Windows Media Player

[frankbell]

I'm brand new here, so I hope I put this in the right spot. Trying to find some help with my pocket PC!

My flight commander issued me an iPAQ Pocket PC 3970. Right now it has Microsoft Pocket PC version 3.0.11171 (Build 11178) loaded. What I'm trying to find is the most up-to-date version of Windows Media Player. Right now I have 8.5, and, although I can play music (which really don't concern me), I can't get it to play videos. Since all the shop chiefs are supposed to be able to watch videos on these things, this is not good. Luckily I'm not the only one experiencing this problem. So any info I can get on this problem would be great.

Also, just to toss this out there, I have Office and Adobe's PDF software loaded as well. I've never had one of these things before, so I really don't know what else I should be putting on there as far as useful office software that won't conflict with government specs (such as an improved image viewer, formflow, etc.) Thanks! Oh, and please nothing too complicated. I'm old.

[yankeejeep]

Media Player is an integrated part of the WM OS and is no longer a user-upgradable item (I think beginning with WM2002, which I think is what you are running). You might want to check the HP website to see if there is any sort of ROM update available for you iPAQ. Another option would to install the Core Player (TCPMP) that you can download for free from http://www.tcpmp.org. This handles a variety of media formats, coexists fine with WMP, and can be installed to a memory card.

Something you will discover is that the Pocket versions of Word and Excel are nothing like their desktop cousins. They support few of the desktop options and strip unsupported features from files when they are converted to the Pocket formats. The addition of WestTek's ClearVue Office would provide you with viewers so that you can see Office files in their native formats (but you will not be able to edit them). If you need to be able to work with Word and Excel files on your PPC, I would suggest Softmaker's TextMaker (word processing) and PlanMaker (spreadsheets) as they can open, edit, and create files in desktop Word and Excel formats. Again, they can be installed to a memory card.

[Sven Johannsen]

Most likely the issue is that the PPC MP only supports one type of video file, a *.wmv. That is not a typical file type for the things you are likely having to view. I bet you have mpeg, mpg, or avi files. There are converters out there that run on the desktop. One that is free and fairly likely permissable is Microsoft's own Windows Media Encoder.

There certainly is also the option of a third party viewer that has a wider array of supported file formats. If you are limited on what you are allowed to install however, the above is an option.