Leaving WMP10 On My Device For A Creative Zen Micro

[Ed Hansberry]

For years, since the original Pocket PC, and technically a bit before that with Windows Media Player that was installable on the old Windows CE 2.11 Palm-Sized PC's, I have listened to portable music exclusively on my Pocket PC. I always had it with me and it could do the job. That coupled with Audible, either through MS Reader or Audible software itself, my audio needs were met. That changed last year when I got my PDA2K. MS Reader no longer worked with Audible, or at least I couldn't get it to, and installing that beast into RAM when I never intended to use it to read ebooks seemed overkill anyway. To make matters worse, Audible's own software has always been horrible and with the PDA2K, it was unusable. If the screen turned off, the player shut down. That bug I think has been fixed but I no longer cared. I was using a tiny 128MB Creative MuVo I had received as a gift with Audible and it worked quite well.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2005/20051208-wmp10tozen.gif" /><br /><br />Windows Media Player on the Pocket PC has never been a <i>great</i> experience, but it has been acceptable. Playlist support for versions prior to 10 was almost nonexistent. Fortunately, a little $9.95 shareware app called <a href="http://www.ceng.com/ce/CEPlaylist/description.asp">CE Playlist</a> would allow you to do anything with music on your device you could do on Windows Media Player on the desktop.<!><br /><br />WMP10 on the PDA2K, when it <i>finally</i> came via a ROM update, was a mess. I don't understand the technical reasons for it, but iMate didn't do something right with button mapping so mapping the buttons to do anything was virtually impossible. I could make the D-Pad button register, so that was screen off, but that was it. Nothing else would map. To make matters worse, even though WMP10 worked really good for creating a "now playing" playlist, you couldn't save it! Who wants 1-2GB of music on their device and they always have to dynamically create playlists? I never actually tried to use CE Playlist with WMP10. It probably would have been a good solution, but now I was frustrated on principle. Why build a playlist editor as slick as WMP10 had and not include a simple "save" command?<br /><br />When I got my JasJar, I was excited about Windows Mobile 5 and one of the first things I tried was WMP10. Same thing, <a href="http://kjamming.blogspot.com/2005/11/playlists-in-wmp10.html">no ability to save a playlist</a>. :frusty: The button mapping thing was all fixed though, so I guess iMate figured out there was more to making WMP10 work for the end user than just making sure it was in ROM.<br /><br />Fortunately for me, I dropped my MuVo. You'd think something that small, the size of a USB key, wouldn't have enough mass to drop to the floor and be damaged, especially with flash memory. It did though. The backlight quit working and it would chew through a AAA battery every day. After 2 days it stopped working reliably in my USB port to transfer Audible content. I decided to quit trying as I didn't want to fry my PC's motherboard because the USB device was flaky. I touched base with our <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2">resident multimedia expert</a> and he recommended a Creative Zen Micro. That was enough for me. 30 minutes later my order with Amazon was done and the next day my new 6GB Zen Micro had arrived. Way bigger than the MuVo but it still made my K-Jam look like an absolute monster. :) The first thing I did after installing the PlaysForSure software on my PC was sync over about 2,000 songs. Now to create the playlists on the device.<br /><br />Wait a minute... what's this? The playlists are there? You mean Windows Media Player 10 on the desktop, when syncing playlists to a Zen Micro <i>also</i> copies them to the device? That made too much sense! Why doesn't it do the same with WMP10 on Windows Mobile devices? :roll: Then, much to my delight, I discovered two awesome bonuses. First, it works with My Yahoo! subscription music. Drag a few of those playlists to the device. :) Second, bookmarks! WooHoo!!!! I can now listen to two hour 25MB podcasts and not have to remember where I was. Just bookmark it and come back to it later. Of course, it works with Audible as well and can allocate up to 2GB as a USB drive as long as I have the cable with me, which it is always in my computer bag. Suh-weet!<br /><br />So, with that, for the foreseeable future, I have no desire to even launch WMP10 on my Windows Mobile device. It is really a shame that something as powerful as a Pocket PC has such great potential with playing music and falls so short compared with an embedded device that works better with WMP10 on the desktop than Microsoft's own portable music solution. Maybe WMP11, both on the desktop and Windows Mobile device, will fix these shortcomings, and support <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/articles.php?action=expand,32903">gapless playback of music</a>. Hey, I can dream can't I? :D

[rhelwig]

What's the big deal about playlists? Aren't they pretty much useless?

If they were able to automatically import new music that met their criteria, they might be useful.

What would really be useful (for me anyway) would be the ability to play any songs randomly based on criteria. For example, I might be in a Metal Mood, so I'd ask the player to only play metal songs. How about the ability to ask for "light rock and folk rock with an emphasis on Arlo"?

The idea of updating every playlist every time I add a new song to my computer and/or PDA seems really absurd. I haven't even had a playlist this century.

[I might even try to do something about this if my development system wasn't in severe crash mode these days :evil: ]

[stevelam]

Hey, I can dream can't I? :D

My advice: don't it isnt worth it. That is the one main thing that I have learnt since buying a Pocket PC.

[trog]

I've been using a Creative Zen Micro for months amd I really like it. You can choose a category like Metal and listen to all the Metal on your device. When it downloads the music it tags it with what genre it belongs to. The only complaint I have had is that I tried to use it with Napster-to-GO and the firmware just doesn't upgrade properly and I have a hard time seeing the device on either computer I use. I had to crash it and re-build the software to get it to work correctly again. You can also use it as portable storage if you need to move several GB of data.

[Starf0x]

WMP10 or any version couldn't enchant me, i never used it.
I have a PPC for about 7 years, and bougth a new one a short while ago, but on both i never used WMP.
I prefer GSPlayer, as i read (listen) a lot of audiobooks (adict) on my daily 4 hours travel. it has anything you like, most important is that it resumes where it left of, it is not something with cool grpahics, but its purpose is just the thing i need.

Cheers.

[Paladin27]

Ok, I'm confused. I have a KJAM and I synched about 100 songs on a miniSD card. If I open WMP10 on the KJAM and click Now Playing -> Library -> select My Music -> Genre then I can pick whatever type of music I want to listen to and it queues it all up in the now playing list. How is that not selecting all "Metal" songs and listening to them at once?

Also, any playlists that I sync from the desktop WMP10 show up in the \Playlist folder on my storage card, if I click them they queue up all the songs in the Now Playing list. This appears to be playlists to me????

[pocketpcadmirer]

Yes I agree to you sir Hansberry..all I can say that I use the WMP 10 as a 'wow' factor..I show it off to my Palm friends that look my pocket pc has WMP 10..they all get amazed to see a 'poor' carbon copy of desktop media player..stupid people they dont know how crippled it is

Holy sh**, it cant even make a playlist which even ver 9 of ppc could do.
All it has is the fancy graphics and low system resource occupation.

Sunny

[rhelwig]

Ok, I'm confused. I have a KJAM and I synched about 100 songs on a miniSD card. If I open WMP10 on the KJAM and click Now Playing -> Library -> select My Music -> Genre then I can pick whatever type of music I want to listen to and it queues it all up in the now playing list. How is that not selecting all "Metal" songs and listening to them at once?


Well, I'd have to have WMP10 to see that :(

and only 100 songs? Hardly worth it.

Maybe once some carrier lets me get a HTC Universal, I'll check it out. Hopefully by then I'll also be able to get a decent sized memory card.

[adamz]

Wait a minute... what's this? The playlists are there? You mean Windows Media Player 10 on the desktop, when syncing playlists to a Zen Micro also copies them to the device? That made too much sense! Why doesn't it do the same with WMP10 on Windows Mobile devices?

My imate JAM has been syncing the playlists with WMP10 and Media Center 2005 for over a year. My K-JAM and every other WM5 device I've had does it too. In Media Player on WM5, check out Library>My Playlists. I've even got auto-playlists from Media Center listed there. Is that what you're talking about, or am I missing something?

[IpaqMan2]

I have to admit that windows media player is pretty much a waste of space on my device...Just proves more of my theory that the people at Microsoft really don't use the PPC they write the software for, if they did how could they miss such a big "Ooops" as that?

Anyway.. I still use my pocket pc for all my audio needs, but I don't use windos Media player, I use GSPlayer. It's a whole lot more clunkier than I would like it to be for an audio player, but still does the job better than the windows media player on the Pocket PC. In fact I actually tried using my Wifes iPod that I bought her for christmas thinking that if I was really carefull with it I could get about 3 weeks worth of use befoe I had to wrap it back up and give it to her as gift :devilboy: but truth is my Pocket PC had better sound quality than what I eperinced on the iPod - and I also like having my phone calls come through on my PPC-6700 when I am listening to music, where with the iPod I would miss them.

[heov]

hmm. I can sync playlists fine on wm5 and wmp10. just go to the sync options for the device and choose the playlists to sync, and it'll be in my playlists on the ppc

[Ed Hansberry]

Wait a minute... what's this? The playlists are there? You mean Windows Media Player 10 on the desktop, when syncing playlists to a Zen Micro also copies them to the device? That made too much sense! Why doesn't it do the same with WMP10 on Windows Mobile devices?

My imate JAM has been syncing the playlists with WMP10 and Media Center 2005 for over a year. My K-JAM and every other WM5 device I've had does it too. In Media Player on WM5, check out Library>My Playlists. I've even got auto-playlists from Media Center listed there. Is that what you're talking about, or am I missing something?
I'll have to dig into this. I don't have this /playlist folder on my SD card and there are no playlists showing up. I sync'd my music from WMP10 on the desktop by checking off playlists. I'd love to know how you got playlists on the device. :confused totally:

[dma1965]

I really used to wonder why anyone would want an MP3 player if you could use a Pocket PC. I would sometimes use my Pocket PC to play music, and it seemed fine. Then I got an iPod Shuffle (free with the purchase of a Netgear switch), and decided to check it out. I immediately fell in love with it. It was small, light, durable. the controls are brain dead simple and common sense, and iTunes is just an awesome way to buy and organize music. Still, I did not listen to music that often, but it was nice to know I had it with me when I wanted to listen. Then I discovered Podcasts, and now listen to it every day on the way to work (I plug in my car stereo adapter). The shuffle was a bit of a pain with Podcasts, since there is no screen, so I got a Nano. I can't begin to say how much more enjoyable the whole listening experience is on a well designed device like the iPod. It automatically saves my place in Podcasts and Audiobooks, it is easy to navigate one handed, it does not ring in my ear when a phone call comes in, or an alarm goes off, nearly giving me a heart attack. iTunes is just braindead easy to use and very cleanly laid out with a great ID3 tag editor and the ability to include lyrics which can be read on the new iPods. Podcast management and updating is automatic and works flawlessly. The iTunes music store gives you at least one free download a week, which has opened me up to lots of great new music. I can find and legally purchase any obscure song I can think of from my youth and be playing it in under 2 minutes for only 99 cents! I guess my point is, if you have never tried another type of music player besides the Windows Media Player on your Pocket PC, you really should check out the other offerings. Both the iPod Shuffle and Nano are soooo tiny that carrying them around is effortless, and the experience is just killer!

[Paragon]

I agree with you Ed. I have pretty much given up on WMP on Windows Mobile. I find it a bit buggy. It doesn't seem to play video very well. At least not consitantly. For music I have just grown tired of wrestling with its DRM every time I use a new or different device. It's just not worth the hassle.

Like you I listen to Audible a lot. Several hours a day. It used to be that my wife would take the kids and leave the house if she heard me utter the word Audible because there was sure to be a long string of profanity to follow because of problems with their software. That has changed. I use their player on my PPC, but I only use the Audible manager to download from their site. From there I simply copy the whole file to a storage card. I can honestly say I'm happy with Audible's software now....and so are my kids....man, how they hated standing out on the street with their mother when it was cold out, watching the house expand and contract as I vented my frustrations with Audible. ;) If you have time give it a try and see what you think.

Dave

[Sven Johannsen]

I think the media Player on the PPC is just fine. Could stand some equalizer functions, but I can live without it. A decent set of headphones does as much to get good sound as mucking with the boost and attenuation in a few audio bands. As far as playlist go, I don't understand the problem. As others have indicated, they sync from the PC just fine to MP10. You just need to spend a little time on your desktop library to create playlists that make sense to you. Actually you can just use the automatic ones which actually work out fairly well IMHO. Four and 5 star rated, recently added, recorded TV not yet viewed, are dynamic, and let things be updated automatically. Personaaly I would much rather do my playlist editing on a 21" screen than a 3" one. When I have some time to listen to music on the PPC, I want to listen, not spend my time managing it. And with Voice Command I can just say Play &lt;Cream> to get the album, artist, genre, etc. that I want.

[Paladin27]

and only 100 songs? Hardly worth it.

Ya know that's only about 300MB. I can put over 300 songs per 1GB on if I wanted. But I also have 200MB of podcasts, 200MB of vidcasts and TomTom Navigator USA on that card. You can get 2GB SD and MiniSD that should hold around 600 songs.

[adamz]

I'll have to dig into this. I don't have this /playlist folder on my SD card and there are no playlists showing up. I sync'd my music from WMP10 on the desktop by checking off playlists. I'd love to know how you got playlists on the device. :confused totally:

Plug your WM5 or WMP 10 compatible device into ActiveSync, or stick a memory card in your card reader. Open Windows Media Player 10 on the desktop. Click on the Sync tab. Choose the storage card on the right sided pane. Click the "Set Up Sync" button. Choose Automatic. Check on "Customize Playlists to be syncronized". Click next, and you get a window with all the playlists on your desktop. Turn on the ones you want automatically synced everytime your device is connected. You can order which ones are priority. So for examply I have a "Mobile" playlist that has all my favorite songs... I have that synced first. Then I have a "Mobile Videos" playlist... then whatever's left can be filled with an autoplaylist like "The last 3 episodes of Family Guy" or "Fresh Tracks" which would change everyday. After you set that up it saves an XML file in the root of your storage card that remembers your settings so it will still sync the same stuff when you put the memory card in a different Pocket PC. Whenever I decide to change my "Mobile" playlist on the desktop, the changes get updated on the Pocket PC and the playlist is listed in the library with the correct order of songs.

You can also do the same thing in Media Center 2005 from the couch with a remote. Here's a picture from my i-mate JAM review (http://www.pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&amp;t=reviews&amp;id=541):
http://www.pocketnow.com/html/portal/reviews/0000000541/review/imateJ6_small.jpg

And here's what you get on the JAM:
http://www.pocketnow.com/html/portal/reviews/0000000541/review/imateJ12.gif

I'm sure you know there's options in Media Player 10 on the desktop for changing the conversion/quality settings. When a new episode of Family Guy (or any show set to sync) is recorded, it is automatically converted to a smaller size for using on the PDA, that way you don't have to wait for the conversion when it's synced.

[Ed Hansberry]

I'll have to dig into this. I don't have this /playlist folder on my SD card and there are no playlists showing up. I sync'd my music from WMP10 on the desktop by checking off playlists. I'd love to know how you got playlists on the device. :confused totally:

Plug your WM5 or WMP 10 compatible device into ActiveSync, or stick a memory card in your card reader. Open Windows Media Player 10 on the desktop. Click on the Sync tab. Choose the storage card on the right sided pane. Click the "Set Up Sync" button. Choose Automatic.
If the only way to get it to work is have automatic sync, forget it. You can't manually sync over music and still get the playlists you manually targeted for synchronization?

The problem is, with only 600MB available for music, I have to be somewhat selective with the playlists on the device so I never selected automatic.

[adamz]

If the only way to get it to work is have automatic sync, forget it. You can't manually sync over music and still get the playlists you manually targeted for synchronization?

The problem is, with only 600MB available for music, I have to be somewhat selective with the playlists on the device so I never selected automatic.

That's why you only selectively select one playlist to sync. If I don't want my whole card filled up with auto-playlists, I only turn on the "Mobile" playlist which has all my specific favorites and only takes up a certain amount of space. It won't change anything on your device, if you've only selected one static Playlist that hasn't changed. If you want to remove a playlist like "Last 3 Episodes of Family Guy", you uncheck it... sync again... then that playlist and it's content is gone from the storage card. If you do a manual sync, and you want to change some content on the device, you have to manually go in there and delete everything. With a playlist set in the auto-sync, you just uncheck the playlist... or edit the playlist in WMP10... which is much easier then browsing through hundreds of artist and album folders trying to find the songs you want to delete after you manually synced them over.

[adamz]

The trick is to turn on "Customize Playlists to be syncronized"... normally people will just see automatic, and that will just sync your whole media library... which is not what you want if you only want 600Mb of music.

[Ed Hansberry]

Thanks for the help Adamz, but your posts prove my point. There is something broken when it gets that involved as to when playlists are/are not created and you still can't create them and save them on the device.

[mobilemail]

I have the devices that Microsoft/companies didn't release WMP10 for. High end handhelds are getting way too costly to expect a customer to plop out $400-600 every 18-24 months for so little value added. I refused just on principle alone. I found a good deal on a Zen Micro and I really like having just about all my music available to me whenever I want it. And if there are people reading this who actually just use a Pocket PC for contacts and calendar, the Micro will sync Outlook data too! (I haven't done it, because I still have my Pocket pc/phone, but it's an available option.) Downloadable music still has some bugs to be worked out, but at least now I have a player that allows me to purchase music from some of the biggest sites on the web and take it with me. (Walmart, Yahoo, Napster, to name a few.)

[adamz]

Thanks for the help Adamz, but your posts prove my point. There is something broken when it gets that involved as to when playlists are/are not created and you still can't create them and save them on the device.

Well, it doesn't really make sense to me that a manual sync would create a playlist on the device. Do you expect the "Sync List" playlist to be accessible in the Pocket PC WMP 10 after the fact?

Anyway, I'm surprised that it works differently with your new MP3 player! Or did you actually set that one up for automatic syncing (and that's how you got the playlists generated)?

I've tried creating playlists on the Pocket PC with other software, but it is such a huge pain trying to search through tracks on such a small screen, I don't see why anyone would want to do that. Having the playlists managed in Media Player 10 on the desktop is so much easier.

Maybe it would be fun to make a poll for how many people...

1. Use Windows Media Player 10's Auto-sync feature with custom playlists

2. Use WMP 10's auto-sync feature with their entire library

3. Use manual syncing in WMP 10, and delete media manually when needed.

4. Drag &amp; Drop media to the device with Windows Explorer.

5. Use a 3rd party Media syncing program

[Ed Hansberry]

Thanks for the help Adamz, but your posts prove my point. There is something broken when it gets that involved as to when playlists are/are not created and you still can't create them and save them on the device.

Well, it doesn't really make sense to me that a manual sync would create a playlist on the device. Do you expect the "Sync List" playlist to be accessible in the Pocket PC WMP 10 after the fact?
That makes zero sense to me. I select 3 playlists worth of music and manually sync them over with the SYNC feature of WMP10. Why would I not want the playlist order also kept? :?:

Anyway, I'm surprised that it works differently with your new MP3 player! Or did you actually set that one up for automatic syncing (and that's how you got the playlists generated)?
It is on automatic sync now but when I first got it, I did manual because that was what I was comfortable with. I just turned on automatic yesterday. Before that, it was manual and playlists were there. That was when I really started getting frustrated with the Windows Mobile implementaiton/integration with WMp10. This whole time I was thinking it was a limitation in WMP10 on the desktop. Obviously not. It may be another ActiveSync shortcoming since AS is what tells WMP10 the device is there.

[Sven Johannsen]

Thanks for the help Adamz, but your posts prove my point. There is something broken when it gets that involved as to when playlists are/are not created and you still can't create them and save them on the device.

It's not that involved. You can make all the custom playlists you want on the desktop. You can then select or not select them to be synched to the PPC from the autosync screen. If you then change the contents of those playlists the PPC is automatically updated, removing the tracks you removed and adding those you added.

I know it seems like you should be able to click a playlist in the library and then sync and it copies all those tracks and the list, but if you did that, how do you get those tracks back off, when you want to sync a new playlist, with minimal storage. You'd have to delete each song individually, and if the new playlist has some of those tracks in it, it would have to re-copy them. With the auto-sync, I uncheck the old list and check the new one and it's taken care of.

If you have gone through the effort of creating playlists on the PC, which obviously you have as you want to sync them, just check their box in the manager and it'll happen. If they are too big, heck, they are too big whether you do it automatically or could do it manually, and all the tracks just don't get copied.

[Yahdie]

Thanks for the help Adamz, but your posts prove my point. There is something broken when it gets that involved as to when playlists are/are not created and you still can't create them and save them on the device.

Ed,
Check out
http://www.cs.pitt.edu/~jmisurda/ppc/playlist/playlist_ed.htm

[adamz]

Well, it doesn't really make sense to me that a manual sync would create a playlist on the device. Do you expect the "Sync List" playlist to be accessible in the Pocket PC WMP 10 after the fact?
That makes zero sense to me. I select 3 playlists worth of music and manually sync them over with the SYNC feature of WMP10. Why would I not want the playlist order also kept? :?:

You cannot select more than one playlist when you sync manually. That's why the playlist isn't transfered. Manual syncing is just like drag/dropping a list of songs to the device except it can auto-convert the files, and you can have your pre-existing playlists set up for the transfer.


Anyway, I'm surprised that it works differently with your new MP3 player! Or did you actually set that one up for automatic syncing (and that's how you got the playlists generated)?
It is on automatic sync now but when I first got it, I did manual because that was what I was comfortable with. I just turned on automatic yesterday. Before that, it was manual and playlists were there. That was when I really started getting frustrated with the Windows Mobile implementaiton/integration with WMp10. This whole time I was thinking it was a limitation in WMP10 on the desktop. Obviously not. It may be another ActiveSync shortcoming since AS is what tells WMP10 the device is there.

I don't know if it's ActiveSync either, since syncing a storage card through a card reader seems to behave the same way (not copying playlists with manual sync). I don't have a Play's-For-Sure media player that syncs with WMP10 (I don't need one), but that's weird that it would behave differently than Windows Mobile and memory card readers. Maybe there's something that sets memory cards in card readers and Windows Mobile devices on ActiveSync to NOT copy the playlist in manual syncing?

Oh well, moral of the story = use Automatic Syncing with Custom Playlists.
:)

[felixdd]

I used to use my PPC for listening to music during my commute. I use GSPlayer.

Then when I upgraded my E398 to a ROKR and put in a 128 mb card, I found that I can comfortably store 25 songs in it. IT's smaller than my PPC, and it's in my pocket anyways, so it's one less thing to juggle when I'm on the commute.

I've relegated my PPC to multimedia when I'm NOT on the move. Otherwise, my ROKR is the weapon of choice.

[heov]

hmm. I can sync playlists fine on wm5 and wmp10. just go to the sync options for the device and choose the playlists to sync, and it'll be in my playlists on the ppc