorance :oops: but...

Does this stream your music wirelessly from your PC to your PPC, or just make your PPC a wireless remote control for music playing on your PC?

patwoods
09-26-2003, 06:08 PM
Sure: Windows Media Player 9. :-D All you need to do is right-click and FIND ALBUM, and it will grab the meta tag info plus the album art. Be warned though that if your file names are a mess, it will have a hard time. And ideally this works best if you have each album in each folder.

EDIT: I should note that it's not fully automated. You have to tell it which of the selections it brings up is the right one, but it's pretty fast and simple. Sometimes though the album will be missing, or the file name is incorrect, and you'll end up spending more time with it than you want to. Re-tagging and organizing my music collection has turned into a year-long project for me. 8O

Excellent. Being a new Windows person (still a mac guy at heart), I never use WMP as I prefer iTunes, but I will check it out, thanks!

T-Will
09-26-2003, 08:42 PM
It lets you control the music that plays on your PC from your Pocket PC.

nic
09-26-2003, 09:04 PM
Where does it pull the album art from? Just the ID3 tags? All my album art is folder.jpg or folder.gif in each folder.
Will it recognize this as album art?
thanks
-nic

Ok..next time I'll dig a little deeper before I ask... To answer my own question: yes it does nic...read the freaken FAQ on the developers web page first next time!

Stealthboy
09-26-2003, 11:58 PM
Jordan, did you get to talk to anyone with PocketWerks? Are they okay? They haven't responded to messages in their forums since July 10th. Also back in March, "Vinyl Staff" posted a message in the PocketWerks forums stating that a new release was going to be available in a few weeks. There have been no updates since 1.0 yet. I'm really interested in purchasing Vinyl (it's the cleanest and easiest to use remote control app I've tried), but if they are not going to provide any support or updates then I'll look elsewhere.

edit: :oops:
OK, now I see in the PocketWerks FAQ that the software has been updated and is now free. I guess I can't complain about that. Thanks for the review, Jordan.

nic
09-27-2003, 06:34 AM
I've played with it a little more and I'm having the following problem:
My network connection is through bluetooth and when I turn off my iPAQ with Vinyl running then turn it back on, my network connection is lost until i click around in bluetooth manager again. And I have to close Vinyl to get to my bluetooth. Vinyl then takes awhile to load back up. I wish I could multi-task with it.

Does anyone know of a way to have bluetooth reconnect automatically after a power off (when the network access was connected) and power on?

Also, I wish that it would interact with winamp's playlist and not run its own. This software has some real potential and if they develop it a little more I think it would be an excellent buy! Although it would be great if they kept it free ;).

Their version of the keyboard has to go though...it should just take the standard ppc input modes.

CameronK
09-30-2003, 03:13 AM
Better than Ezra eh? If you like that kind of music, you need to check out Sister Hazel and (in the small case that you haven't) Gin Blossoms and Live. Definently check out Sister Hazel though, they're a great band, and throw some of the best concerts you'll ever go to.

Jonathon Watkins
11-29-2004, 04:34 PM
Anyone tried this with WMP 10 yet? I would like to give it a go and would like to know if anyone else has been there before......