Kinoma Play: The Best Media Player Ever for Windows Mobile?

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.wmexperts.com/reviews/software_reviews/review_kinoma_play.html' target='_blank'>http://www.wmexperts.com/reviews/so...inoma_play.html</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Kinoma Play ($29.99) is the new media player we've been hinting at in our series of media player reviews this past week. It's essentially a super-charged media player that aims to make media you find on the internet as easy to find, play, and interact with as the media stored locally on your memory card. Those of you familiar with Kinoma Player EX on the Palm OS are going to be pleased to hear that all the functionality of the PalmOS's player is here and then some."</em></p><p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="437" height="288" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="id" value="viddler" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="src" value="http://www.viddler.com/player/c7c9643b/" /><embed id="viddler" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="437" height="288" src="http://www.viddler.com/player/c7c9643b/" wmode="transparent" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed></object></p><p>I've seen a lot of software come and go on the Windows Mobile platform, but watching this video and reading about Kinoma leaves me with the impression that this is one of the most impressive media players I've ever seen. The functionality, and the blending of local and online content, is extremely impressive. From an audio playback standpoint, it's a shame so many device makers use miniUSB or 2.5mm headphone jacks - I hate having to use adaptors. Check out Kinoma's Web site for a <a href="http://kinoma.com/play/" target="_blank">trial download</a>.</p><p>One thing that Kinoma doesn't seem to have a good grasp on though is getting the software onto the devices. Kinoma Play isn't available in any of our software stores at MobiHand or Handango, and when I downloaded the software directly from their Web site it was only a CAB file - normally I wouldn't mind a CAB file, but when I tried to install it I received an error on my Blackjack II: "Installation was unsuccessful. The program or setting cannot be installed because it does not have sufficient system permissions." I've installed two other programs via CAB files today, so I'm not sure why Kinoma Play won't install. Hopefully you'll have better luck than I did!</p>

[tnels!]

What can I say!? "PRETTY SLICK."

[rzanology]

i just installed it, but i cannot get pass the activation part. it asks for an email and tries to connect to a server. never connects :(

[RayanMX]

Totally COOL app! (a killer app if you ask me) ;)

What's not so cool is the poor battery performance of the almighty Treo Pro!!!

If you look closely on the video, it went from almost 50% of power to almost zero in 11 minutes!!!

Darn Windows Mobile devices and their less than stellar battery performance!!! :mad:

[Kinoma]

i just installed it, but i cannot get pass the activation part. it asks for an email and tries to connect to a server. never connects :(
If you're having network problems, you can also activate without a connection here (http://kinoma.com/play/activate/).

Also, definitely contact support (http://kinoma.com/support/contact/) if this continues to be an issue -- they're there to help!

-- Charles Wiltgen

[Phillip Dyson]

has anyone compared this with the recently released pocket player?

[Jason Lee]

I don't know that i would actually call this program a media player. I think their website hits it pretty well. It is a media browser. It seems to be something like a web browser. Something you fire up when you want to look at media, be it yours or stuff in the internet.
This is definitely NOT a program i want firing up every time i click any media file in file explorer. However if i want to bring up several types of media to view or show someone this would be a great app for that. A media browser, not a media player.

EDIT: Hmm... I was rather displeased that the program re-associated all of my media files without asking me nor giving me the option to choose some or NONE.

[Craig Horlacher]

Does it support any hardware accelerators? I have a GoForce 5500 in my iMate Ultimate 6150.

I don't see anything about supported hardware or framerates. If it is more of a browser and just uses Windows Media Player then I'm not interested. If it supports hardware acceleration I would probably pay $30.

[Jason Lee]

I don't think it has any hardware acceleration support but it does do its own rendering/decoding. It doesn't just use media player.

[felixdd]

What's the earliest iteration of CE that Kinoma supports? I'm thinking of using this on my Ipaq 2210 (old I know) but I can't find the information on whether or not it's supported.

[Jason Lee]

What's the earliest iteration of CE that Kinoma supports? I'm thinking of using this on my Ipaq 2210 (old I know) but I can't find the information on whether or not it's supported.

Their website say WM 5 and 6 are supported. Since the programming APIs changed drastically in WM5 I doubt it will work with anything older.
But you could always install the free version to see. It probably won't even install if they did their job right.

[onepieceman]

It's a very slick app but there are a bunch of things that don't work for me.
a) I use Egress as an RSS reader. This downloads small jpg images. Kinoma scans these and adds them to my photo album. I don't want RSS images in my photo album! Now I can't see my photos because of all the junk that's there! No option to specify where to look for photos...
b) Because of the above, every time I start the app I have to wait a long time while it processes all the new images. Until it has scanned all the new images, it won't let me do anything. This can take a minute or two, by which time I've forgotten what I wanted to play! Very annoying.
c) The media browser is very nice, but it contains links to various services I never use and would never want to use. There is no option to remove them, so I have to scroll through a lot of junk to get to what I want. Not an ideal browsing experience.
d) No home button! Which means it can take 8 clicks or more sometimes to back all the way up in order to go somewhere else.

All of these are small problems with really easy solutions, but they turn what would otherwise be a fantastic experience into quite a frustrating one. I'm hoping that Kinoma will issue a point release soon to fix these issues. Attention to detail is really crucial in an app like this.

[signs]

If you're having network problems, you can also activate without a connection here (http://kinoma.com/play/activate/).

Also, definitely contact support (http://kinoma.com/support/contact/) if this continues to be an issue -- they're there to help!

-- Charles Wiltgen

I am trying out the free version to decide on my Imate 8502 ultimate, works good when installed on device, had to reset when i had it on the storage card. But what i would like to know if pdf format would be readable in the future, i feel it would be great to read pdf files using it. I have to say the rendering of images make me remember the old trustworthy Picsel Viewer i had, and that one could open huge pdf 120 mb file with no problems. I wonder whatever happened to them? there site seems to be closed or something.

[Menneisyys]

It's a very slick app but there are a bunch of things that don't work for me.
a) I use Egress as an RSS reader. This downloads small jpg images. Kinoma scans these and adds them to my photo album. I don't want RSS images in my photo album! Now I can't see my photos because of all the junk that's there! No option to specify where to look for photos...

Yup, excluding dirs (as in several other players) and/or filetypes (as in coreplayer) would be great. I will recommend this to the devs.

b) Because of the above, every time I start the app I have to wait a long time while it processes all the new images. Until it has scanned all the new images, it won't let me do anything. This can take a minute or two, by which time I've forgotten what I wanted to play! Very annoying.

Same here. I've already told the dev to make rescans / updates optional (manually invokable).

[Menneisyys]

Does it support any hardware accelerators? I have a GoForce 5500 in my iMate Ultimate 6150.

I don't see anything about supported hardware or framerates. If it is more of a browser and just uses Windows Media Player then I'm not interested. If it supports hardware acceleration I would probably pay $30.

It doesn't support any kind of video acceleration, unfortunately. See my forthcoming review on this issue.

[Menneisyys]

EDIT: Hmm... I was rather displeased that the program re-associated all of my media files without asking me nor giving me the option to choose some or NONE.


Yup, indeed another problem to fix - I'll also tell the devs.

[Menneisyys]

has anyone compared this with the recently released pocket player?

I'm in the process of comparing. The first stage (CPU usage) has already been published:

http://www.winmobiletech.com/sekalaiset/audioplayerpuusage072008.html

More to follow VERY soon!

[Kinoma]

But you could always install the free version to see.
That's excellent advice.

Kinoma FreePlay is available here (http://kinoma.com/freeplay/download/), or (easier still) just go to kinoma.com (http://kinoma.com/) on your phone and select the "Kinoma FreePlay" link.

-- Charles Wiltgen

[Kinoma]

I use Egress as an RSS reader. This downloads small jpg images. Kinoma scans these and adds them to my photo album. I don't want RSS images in my photo album!
My guess is that Egress isn't keeping its images in reserved application folders. Can you give me the exact path?

The media browser is very nice, but it contains links to various services I never use and would never want to use. There is no option to remove them, so I have to scroll through a lot of junk to get to what I want.
Note that in most places, you can press keys to do instant filtering. For example, you can select Kinoma Guide and then press N to jump right to News & Politics.

Also, you can save often-used item to Favorites, and even create your own personal OPML "guide" and either put it on your phone or keep it on a server somewhere.

All of these are small problems with really easy solutions, but they turn what would otherwise be a fantastic experience into quite a frustrating one.
I appreciate you sharing your feedback. We released the app less than 300 hours ago and our first update on Friday, so please keep letting us know how we're doing.

-- Charles Wiltgen

[Phillip Dyson]

My guess is that Egress isn't keeping its images in reserved application folders. Can you give me the exact path?


I also use Egress. The complication is that Egress allows you to store its data on any path you want. The best solution for Kinoma is to allow the user to exclude, or specify folders explicitly for where their various media files are.

[peckmiester]

I was playing around with my i760 and installed Kinoma freeplay, I followed the directions to import my itunes playist, and it wanted me to pay for the kinoma play to be able to import playlists. All I really use my media player on my phone is to listen to podcasts to and from work, and I had been using Beyond Pod for that. It is a nice program and it is free so I had all of my podcasts in that and lo and behold Kinoma became my default player for some of my podcasts. I love the way Kinoma looks but I do not use most of the features it has to offer so I cannot comment on that. I also do not use a data plan so I must download podcasts via wifi or when I sync. I hope this was a help to someone out there.