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View Full Version : Conduits Pocket Player 3.0: Support for Video, Windows Media Connect, Podcasts, and More!


Darius Wey
09-26-2006, 03:30 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.conduits.com/news/pr20060925.html' target='_blank'>http://www.conduits.com/news/pr20060925.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Conduits Technologies, Inc., announced today the release of Pocket Player 3.0, an alternative media player for Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC and Smartphone. Pocket Player aims to satisfy consumers who demand more from a media player on a mobile device. The new version sports video support, a new library engine to handle thousands of tracks, smart playlists, supports skins designed for Windows Media Player, and introduces new connection options such as downloadable album art, podcast streaming and Universal Plug-and-Play (Windows Media Connect) connectivity."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20060926-pocketplayer.gif" /><br /><br />Well, you can't get much better than this. I've never been completely satisfied with Windows Media Player Mobile's features (or rather, lack of features), so Pocket Player has always been one of the first applications to go on my Pocket PC following a hard-reset. The new features (mentioned above) add to the already rich set of features that existed in v2.x. The end result? One power-packed media player. A free trial version can be downloaded from <a href="http://www.conduits.com/download_list.asp">Conduits</a>, and the full version is available for $19.95 from our <a href="http://www.mobihand.com/pocketpcthoughts/product.asp?id=3017">affiliate software store</a>. I'm giving this new version a workout as we speak, but if you've already given it a spin, let us know how it works. If you're interested in the Windows Media Player skin support, check out a screenshot after the break. :) <!><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20060926-ppwmp.jpg" />

kaiden.1
09-26-2006, 04:10 PM
OK.....my second post of the day because the software being reviewed today are absolutely some of the best out there being posted and I wouldn't be caught dead without them!

Pocket Player! THERE IS NO OTHER! IF you don't have this program you are missing out or wasting valuable ram on something else. This program does everything perfectly.

Another must have and another Awesome company! Check it out! :)

stlbud
09-26-2006, 05:34 PM
How does this compare to "the Core" media player (TCMP)?

gregk
09-26-2006, 05:35 PM
This looks like an awesome app but since installing on my v1605 (hermes) I've had to soft reset about 5 times. Since uninstalling it's been fine.

Anyone else had any issues?

Darren Behan
09-26-2006, 05:57 PM
Upgrade pricing for 1.X &amp; 2.X is $9.95 and is available here:

http://store.conduits.com/popl2up.html

db

whydidnt
09-26-2006, 06:15 PM
I second the thought - Would love to see a comparison of this and the excellent TCPMP that is free and seems to play everything I throw at it. :)

stlbud
09-26-2006, 06:19 PM
It's no longer free (unless you know where to look). But it's only $9.95. Check it out at http://www.tcmp.org/

stlbud
09-26-2006, 06:26 PM
Now, I'm confused. www.tcmp.org only shows the windows version of the player. http://tcpmp.corecodec.org/about shows the pocket pc version but it is free. What happened to all the notices about a new Core Media player coming out and charging for it?

Marcel_Proust
09-26-2006, 07:08 PM
I second the thought - Would love to see a comparison of this and the excellent TCPMP that is free and seems to play everything I throw at it. :)

Yeah, I'm confused to. Where is the latest version? Some people have put up a 0.82 version, but it's not on the new web site.

Saying that, I think TCPMP is primarily a video player, and I think the conduits product trumps it playing music. Maybe the new tcpmp will add more music controls. However, if you do want a freeware music player, it is worth checking out MortPlayer.

Jason Patterson
09-26-2006, 08:18 PM
gregk, that certainly should not be happening. How many media files do you have on your device? What was the cause of the reset? How much program and storage memory do you have? Did you let it first scan and update your library once? We can certainly support this better if you could email [email protected].

Jason Patterson
09-26-2006, 08:28 PM
A comparison with TCPMP is certainly warranted here. TCPMP has honestly been doing video for a while, and Pocket Player currently cannot match what it can play back. Most notably, this is because it is a freeware program that (apparantely) doesn't need codec licenses such as MPEG-4 (used in DivX, etc) to support. We are a commercial software program and would therefore need a commercial license in place with the MPEG-4 consortium as to not violate their IP.

The foundations we built into Pocket Player 3 will allow us to distribute updates and plugins to add more video support. Currently we are limited to WMV video, with the exception of some devices that have DirectShow components for other codecs. For example, our K-Jam device here has MP4 and M4A playback, and Pocket Player sees that and can play those formats back, but just on that device.

Note that WMP10 on the desktop can transcode any video while you sync it, which is quite useful since most DivX and other video files are formatted too large for the Pocket PC screen anyway.

TCPMP lacks features like music visualizations, metadata library, library Browser, UPnP, web guide, advanced streaming (pause/seek into podcasts), and other UI-type features.

azhiker
09-26-2006, 09:54 PM
I use a Dell X50v and so far I love the many tools and options in Pocketplayer but am less than impressed with the playback capabilties.

I use Betaplayer which plays everything well, but Pocketplayer will not play mpegs, or avi files. Even the video files I can play or choppy and stop halfway through. One asf file I tired stopped altogther and have a long exception fault come on screennot free flowing

It will not remember my settings for equalizer and keeps reverting to default. This is very annoying and happens every time I switch songs!!! I did finally figure out how to set one of the presets as the default setting. The website support is good!

It is very slow to find files, and the menu system is very slow to make changes. When a list of songs is on the screen it take several seconds after tapping the title for it to play.

WM Player at least allows for skins to be in separate files, but Pocketplayer forces all skin files into one directory, and this makes it much more difficult to remove the ones I do not want.

Finally it seems to take far more RAM to run it then Betaplyeror WM Player.

So far I am not impressed. I am running a trial version so maybe people have better results when they pay for it.

Demens
09-26-2006, 10:13 PM
Hmm... Well... This is quite disappointing. I decided to test it only becouse of the new "UnPnPMNNNM" networking thingie that is supposed to be able to talk to Windows media connect.

Well, i dont see any "Network" option on the browser like it shows on screenshots, and i cant find anything to configure.
Online-help wasnt really help at all. :lol:

Jason Patterson
09-26-2006, 10:16 PM
azhiker,

Do you have Menu > Equalizer > Auto-load Presets checked? That will reset the preset to Default if you haven't yet set a preset for a track. Uncheck that, and your desired preset will stay loaded.

How slow is it finding your files? How many do you have? Where are they stored? How does it compare to when you pick Update Library in WMP?

Pocket Player does not force all skin files in one folder. I'm not sure what you meant here. It will look in your My Documents, Pocket Player install folder, and any storage card documents folders for skins.

Pocket Player takes up more RAM when it's initially scanning your library files. Once you exit after the initial scan, the library is written out and it should take up less memory.

Jason Patterson
09-26-2006, 10:18 PM
Demens,

Pocket Player has a plugin framework, where you add functionality by way of downloadable plugins. We should really have a "Catch-all Installer" of Pocket Player that contains the common plugins (and certainly those that we advertise as core functionality).

The UPnP functionality is embedded in the "gen_upnp" plugin, available from:

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

We didn't include this in the base install since many don't have UPnP networks set up.

azhiker
09-26-2006, 10:36 PM
azhiker,

Do you have Menu > Equalizer > Auto-load Presets checked? That will reset the preset to Default if you haven't yet set a preset for a track. Uncheck that, and your desired preset will stay loaded.

How slow is it finding your files? How many do you have? Where are they stored? How does it compare to when you pick Update Library in WMP?

Pocket Player does not force all skin files in one folder. I'm not sure what you meant here. It will look in your My Documents, Pocket Player install folder, and any storage card documents folders for skins.

Pocket Player takes up more RAM when it's initially scanning your library files. Once you exit after the initial scan, the library is written out and it should take up less memory.

I did figure out the preset equilizer system and it does work fine.

Everytime I load PP, it seems to go through my entire system looking for files. I have 468 songs in 2.5 gigs. Once I go to the top of my list of songs, the application slowly goes through each song and adds the total playing time to each file! Is there a way to prevent that?

When I use the "browse" feature it seems to hang up and take forever.

I'd also like to restrict it from looking everywhere, just to look at my SD.

When I first loaded a skin, I kept it in its own file in the directory where the program is located. The system could not find it. I then copied all the files into the root directory and it found them.

Thanks for your rapid responses!

RogueSpear
09-26-2006, 11:31 PM
I've been using TCPMP (and BetaPlayer before that) for what seems like ages now to play .m4a music files. Using Winamp, I can encode my CDs at 96Kbs and they are not only half the size of my old vbr MP3s, but they also sound much better. I simply cannot believe that a commercial product is incapable of securing the proper licensing to play those files.

Anyway, after a little while you get the hang of TCPMP just fine and you don't even miss the pointless eye candy either.

Jason Patterson
09-26-2006, 11:40 PM
Everytime I load PP, it seems to go through my entire system looking for files. I have 468 songs in 2.5 gigs. Once I go to the top of my list of songs, the application slowly goes through each song and adds the total playing time to each file! Is there a way to prevent that?

There's a definitely way to avoid that - don't use the Local Content playlist. That playlist is a sort of "mirror" of what has been actually validated from your library. Is this with 3.0 though? Check your About screen just in case. If you queue up a few tracks using the browser, and then exit and restart, you should still have those tracks there when you restart.

When I use the "browse" feature it seems to hang up and take forever.

In version 2.8, this was a problem, but (should be) fixed for 3.0. Navigation that took over a minute now takes 3-5 seconds (in version 2.8, to pull up the list of artists, it was effectively re-reading the whole library from storage).

I'd also like to restrict it from looking everywhere, just to look at my SD.

This is settable via the Registry, and explained in our forum here (http://www.conduits.com/community/forum_posts.asp?TID=626&amp;KW=restrictExclude).

When I first loaded a skin, I kept it in its own file in the directory where the program is located. The system could not find it. I then copied all the files into the root directory and it found them.

Again, is this with 3.0? Try putting them in My Documents or the PP install folder.


RogueSpear: Thank you for your comments.

Atticus
09-27-2006, 12:00 AM
The player at www.tcmp.org is not the new upcoming player.
It hasn't been released yet. There is a technology demo out of the new player for Windows, and they are planning to release a demo for the PDA. But afaik, this is all invitation based.

The new player is scheduled to be released on October 16th.

Atticus

Jason Lee
09-27-2006, 04:13 AM
Just as a note, TCMP and TCPMP are two separate programs. The new up coming software release will actually be a mobile version of TCMP and will have nothing to do with TCPMP.

haesslich
09-27-2006, 04:36 AM
I don't know about the direct comparison - TCPMP is, in my mind, the superior VIDEO player; it has more formats through FFMPEG, and has video acceleration for the Intel 2700g chipset. But, on the other hand, i've felt Pocket Player to be a better audio player, due to the easier to use equalizer, the ability to use one's fingers with some skins to allow more direct access to buttons on top of a customizable button list which is, in some ways, better than TCPMP's for music, as well as being a more stable program in my experience when it came to audio (I've had TCPMP 0.71 RC1 crash out playing audio, while PocketPlayer hasn't had that issue).

Both are, however, undoubtedly better than WMP. :D

However, I've also noticed PocketPlayer 3 loads a LITTLE slower than my previous version did.. by about a second or so. Once in there, it's perfectly fine, and I appreciate being able to rename my playlists easily. I do, however, miss the quick access to the 'Exit' option on the softkey menu, since it got moved into the "More" category - is there a way to move it back out? Screen Off or Minimize isn't a big deal, but being able to close the program out one-handed is kinda nice.

I'll probably be using CorePlayer, when that shows up, for my video... but PocketPlayer's plugins for the DSP and the working BT support for AVCRP (which doesn't work for me in TCPMP) makes it my audio player of choice for WM5. We'll see how stable it is under 4-5 hours of music playing, though...

Edit: Subjective note here - but is anyone else using BT headphones with this, with either the Widcomm or MS stacks? The MS ones always had a bit of a high-pitched whine with PP 2.8, which I've yet to notice with Pocket Player 3 - I don't know if they did anything in the background with BT handling, but it seems to be a little improved in that respect; I didn't have the problem with my old Widcomm stack, but now the MS BT stack seems a little clearer. It's probably just my imagination, but I don't hear it anymore. We'll see if CPU consumption (and thus, power usage) goes up any with this release.

Edit #2: Not sure if this is a bug or not, but I've found that when I changed the "Outpage Wave Device" in the Advanced menu under Options, the "Bluetooth Advanced Audio Output" and "Audio Output" options seem to trade places on the menu.. so I can leave the menu checked on "Bluetooth" and go back in a bit later and it's checked on the same menu option... which now says "Audio Output" and outputs straight to my speakers.

Joelacrane
09-27-2006, 06:39 AM
This is a great program. I liked PP 2.8, but this has some excellent improvments, mainly in the browse/now playing interface. I love the way it slides around so smoothly. It makes it feel more like an iPod.

Visualization should be dropped. Expelled. Thrown away. Its just taking up memory.

Every version conduits puts out is better and better! Good job conduits!

I can't get the UPnP function to work. After installing the plugin, installing Windows Media Connect, allowing pocket player, and navagating to browse->network it just says "No Results". I've never used UPnP before, so im not even 100 percent sure of what it does!

haesslich
09-27-2006, 08:09 AM
Basically, all UPnP does is that it lets devices configure one another - for example, my PC can configure my router settings on the fly, for example to open up a port for port forwarding for one specific program, then undo it once I close the program. In this case, your PDA could talk to the PC doing the media streaming and set things up without your needing to manually enter port information or to set up everything on both systems.

Menneisyys
09-27-2006, 10:05 AM
How does this compare to "the Core" media player (TCMP)?

I'll make a comparison some day (if noone else does it, that is).

Jason Patterson
09-27-2006, 02:57 PM
I do, however, miss the quick access to the 'Exit' option on the softkey menu, since it got moved into the "More" category - is there a way to move it back out?

Due to demand, this will definitely be moved out of the More category for the next release.

Edit #2: Not sure if this is a bug or not, but I've found that when I changed the "Outpage Wave Device" in the Advanced menu under Options, the "Bluetooth Advanced Audio Output" and "Audio Output" options seem to trade places on the menu.. so I can leave the menu checked on "Bluetooth" and go back in a bit later and it's checked on the same menu option... which now says "Audio Output" and outputs straight to my speakers.

This is the MS (as far as I know) stack shuffling around the wave devices, depending on if there's a BT connection or not. You can usually just leave it checked on the first option. The last option is usually BT when not connected, and speaker output when connected.

Jason Patterson
09-27-2006, 03:02 PM
Visualization should be dropped. Expelled. Thrown away. Its just taking up memory.

Album artwork visualization is by far the most popular. We'd suggest leaving it on that choice.

I can't get the UPnP function to work. After installing the plugin, installing Windows Media Connect, allowing pocket player, and navagating to browse->network it just says "No Results". I've never used UPnP before, so im not even 100 percent sure of what it does!

You do need to have a connection active on your device for it to give you any results*. This means a WiFi, Bluetooth PAN, or (sometimes*) a simple cradle/cable connection to your PC. UPnP works over a different network protocol called UDP, and older (3.x) versions of ActiveSync do not shuffle those packets around properly.

If your device has WiFi, we'd recommend disconnecting your device and then pulling up the Network. The UPnP functions don't need any configuration to connect -- it's like Bluetooth in a way, where UPnP devices/services are 'discoverable'.


* for the technically minded, the Network plugin runs a local HTTP server on "localhost" or 127.0.0.1, and apparantely with 2003/WM5, MS's connection manager requires you to have a connection in order to connect to it!

Joelacrane
09-27-2006, 04:46 PM
Yep... active WiFi connection... but i haven't tried it over ActiveSync yet.

As for the exit option, maybe its location could be an option in the advanced options tab? Although i am probably the only person out there that likes it where it is.

One more thing i would love to see... Could you make song switching faster? If i keep hitting forward or backward the songs dont quickly skip like a CD player, sometimes the song just keeps playing for 5 seconds! Its also painfully slow when you want to skip through many tracks, and the playlist is extrememely slow, it doesnt keep up at all.

Right now, i have up and down and select mapped to my d-pad, so i can just highlight the song i want and hit select, it works well enough i suppose.

Once again, great job, this is my favorite Pocket PC program.

If you haven't spent the $20 bucks to get it, go buy it now. No other media player compares to it.

Jason Patterson
09-27-2006, 11:54 PM
Joelacrane,

Thank you for the report on the playlist track switching. We will indeed improve that in an upcoming release. One quick method to switch faster is to press Pause first, and then you can switch from track to track much faster as it won't auto-start the next track each time.

haesslich
09-28-2006, 03:41 AM
I do, however, miss the quick access to the 'Exit' option on the softkey menu, since it got moved into the "More" category - is there a way to move it back out?

Due to demand, this will definitely be moved out of the More category for the next release.

Edit #2: Not sure if this is a bug or not, but I've found that when I changed the "Outpage Wave Device" in the Advanced menu under Options, the "Bluetooth Advanced Audio Output" and "Audio Output" options seem to trade places on the menu.. so I can leave the menu checked on "Bluetooth" and go back in a bit later and it's checked on the same menu option... which now says "Audio Output" and outputs straight to my speakers.

This is the MS (as far as I know) stack shuffling around the wave devices, depending on if there's a BT connection or not. You can usually just leave it checked on the first option. The last option is usually BT when not connected, and speaker output when connected.

Thanks for the first. One reason I'm a PocketPlayer user - like SBSH, Conduits is responsive.

As for the other, you could be right - usually I try to set it to Bluetooth Audio so that the Axim doesn't start playing music in my pocket even if my headphones are synced.

Jason Patterson
11-01-2006, 08:31 PM
Greetings,

We have released Pocket Player 3.01 and an update to the UPnP plugin that enables support on PPC2002 devices, and fixes all known bugs in the software.