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A2DP support & sound quality & power usage of MS & Widcomm BT stack compared!

A2DP support & sound quality & power usage of MS & Widcomm BT stack compared!
Now that I’ve made the stereo Bluetooth headphones (A2DP) support work with my Dell Axim x51v with the original Microsoft BT stack (see the tutorial here), I’ve thoroughly tested it and compared the sound quality and the power consumption of the two stacks.
First, the power consumption test, along with the CPU usage (all measured on the same x51v two times - with a hard reset in between. I've long been promising something similar to the AximSite folks in this thread):
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As can clearly be seen, while device.exe, which is in charge of encoding the A2DP stream, consumes slightly less CPU time with the Widcomm BT stack, the latter still consumes about 13 mA’s more than the Microsoft stack. This, however, isn’t that big a problem if you also take into account the really superior sound quality.
What should you use to check out the sound quality yourself?
I really recommend for example the demo MP3 of Värttinä’s Oi Dai (linked from here); in there, you’ll clearly hear the quality difference between the A2DP mode of the MS and the Widcomm BT stack. Just make sure you try to listen to the generic distortion in the middle band when the girls start to sing.
BTW, use the first about five seconds to fine-tune the Subbands value with the Widcomm BT stack (see my earlier, related tweaking article here) – it’s mostly in the increased noise of strong lows (like at the beginning of this song) that the drastically decreased Subbands value has a really audible effect. With other kinds of music, the difference is very hard to hear.
Tweaking
I’ve played a bit with the MS BT stack parameters under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\Bluetooth\ A2DP\Settings I’ve listed in my previous A2DP fine-tuning article. I’ve paid special attention to the following DWORD’s:
MinSupportedBitPool: it does have an impact on the sound transmission: while you can’t fine-tune the quality, a sufficiently high value (for example, 64; with 48, it still works) will make sure no connection can be made between the headphones and the PDA. That is, it’s useless to try to “tweak” this value.
UseJointStereo: the default 0 is “false”. When set to 1, it results in a mono transmission. With 2 (I’ve also tested with 3, with the same result), it seems it indeed uses joint stereo mode. It, however, hasn’t resulted in any kind of sound quality improvement. Conclusion: forget it too.
I’ve, in addition to trying to tweak BitPool, also tried to raise MaxSupportedBitPool , MinBitPool and, of course, BitPool – without success. I couldn’t achieve any sound quality improvement.
All in all, it seems the Microsoft BT stack is definitely worse, A2DP quality-wise, than that of Widcomm / Broadcomm and nothing (no tweaking) can be done to fix this.
Summary
There is not really competition between the A2DP quality of the two Bluetooth stacks. If you happen to have a WM5-upgraded Dell Axim x50(v) or x51(v), don’t hesitate: install the Widcomm BT stack on it if you want the best available sound quality. You’ll be presented definitely better sound quality, on the expense of slightly (but not much!) decreased battery life. And, of course, you get a lot of additional Widcomm goodies like Bluetooth PAN and the like.
Similarly, if you need to choose between, say, a Widcomm BT stack-based device and a MS-based one (and there's no known Widcomm hack for the latter), go for the earlier, if, otherwise, the two devices are the same.
This also means my sound quality problems with the HTC Wizard weren’t (also see my mourning here) because of the HTC Wizard hardware or the bad A2DP hack (see this for a more thorough elaboration on the hack) but because of the A2DP algorithm used in the MS BT stack. The official A2DP implementation of the really powerful Dell Axim x51v AKU2 isn’t at all better, quality-wise, than the A2DP hack for the Wizard.
I’ll try, of course, to push the Microsoft folks very hard to find the cause for the audibly lower sound quality.
More of my Bluetooth-related articles
The Bluetooth category in the Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine Expert Blog

???
Menneisyys said:
Now that I’ve made the stereo Bluetooth headphones (A2DP) support work with my Dell Axim x51v with the original Microsoft BT stack (see the tutorial here), I’ve thoroughly tested it and compared the sound quality and the power consumption of the two stacks.
First, the power consumption test, along with the CPU usage (all measured on the same x51v two times - with a hard reset in between. I've long been promising something similar to the AximSite folks in this thread):
As can clearly be seen, while device.exe, which is in charge of encoding the A2DP stream, consumes slightly less CPU time with the Widcomm BT stack, the latter still consumes about 13 mA’s more than the Microsoft stack. This, however, isn’t that big a problem if you also take into account the really superior sound quality.
What should you use to check out the sound quality yourself?
I really recommend for example the demo MP3 of Värttinä’s Oi Dai (linked from here); in there, you’ll clearly hear the quality difference between the A2DP mode of the MS and the Widcomm BT stack. Just make sure you try to listen to the generic distortion in the middle band when the girls start to sing.
BTW, use the first about five seconds to fine-tune the Subbands value with the Widcomm BT stack (see my earlier, related tweaking article here) – it’s mostly in the increased noise of strong lows (like at the beginning of this song) that the drastically decreased Subbands value has a really audible effect. With other kinds of music, the difference is very hard to hear.
Tweaking
I’ve played a bit with the MS BT stack parameters under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\Bluetooth\ A2DP\Settings I’ve listed in my previous A2DP fine-tuning article. I’ve paid special attention to the following DWORD’s:
MinSupportedBitPool: it does have an impact on the sound transmission: while you can’t fine-tune the quality, a sufficiently high value (for example, 64; with 48, it still works) will make sure no connection can be made between the headphones and the PDA. That is, it’s useless to try to “tweak” this value.
UseJointStereo: the default 0 is “false”. When set to 1, it results in a mono transmission. With 2 (I’ve also tested with 3, with the same result), it seems it indeed uses joint stereo mode. It, however, hasn’t resulted in any kind of sound quality improvement. Conclusion: forget it too.
I’ve, in addition to trying to tweak BitPool, also tried to raise MaxSupportedBitPool , MinBitPool and, of course, BitPool – without success. I couldn’t achieve any sound quality improvement.
All in all, it seems the Microsoft BT stack is definitely worse, A2DP quality-wise, than that of Widcomm / Broadcomm and nothing (no tweaking) can be done to fix this.
Summary
There is not really competition between the A2DP quality of the two Bluetooth stacks. If you happen to have a WM5-upgraded Dell Axim x50(v) or x51(v), don’t hesitate: install the Widcomm BT stack on it if you want the best available sound quality. You’ll be presented definitely better sound quality, on the expense of slightly (but not much!) decreased battery life. And, of course, you get a lot of additional Widcomm goodies like Bluetooth PAN and the like.
Similarly, if you need to choose between, say, a Widcomm BT stack-based device and a MS-based one (and there's no known Widcomm hack for the latter), go for the earlier, if, otherwise, the two devices are the same.
This also means my sound quality problems with the HTC Wizard weren’t (also see my mourning here) because of the HTC Wizard hardware or the bad A2DP hack (see this for a more thorough elaboration on the hack) but because of the A2DP algorithm used in the MS BT stack. The official A2DP implementation of the really powerful Dell Axim x51v AKU2 isn’t at all better, quality-wise, than the A2DP hack for the Wizard.
I’ll try, of course, to push the Microsoft folks very hard to find the cause for the audibly lower sound quality.
More of my Bluetooth-related articles
The Bluetooth category in the Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine Expert Blog
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you ACTUALLY know what you are doing???
Seems like you are taking others work, experimenting, and saying "MY" a looad of times...
Soz, maybe I'm a cinersist!!! (is there such a word?)
A2DP on AKU2.3 / .6 does not have a correct implimentation of EDR tie-in to the bluetooth firmware!!! Nuff said.
If I offend. I am sorry!

Farsquidge said:
Do you ACTUALLY know what you are doing???
Seems like you are taking others work, experimenting, and saying "MY" a looad of times...
Soz, maybe I'm a cinersist!!! (is there such a word?)
A2DP on AKU2.3 / .6 does not have a correct implimentation of EDR tie-in to the bluetooth firmware!!! Nuff said.
If I offend. I am sorry!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please DO show any of the substances I've referred to as mine (just search for the word "my" in the above article and the substance it refers to) actually not having been created / done / published first by me! Thanks in advance

Farsquidge said:
Seems like you are taking others work, experimenting, and saying "MY" a looad of times...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is, excuse me, utter BS.
I have NEVER published any other's work without 1. thoroughly checking it and 2. referring to it. Just compare my articles. I've linked in every single thread where a particular registry hack has been implemented. Count the XDA-Developer references (referencing to work done by others) in my Bluetooth-related articles - you'll see loads of them.
Second, I do test all the hacks and I don't publish anything I haven't tested. This is why the findings in my articles are sometimes diametrically opposed to what people have generally thought before. There're a lot of examples of this too; for example, the BitPool hacks.

Menneisyys said:
Count the XDA-Developer references (referencing to work done by others) in my Bluetooth-related articles - you'll see loads of them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK, one of the linked article, there are "only" AximSite references. Some four or five of them, all referencing to the original author that has intoduced the hack in the first place. I've "only" thoroughly tested it, which hasn't been done by anyone else before. (Just read the AximSite thread in question.)

Farsquidge said:
A2DP on AKU2.3 / .6 does not have a correct implimentation of EDR tie-in to the bluetooth firmware!!! Nuff said.
If I offend. I am sorry!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please explain what you are saying.

austinbrady said:
Please explain what you are saying.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is what I'm also waiting for Or, for an apology for attacking me without any truth.

Problem lies with sbc.dll
After a lot of digging, I think the problem with the MS BT stack lies with the fact that it uses the sbc codec to send music to the bluetooth headset.
In fact, I don't think MS implemented the sbc codec incorrectly, but that it is the nature of the sbc codec to sound crappy (correct me if I'm wrong).
What MS didn't do was add MP3 support, which would have saved a lot of decoding overhead (no MP3 to SBC conversion), since many of the stereo headsets support MP3 natively.
But since MP3 support is optional in the bluetooth spec, MS ignored it. It's also not in WM6, so don't expect sound quality to improve. If only MS added a way to bypass sbc.dll completely and route MP3 data straight to the bluetooth headset.
If anyone here knows how to write a stub driver to replace sbc.dll, that would be great! :>

joe_dude said:
After a lot of digging, I think the problem with the MS BT stack lies with the fact that it uses the sbc codec to send music to the bluetooth headset.
In fact, I don't think MS implemented the sbc codec incorrectly, but that it is the nature of the sbc codec to sound crappy (correct me if I'm wrong).
What MS didn't do was add MP3 support, which would have saved a lot of decoding overhead (no MP3 to SBC conversion), since many of the stereo headsets support MP3 natively.
But since MP3 support is optional in the bluetooth spec, MS ignored it. It's also not in WM6, so don't expect sound quality to improve. If only MS added a way to bypass sbc.dll completely and route MP3 data straight to the bluetooth headset.
If anyone here knows how to write a stub driver to replace sbc.dll, that would be great! :>
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well,
1. SBC itself isn't bad - when correectly implemented. Widcomm / Broadcom, Plantronics (with their A2DP dongle) and Softick (in their Audio Gateway) don't have any problems / bugs in their SBC implementation. MS' SBC implementation in AKU2 is, unfortunately, much worse than the ones listed above.
2, Indeed feeding MP3 directly to the headphones is a very good idea to increase sound quality. Too bad quite few headphones support it MP3 streams in addition to SBC ones (about 15-20%).

Menneisyys, I was able to try A2DP from AKU 3.3 on my Prophet, and unfortunately it sounds pretty much the same as the AKU 2 version.
I tried manipulating bitpool and the minsupportedbitpool, and no difference. Whatever algorithm MS used in SBC.dll is completely fubared.
Other than MSI BluePlayer, is there any other MP3 player that does not do (down) conversion to SBC? BluePlayer sounds awesome, but too much of a pain to use.

joe_dude said:
I was able to try A2DP from AKU 3.3 on my Prophet
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you sure it's TRUE AKU3.3? Cooked / "leaked" AKU ROM versions don't necessarily have really all AKU3 stuff (for example, BT FTP or AJAX support).
joe_dude said:
Other than MSI BluePlayer, is there any other MP3 player that does not do (down) conversion to SBC? BluePlayer sounds awesome, but too much of a pain to use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know of any. I'll dedicate an article to this; hope it'll make some software developers (for example, Mort) add direct MP3 support to their programs.
BTW, speaking of the PPC version of MSI BluePlayer, do you know any other source for MSI Blueplayer than http://download.enet.com.cn/html/EN947892006041701.html#instruction ? The download is very slow with me and stops after a minute with all the sources.

Well, it's the AKU 3.3 files from this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=284509
So it looks official enough, and the files are slightly different than the ones in the Tornado patch.
As for BluePlayer, check out this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=262715
Can't knock the sound quality, but it's pretty much just a GUI that sends out MP3 data to the BT headset. If MortPlayer could do this, I'd definitely pay to use it.
But bypassing the MS BT stack might not be a trivial exercise (not that I'd know, of course).

joe_dude said:
Well, it's the AKU 3.3 files from this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=284509
So it looks official enough, and the files are slightly different than the ones in the Tornado patch.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! Indeed it's different from previous cooked ROM's. WIll flash it onto my Wizard.

joe_dude said:
Menneisyys, I was able to try A2DP from AKU 3.3 on my Prophet, and unfortunately it sounds pretty much the same as the AKU 2 version.
I tried manipulating bitpool and the minsupportedbitpool, and no difference. Whatever algorithm MS used in SBC.dll is completely fubared.
Other than MSI BluePlayer, is there any other MP3 player that does not do (down) conversion to SBC? BluePlayer sounds awesome, but too much of a pain to use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This has been a source of much pain for my gadget budget... I bought different headsets because I thought that perhaps it was the headset causing the bad quality. However, it was the MS implementation of A2DP all along!
I'd like to try blueplayer, but the real hurdle now is getting it to work on my Smartphone Edition device (tornado). Since blueplayer only exists in a PPC install, can someone extract the files for me (the actual .exe, etc...) to try on a smartphone device?
I've done this before, and I already have my ways of dealing without a touchscreen... I just need the files so I can try running it!
Anyone?

Everything you will ever need to know about the power consumption of PPC audioplayers

In my well-known Pocket PC & Smartphone Magazine article Maximize Battery Life by Minimizing Power Consumption! and, for example, Pocket PC Thoughts-frontpaged Some new power consumption measurements (Dell Axim x51v, HP iPAQ hx4700, Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 720, HTC Universal, HTC Wizard), I’ve elaborated on how important it is to reduce the processor (CPU) usage of a given application to gain the best battery life possible and/or force the CPU to run at a lower clock speed.
In the current article, I elaborate on how all the known MP3-capable Pocket PC multimedia players fare in this respect. You will really need to read this article if you regularly listen to for example MP3 files for more than, say, half an hour between recharges. You can save even hours of battery uptime if you choose your multimedia player with the CPU usage in mind. As you’ll see, current multimedia players have vastly different CPU usage (and, therefore, power consumption), particularly if you enable for example equalization, digital signal processing (DSP) and the like.
I’ve previously also made some similar measurements with Pocket PC multimedia players (see for example this article) and sound recorders (see the well-known (see for example these remarks) Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible), but have never compared ALL MP3 players directly to each other, on the same Pocket PC, at the same time. Now, this omission has been fixed.
In the comparison chart (click the link!), I’ve collected (after some really thorough measuring) the following characteristics of each and every MP3-capablePocket PC-based multimedia player.
Upon creating the chart, I've measured the CPU usage at 208 MHz to directly and reliably compare the CPU usage of each and every application. I’ve chosen such a low CPU frequency to emphasize the CPU usage differences (at higher CPU speeds, the differences would be smaller and more prone to benchmark errors. As can be seen, the, in this respect, there are four clearly separate groups. As with all the other figures in the test, the lower the given percentage, the better.

[/LIST]
The first group, consisting of three applications, offers, CPU-usage wise, about twice the runtime than the better titles (for example, the built-in Windows Media Player (WMP), LGC Jukebox and GSPlayer in the second group). The best-behaving applications is definitely 40th Floor's iPlay (sporting 11% CPU usage), closely followed by TCPMP and Resco Audio Recorder (12 and 12.5% CPU usage, respectively). Always try preferring these three players if you absolutely need the best battery life!
The second group contains many more titles and is started with a brand new title, LGC Jukebox (sporting 20% CPU usage), which is, then, closely followed by the widely-known, excellent, with third party add-on plug-ins, even midi- and mod-capable freeware GSPlayer (21%), VITO AudioPlayer (21%) (when minimized), WMP (21.4%), the (as opposed to all the listed titles so far, not taken iPlay and, partly, TCPMP into account) AVRCP-capable, free and and excellent MortPlayer (22%). Also, some lesser-known titles (for example, the no-longer developed TodayPlayer) are also in this group; so is NoteM, the excellent, free MP3 recorder. (Also note that NoteM is particularly sensitive to skips, which may make it to a non-recommended player in certain circumstances.)
The third group consists of titles like WinVibePro (more on this title later!), Conduits' Pocket Player, VITO SoundExplorer, PocketMind's PocketMusic Bundle , iMusic and withMP3. The CPU usage of these titles is between 24 and 27.5% and are definitely less recommended than even the players in the second group, unless you REALLY want to take advantage of the advanced features of, say, Conduits' Pocket Player and VITO SoundExplorer.
The fourth (worst) group consists of Nero Mobile (31%), Platform4 Player (37%) and absolutely the worst title, WinamPAQ (40%). Note that WinVibePro should also belong to this group because its CPU usage is pretty tricky and is pretty hard to predict whether it will really "only" consume 24% of the CPU cycles, or, will it consume way more.
I've also measured the CPU usage with enabled equalizer (I've tried to "cook" the same very-strong-at-highs and slightly-stronger-at-basses with all the players so that they sound at least similarly the same with my Plantronics 590A, which, by default, pretty much lacks the highs) and bass boost, both when available. These are listed in the third column.
As can be seen, using built-in equalizers (EQ's) definitely raise the power consumption with most (but not all; there are some exceptions like GSPlayer and MortPlayer (they use exactly the same core; hence the minimal additional CPU usage), the no-longer-maintained TodayPlayer and the otherwise absolutely bad WinamPAQ). This means if you use some other player, you may want to consider using built-in, hardware-level equalizer capabilities of your Pocket PC if and only if it supports it AND you don't listen to music via Bluetooth A2DP. In some devices (for example, the HP iPAQ hx4700, the HP iPAQ 2210 (even if the latter only has a really basic bass/middle/tremble setter) in Start / Settings / System / iPAQ Audio), there is already a built-in equalizer; in other devices (for example, the Dell Axim x50(v) / x51(v) or the old Compaq iPAQ 36xx/37xx series, you can get access to them with external tools like x50mix and UdaEq 1.1, respectively. They won’t cause any additional CPU usage, as opposed to software-based solutions.
Except for them in this test, excellently behaving GSPlayer, MortPlayer, TodayPlayer and the (otherwise, in no way recommended) WinamPAQ, enabling EQ may result in really bad CPU usage increase. This is definitely the case with, for example, PocketMind's PocketMusic (Bundle), withMP3, the non-recommended Nero Mobile, and, finally, depending on the number of points you use (for example, if you only raise the highs with only one point, you can save a lot of battery - but, still, it's better to use another media player if battery life is a concern), VITO SoundExplorer. Note that VITO AudioPlayer, unlike its "big" brother, doesn't have any DSP or equalizer; it, however, sports a (fixed) bass boost, which, unfortunately, is pretty CPU-hungry.
Also note that the two multimedia players (iPlay, TCPMP) belonging to the "least CPU-hungry" group and also having a built-in EQ (Resco Audio Recorder doesn't support EQ) become much more CPU-hungry when you enable the built-in EQ. iPlay's CPU usage almost doubles, and TCPMP's CPU usage increases by about 40%. This also means you almost completely lose the CPU usage advantage of, say, iPlay if you DO use the built-in equalizer. Again and again, if you use wired headphones, check first if your particular Pocket PC model already has support for system-level EQ settings. (Unfortunately, this, as has already been pointed out, won't work through A2DP.) Alternatively, try to avoid EQ's - remember, real audiophiles (like I used to be) don't use any kind of equalizers at all ;-)
The fourth column lists a well-known, nice and really useful DSP, reverb. While most reverb (in some players, there are only some similar DSP's like Pocket Player's "echo") implementations (except for that of iPlay) are pretty bad, I've still found this test necessary to find out how much additional CPU load they cause. I was particularly interested in the figures of iPlay, which has a wonderful reverb DSP you'll love to keep enabled. As can be seen, with iPlay, enabling reverb almost triples the CPU usage. This is, however, in my opinion, is a good tradeoff, taken into the quality of the reverb. It should be pointed out that "massive" (maximal) reverb causes the same CPU usage as "more". This means you won't really extend battery life if you refrain from using "massive" reverb effects and stick to lower-level effects.
The fifth column lists whether the bad side effects of enabled visualization (spectrums, peaks) can be avoided by (that is, is the application celever enough NOT to spend any CPU time on the then, invisible visual effects) just shutting down the screen. As can be seen, even some of the top apps (for example, Conduits Pocket Player and, of course, the CPU usage-wise, pretty hopeless WinVibePro; also in this group is VITO AudioPlayer) ignores this and continue to compute for example the spectrum. It's only with withMP3 that the CPU usage decreases in this case.
Finally, the sixth column lists the speed the (XScale) CPU switches to while playing the same 112 kbps MP3 test file (Värttinä: Oi Dai - Oi Dai). The CPU speed setting will also be of interest in addition to the, up to now, 208 MHz-only CPU usage figures. As you'll see, these results are pretty easy to predict based on the results listed in the second (208 MHz, no-EQ/reverb/bass boost CPU usage) column - with a notable exception (WinVibePro).
Why is this column important? If you don't want to manually force the XScale CPU of your Pocket PC to either 104 or 208 MHz (as opposed to letting the CPU itself switch back to these speeds when there isn't much load), you may want to go right for a program that lets the CPU run at the lowest speed possible; that is, 104 MHz. Currently, there are only two of them: iPlay and, for the most of the time, TCPMP. (Without using the built-in EQ or, with iPlay, Reverb DSP, and, naturally, without additional CPU-intensive tasks like A2DP encoding running in another process. If you do run additional tasks like A2DP encoding - A2DP is VERY resource-intensive, particularly if you use the Microsoft BT stack -, then, the CPU usage of the multimedia player application won't be the only factor for the CPU to decide what clock speed to run itself at.) This is because, say, consuming 22% of CPU cycles at 104 MHz requires LESS power than consuming 11% at 208 MHz, as can also be seen in my past, power consumption-related articles.
Note that the CPU usage introduced by actively monitoring the CPU speed / load (through Services.exe) is 1.5% (1.8% with enabling the load monitoring) at 208 MHz and is, therefore, negligible, as far as the test results are concerned. That is, it's highly unlikely the additional, at 312 MHz, ~1.3% CPU usage caused by monitoring is causing the CPU to switch to 416 MHz from 312 and so on.
Also note that this column is only meaningful for XScale CPU's (it's they that use integer multipliers with the default 104 MHz); Pocket PC's with Samsung (for example, iPAQ 1930/1940/rx1950; HTC TyTN etc.) or the TI (HTC Wizard and a load of other QVGA WM5 PPC Phone Edition devices) CPU's don't really use this kind of automatic speed switching or, if they do, they use vastly different speed steps.

Other remarks
Note that if you install Platform4 Player 3.0 into the main storage, it'll start playing its default video, MPEG4 by philips.mp4, at starting. This will mess up the screen of the Pocket PC. Therefore, you'll want to manually delete this file from \Program Files\Philips.
It's also worth pointing out that Citsoft's iMusic 2.10 , which is a direct successor to withMP3, seems to be definitely worse, both CPU usage- and capabilities-wise, than its predecessor. For example, it seems it's not possible to switch off the screen from inside the new player, as opposed to withMP3. That is, you may want to stick to the latter, despite its being older.
Note that, as it doesn't have (and I don't particularly like requesting freebies so that I can avoid situations like biting the feeding hand) a trial version, I couldn't test the current version of TCPMP's successor, CorePlayer either. According to the developers (I've talked to them on the matter per e-mail), it has 6...10% less CPU usage than TCPMP 0.72rc1, which may mean it's, now, better than even iPlay. Once again, I haven't tested this.
Also note that the current roundup ONLY tests MP3 playback. For example OGG or Flac playback is NOT benchmarked in here. In some of my older benchmarks, I've published Ogg-related information too.
Finally, the latest downloadable build of the WinCE port of well-known (also see this Wiki entry) VLC wasn't able to play any MP3 files at all; this is why I haven't included it in the chart.
Other recommendations on decreasing CPU usage
As can be seen, visualizations (and, with some titles - for example, TodayPlayer - even peak meters) are one of the worst enemies of battery life. The most CPU-intensive task is displaying equalizer spectrums. Some apps (for example, WinVibePro) don't even notice the spectrum not being visible and still consume a lot of additional CPU cycles - in vain. Therefore, make sure you scrutinize the peak meter / spectrum-related remarks in the chart and either disable them or make sure they are hidden while playing.
The comparison chart
(Note that, should you have problems with the local rendition of the chart, you can also access it HERE):
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Verdict
My personal pick / recommendation is iPlay. I only wish I could find ANY way of purchasing it. I’ve been trying very hard to find a proxy server so that I can visit the homepage of the developer; so far, without any success. The developer is also ignoring my e-mails and public messages to contact me back. It seems the developer considers me because I'm unable to pass to his homepage a "dark alley guy", as he often puts it about everyone that complains about being banned out of the website of 40th Floor. A nice way of handling would-be customers, eh? (I also recommend THIS and THIS AximSite threads on this.) Nevertheless, iPlay is still really worth checking out and is highly recommended - assuming, again, that you can get even the trial version.

good read!
hmm i hand no idea pocket music used that much battary!, i alwasy thought he 10% battary loss in 30mins (i was using the eq) i was getting was due to the BT being on!
iPlay is a ass to get, mortplayer seems good though, plus i has a today plugin (thouhg the site is currently down)

thebranded said:
good read!
hmm i hand no idea pocket music used that much battary!, i alwasy thought he 10% battary loss in 30mins (i was using the eq) i was getting was due to the BT being on!
iPlay is a ass to get, mortplayer seems good though, plus i has a today plugin (thouhg the site is currently down)
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Click to collapse
Yup, Pocket Music pretty quickly chews through your battery if you enable the equalizer. Get something else.

New, updated version posted, including info on VITO AudioPlayer and providing a much bigger chart, with much more links.

Another update; see the new version at http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=1656&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Menneisyys said:
Another update; see the new version at http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=1656&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
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thanks for this man ive currently switched from using pocketplayer to mortplayer ive noticed that pocketplayer does eat alot of memory also mortplayer is very stable in a2dp unlike pocketplayer i encounter skipping playing mp3 files 192kbps and higher.

I would not recommend people use tcpmp. I have noticed that in some video playback it can malfunction while drawing to the screen buffer directly and write over its own controls. This in itself is not a dangerous thing but it suggests that their drawing algorithm dose not clip the region it is trying to access before writing to the screen. This could result in more serious corruption of data on the device during a malfunction. I know this is not music related but it is the same software. If that bug was fixed it would be very good, I have found its playback to be good on most formats.
Do you have any stats on the aidem mp3 player that ships with the dopod 838 pro?

OdeeanRDeathshead said:
Do you have any stats on the aidem mp3 player that ships with the dopod 838 pro?
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Nope as I don't have the TyTN. I'll try to get hold of it - is there an extracted version installable to other models anywhere?

bkb said:
in a2dp unlike pocketplayer i encounter skipping playing mp3 files 192kbps and higher.
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Your
1, BT stack?
2, phone and headphones model?

Hi Menneisyys,
Been wondering how to get you(other that pm-ing you), since you are active in this thread(it's yours!!). I got a few questions for you.
1) I tried iplay like you suggested, unfortunately it plays my aac+ files at "chipmunk" speed. So I just stick to TCPMP.
2) In Sleuth's A2DP skip free thread, you mentioned that the Widcomm stacks play fine on your wizard, well, it plays ok on mine too except for the memory issue after switching it off for a while and it does not continue connection after my wizard goes into standy. Any idea which registry setting I need to change? I have tried a few(and still trying) in the Widcomm directory but no luck so far.
regards,
Eugene

new2city said:
Hi Menneisyys,
Been wondering how to get you(other that pm-ing you), since you are active in this thread(it's yours!!). I got a few questions for you.
1) I tried iplay like you suggested, unfortunately it plays my aac+ files at "chipmunk" speed. So I just stick to TCPMP.
2) In Sleuth's A2DP skip free thread, you mentioned that the Widcomm stacks play fine on your wizard, well, it plays ok on mine too except for the memory issue after switching it off for a while and it does not continue connection after my wizard goes into standy. Any idea which registry setting I need to change? I have tried a few(and still trying) in the Widcomm directory but no luck so far.
regards,
Eugene
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1, thanks for the iPlay bug report; will check this issue too
2, I'm having the same problem - this is why, in most cases, I need to soft reset before (re)connecting my 590A headphones. However, it's still well worth using the Widcomm BT stack because of the vastly superior sound quality and slightly reduced CPU usage, compared to the MS BT stack.

Just to let you know I am using the Axim's stack BTW. Helm's universal stack is more stable, I feel but I think you noticed that I couldn't get A2DP to play skip free on my wizard using that stack.

That is, to my knowledge, it's not possible to fix the Widcomm memory problems on the Wizard.
Can't really answer the Wizard Widcomm skipping problems as I haven't had any skipping probs on the 590A and, therefore, couldn't really try in practice how skipping, different headphones should be "hacked".

UPDATE (10/31/2007):
HTC has also released a hardware equalizer compatible with most (but NOT all!) Pocket PC Phones
I've started working on the long-awaited Multimedia Bible! It'll kick some serious butts, I promise

the HTC audio manager is about twice as more conservative than core player.
unmatched thrift!

The UPnP Bible

Introduction
What is Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) and why you might want to make use of it? To get a nice overview what it’s all about, spend some time on reading the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) tutorial’s first three pages HERE, HERE and, finally, HERE. These pages are also interlinked so you can just safely follow the “Learn how DLNA works” link at the bottom of the first page. I especially recommend the interactive “What can you do with DLNA products?” section at the bottom of the third page. Try selecting all the possible pairs to see what a particular device pair can be used for - this demo is really instructive. An example screenshot showing what for example the NAS & networked TV pairing can be used for:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Pretty instructive, isn't it? Again, I really recommend playing with the different pairings so that you get a clear picture of what UPnP can really be used for. In addition, please PLEASE do read the above DLNA intro (the three pages) so that you understand what UPnP is about and the terms used in this UPnP Bible. I’ve refrained from reproducing (almost) the same info in here so that I could concentrate on the more important and never-before-published subject: how this all works on the two most widely used mobile platforms: Windows Mobile and Symbian.
You might also want to take a look at the Wiki page (most importantly, the “UPnP AV (Audio and Video) standards” section) but it’s highly technical and, for a non-pro, in no way as comprehensible as the DLNA tutorial. Note that the DLNA tutorial doesn’t explain what “Controllers” are. It’s, as has also been explained in the Wiki (officially referred to by “MediaServer ControlPoint”), is like a remote controller between the source (the “MediaServer”), that is, typically a file store, and the target (the “MediaRenderer”); that is, typically, a TV set, a monitor or a home Hi-Fi.
On both Windows Mobile and Symbian (more precisely, the latest-generation, N-series Nokia handsets) all these three functionalities are supported:
a phone can act as the source (“MediaServer”) of multimedia content (for example, the pictures you’ve taken with the built-in camera; the MP3’s you have on your storage card etc.)
it can also act as the mediator (“MediaServer ControlPoint”) between the server and the renderer. That is, it can select the files on the server you’d like to, say, see on your TV / listen to on your home Hi-Fi etc. It also allows for basic playback control functionality like pausing/ resuming, previous / next etc.
finally, it can also function as the target of the stream: the device that actually plays back the video / audio / images on its own screen / audio unit. That is, it’s also a “MediaRenderer”.
As far as the two operating systems are concerned, all these functionalities are implemented. First, a birds-eye view on what’s available and supported.
For Windows Mobile (WM), currently, there are three apps with UPnP capabilities: Nero Mobile Pro, Conduits’ Pocket Player and Rudeo Play & Control (at the time of writing - December, 2007 - no preview of CorePlayer 1.2 was available. It will also have UPnP support.)
For the newer Nokia N-series Symbian devices (N95 (8 GB ), N81, N82), the OS already has built-in, pretty impressive (no third-party, commercial apps are needed) UPnP support.
[*]: with the N95, only starting with firmware version v20, not with previous OS’es; also see THIS. Note that the manual printed with the original N95 still reflects this (old) state.
[**]: limited presentation capabilities (while it has no problems with the much more important streaming): no library, not even file system folder-separated view
Now, let’s take a look at what functionalities the MediaRenderer-capable applications offer.
I'll later explain what the difference between pre-fetching and streaming is.
Incidentally, the second column ("Accessible for external controllers") is also clearly visible in the following Windows Vista screenshot:
It shows the following UPnP servers / renderers in order: Nero MediaHome (server), N95 (server), (the notebook itself, where the screenshot has been taken), the built-in UPnP server of the Vista on the notebook, the Conduits Pocket Player (PP) renderer (!) on the “wr-x51v” PDA; the same PP on the same PDA as a server; PP as a server on the “wr-univ” and, finally, PP as a renderer on the same “wr-univ”.
1.1 Differences between traditional Remote Media Controllers (RMC’s) and full UPnP applications
Back in February, I’ve already published an extensive Bible on all non-UPnP applications. Now, let’s see what the real difference between a fully-fledged UPnP app and the, back then, reviewed remote controllers is!
First, as you may already have guessed (without even reading my previous Bible), RMC’s can only remotely control media player applications – they don’t offer built-in, local rendering (MediaRenderer) or file serving (server) capabilities. The best, UPnP-capable titles in this respect (currently, as of late December, 2007, Pocket Player 3.51 on Windows Mobile and the built-in UPnP client on the latest Nokia N-series models) offer both of these.
Second, their configuration can be much more complicated than those of UPnP clients, particularly when you need to manually (!) enter the local network address of the server (also containing the media player) you’d like to remotely control. This is true with almost all RMC’s not capable of discovery protocols to automatically discover controllable servers in the LAN. UPnP’s automatic discovery also greatly helps in this respect: you don’t need to do any manual work; just let the controller discover the servers / renderers and you’re all set.
Third, you can only remote control a Windows PC (in cases, other desktop OS’es are also supported) with those “old-fashioned” RMC’s because all the tested applications need server&renderer-side custom software to be installed. This also means it’s impossible to remote control for example Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices (file servers) or plain renderers like a flat TV. With UPnP, all these can be remote controlled.

1.2 Available UPnP-capable software
Now, let’s take a look at what’s available on mobile platforms. Note that as far as Palm OS is concerned, not even Pocket Tunes, by far the best music player support UPnP (and CorePlayer won’t support it either) – you need to go the manual route explained in my RMC Bible for being able to stream stuff from your local UPnP network. There’s a nice thread on this all HERE.
Please, Windows Mobile users, don’t be disgruntled because of including Symbian. Some of the, especially, multimedia / entertainment-centric smartphones like the Nokia N95, N81 and N82 have excellent capabilities well worth incorporating into Windows Mobile handhelds. For example, these devices support UPnP “out of the box”, which is only available (if at all – see for example the complete lack of, say, UPnP printer support in current WinMo apps) with (expensive) third-party applications on WinMo. A direct inter-OS (operating system) comparison like this will certainly help both Microsoft decide to, finally, include UPnP in Windows Mobile (not only on non-WM WinCE 6 devices) and also shows WinMo hardware manufacturers what they should concentrate their forces on – for example, at really (!!!) lowering Wi-Fi power usage when not actively used.
The same also states for Symbian users. I know you’d rather not see Windows Mobile contents in here, but, again, such a comparison is instructive for you too because, then, you’ll know what Nokia should be told in order to improve the facilities of its client. And, as I seriously doubt anyone (except me) would write a thorough feature comparison / buglist of these two operating systems, Symbian developers can make great use of this report.
1.2.1 Windows Mobile
1.2.1.1 Conduits Pocket Player 3.51
Currently (before the release of CorePlayer 1.2 and its UPnP support) this is definitely the best and most versatile UPnP client for Windows Mobile. It has definite advantages over the alternatives: first, as opposed to the two other WM solutions, it can act as a server. Second, as opposed to Nero’s app, it can act as a pure controller (without locally rendering anything), in which it can be pretty handy at just controlling the data flow between your home entertainment devices. After all, if you do have a UPnP-enabled flat TV (with an excellent H.264 decoder), why would you want to watch the same video on the small screen of your smart phone? On the other hand, your phone is one of the best tools to actually remote control the data flow in the network - you, for example, won't need to purchase additional, UPnP-only remote controllers if you already have a UPnP remote control-capable phone in your pocket.
The UPnP interface, accessible under Browse / Network, is pretty easy to master. In addition, moving between the pages (with the left/right D-pad arrows) is very easy too – not so with, say, the much more awkward (and VERY slow!) Nero Mobile Pro, where it's very easy not to be able to click the "Back" arrow at the top of every list.
It’s only at remote controlling that I’ve found it a bit lacking: the pure remote control user interface (UI) it uses isn’t as intuitive as that of Nokia or Rudeo: you need to use a separate, list-based UI. That is, not the native, well-known and familiar playback interface, but a completely different one depicted here:
In this regard, Nokia’s and the Rudeo apps are definitely better. Again, on these, you can use the well-known controls to control the multimedia stream flow between the media server and the renderer as if you played back a local stream as can be seen in the following screenshot:
As can also be seen, Nokia's (and Rudeo's too) not only displays the controls to control the rendering of a multimedia stream, but also displays its metadata, the progress etc. No such features are available with Pocket Player.
1.2.1.1.1 Additional screenshots & usage tips
An example of browsing my (Vista) notebook: the main category list. All these contain the usual categorization: the music list shows the traditional (example of the album view and, inside of it, the list of the individual songs) library view.
The list of videos is also shown; they, however, can’t be played back, not even WMV files (which are, by default, supported by PP with local playback) – only the sound will be heard. If playback starts at all, that is - it doesn’t seem to work on WM6 (only the list is shown, play controls don’t work) ; it does on WM5 as can also be seen in HERE (notice that the movie is being played back). Unfortunately, this also applies to viewing pictures – while their list is correctly displayed, “Play” doesn’t result in their being actually displayed.
PP is also able to use another renderer (screenshot of stepping into the menu); for example, in THIS screenshot, you can see the GUI for remote controlling a device.
1.2.1.1.2 Problems (as of version 3.51)
1. Even Western (äö, for example) accents in the title of the MP3 tags (the one needed to be displayed in the given situation) result in the clients not being able to connect. The Symbian client displays the server’s refusing the connection (“Selected device rejected the operation”):
The Nero Mobile client, when run from another PPC, just crashes and immediately exits when stepping into a view that would contain an accent anywhere. From the same PPC, it “only” refuses to display anything including and after the accent. For example, if you have the album “Hilapiäles” from the artist “Pömpeli”, then, only a single “P” will be displayed as an artist name (the second letter, ö, is already accented) and only “Hilapi” as the album name.
2. When (this is a very rare case but you may still run into it, particularly if you try to remote control a Windows Mobile PDA from, say, a Symbian phone, which defaults to remote rendering) it’s controlled from an external controller and its renderer module is instructed to connect to its MediaServer module, the connection will fail. During this, it just displays a local (192.168.0.1:51524) connection message for about 30 seconds; nothing happens after this, no playback / anything.
3. When operated in direct mode (NOT remote controlled! In the latter case, it has no problems accessing MediaServers!), it can’t connect to other Windows Mobile / Symbian servers (tested with both serving-capable UPnP apps: Pocket Player itself, running on another Pocket PC, and Nokia’s UPnP app). Then, it displays a “Server Error or Access Denied” error message.

1.2.1.2 Rudeo Play & Control 2.9.15
In my RMC Bible, I’ve already discussed the non-UPnP-capable version of this program, Rudeo Control for Windows Media Player. Rudeo Play & Control is entirely different as it’s specifically written for controlling UPnP-compliant servers and renderers – and to play back from the latter.
(playing back a song remotely; also showing the target renderer; note that the song title is only shown at the bottom)
(playing back a song locally, also showing the target renderer)
(server list)
During install time, you can also install a server-side component, which lets for some goodies well-explained in the user guide. It, however, didn’t work with my setup (XP SP2 + WMP 11).
Other screenshots: filelist of the, in the previous screenshot, listed two servers. As can be seen, it correctly lists the categories / files. Quickly playing a title is pretty easy (if you don’t want to fuss with playlists): just tick the given song, tap and hold it and select “Checked – Add and Play” as can be seen in HERE.
It seems it has severe problems with the CPU usage even in pure remote control mode (the same on the Wizard, in pure remote control mode; the red chart is the charted Rudeo executable). The situation is even worse when it locally plays back music (Wizard example screenshot HERE); then, the CPU usage can be so high that the player really quickly chews through the battery. Note that this seems to be a generic problem with all Rudeo products: Rudeo Control for Widows Media Player also had unpredictable, sometimes very high CPU usage (see my previous RMC Bible).
Incidentally, as has already been mentioned, like Nokia’s player and as opposed to Pocket Player and Nero and, it pre-fetches the songs before playing them. This can be a bit time-consuming, largely depending on the speed / optimization of the storage card. Unlike with the Nokia, where you can set where the fetched file should be temporarily stored (either the card or the, at times, much faster built-in storage), you can’t do the same on Rudeo’s controller.
1.2.1.3 Nero Mobile Pro 1.4.0.9
I’ve already reviewed the individual audio file playback and MPEG-4 ASP/AVC playback support of Nero Mobile Pro. Unfortunately, compared to the best (and, at times, even free like TCPMP!) titles, it didn’t really excel at them.
The case is pretty much the same with UPnP. First, it only has pretty basic UPnP support. It has absolutely no MediaServer and (purely remote) MediaController capabilties, unlike all of the alternatives (note that Rudeo can’t act as a MediaServer either; Pocket Player and Nokia can). That is, it can “only” connect to other UPnP MediaServers and play back (locally render) their contents on the PDA itself. That is, you can’t use it at all to, say, remote control the communication between your UPnP-capable flat panel TV and network storage – again, unlike with all the other alternatives.
1.2.2 Symbian (Nokia N-series)
The latest Nokia N-series (that is, multimedia-centric) phones have UPnP support built-in. Before the latest (2007 Autumn / Winter) batch of multimedia Nokia phones, they - in addition to being MediaServers and the ability to send files directly to, say, UPnP printers - were only able to remote control other UPnP devices. That is, they didn’t have local, on-phone rendering (playback) capabilities. Now, with the latest models (N81, N82, N95 8GB ) and firmware upgrades of older models (N95-1 with the v20 firmware), a (pre-fetching) renderer component has also been added.
(main mediaserver list; as can be seen in there, it saw Conduits Pocket Player’s server on my Dell Axim x51v; Orb, Nero Mediahome and the built-in UPnP server in Vista on my notebook called “WR-NOTEBOOK”; the Conduits Pocket Player’s server on my HTC Universal and, finally, the TVersity UPnP server on my notebook.)
A quick tip: by default, when you select a (single) song on an external MediaServer to be played back on the (local) Nokia, when you click on the song, the pop-up window displayed only lists the external renderers.

In order to play back the title on the local Symbian device itself, you must select Play / On device instead:
Note that the other menu item in this submenu, “Via home network”, results in displaying the available renderers on the network – that is, the same dialog as above. Also note that, if you select more than one song to play back with either Mark/Unmark / Mark all viewed or with the traditional multiple selection shortcut on your particular model (for example, on the N95, holding down the pen button while navigating down with the D-pad), you will only be able to use this menu for initiating playback. Simply pressing Action on a title to be played back on another, external renderer won’t work when more than one title are selected.
Note that, in order for the other devices to see your Symbian device (that is, it can act as a MediaServer), you must manually enable “Show phone” in “Visibility in network” in the settings as can be seen in HERE. This needs to be done every time you start Tools / Connectivity / Home media – this setting, unlike with Conduits Pocket Player’s similar setting (Browse / Setting/ Enable sharing), doesn’t stick.
Still speaking of PP, it’s also worth pointing out that, in Pocket Player, sharing your own contents is, by default, disabled; therefore, you may want to click all the three list elements in Browse / Network / Settings so that they become the following:
(the second list item makes Pocket Player controllable from another MediaController. If you don't need it, just don't click it).
Finally, in addition to multimedia playback / remote control, the Symbian UPnP client excels at something the Windows Mobile clients don’t support: handling non-multimedia UPnP devices like wireless UPnP printers. To make use of them, you can just copy any document to them with “Copy to home network”:
1.2.2.1 Problems with the Symbian client
Unlike with all (!) MediaServers (Windows Mobile and desktop alike), it doesn’t support media library or even file system-based file / media separation. That is, while it does have three main categories (Music, Images&Videos, Uploaded) (the latter for direct file transfer – the N95 supports it both as a client and a server – note that few other MediaController clients support this). (The same category screenshot is HERE, taken on the desktop running Cidero, which I’ll elaborate on later.)
Inside these categories, however, ALL the available files are shown without any separation (screenshots: Music; Images&Videos) – neither library-, nor file system-based. Hope the Nokia folks fix this VERY annoying issue some time and at least adds file system-based separation, if not the full Music Player library support.

1.3 Minimizing power usage – with benchmarks
1.3.1 Rendering: Pre-fetching vs. streaming
As has already been explained, a media renderer may opt for pre-fetching a file before / during playback so that it doesn’t have to stream the content all the time from the MediaServer. Two renderers follow this approach: Nokia’s and Rudeo.
Pre-fetching, while it’s certainly has its drawbacks (for example, pre-fetching huge media files may just fail because of the lack of storage space and/or can be lengthy at first), has some definite advantages; most importantly, the Wi-Fi power usage can be minimized – if it automatically powers down itself after a given inactivity time threshold. The following screenshot certainly shows this all:
I’ve played back several songs during the test; the power usage peaks definitely show the boundaries of these songs. (It was slightly before the end of each song that the Wi-Fi unit was activated and the next song was quickly pre-fetched.) As can clearly be seen, the average power usage was 0.57W, which is about only 0.18W more than playing back local MP3’s (see THIS for more info & never before published benchmarks on the latter). Pretty impressive, isn’t it?
Interestingly, keeping the N95 visible (again, it defaults to being invisible) in the Wi-Fi UPnP network (as a server device) was also really battery-friendly – only consuming some 0.11W’s (that is, almost the same as without Wi-Fi).
As far as Rudeo on Windows Mobile is concerned, it also does pre-fetching, which also allows for the Wi-Fi unit’s powering down. However, as the CPU usage of Rudeo is pretty high, the overall power usage will also remain high, particularly with non-battery-friendly CPU’s like the Intel XScale PXA-2XX series (their latest, PXA-3XX series, now, Marvel-branded CPU’s are stated to be better in this respect; I've elaborated on the huge power usage increase with increasing CPU usage when compared to, in this respect, much better architectures like the newer TI OMAP platform for example HERE, in section "1.1.1.1 Battery life considerations" - worth a read!). The following acbTaskMan screenshot (measured on a Dell Axim x51v with minimal backlight and moderate sound volume) clearly shows this:
This chart shows an about 2-3-minute-long initial pre-fetch session, when all the three demo songs were pre-fetched for playback on the local PPC (about 450 mA current, with 600 mA peaks). After the fetching has completed, the player switched to regular playback and the Wi-Fi unit was powered down to idle state, but the CPU usage remained very high (20% at 624 MHz, with much higher peaks) – hence the overall ~280 mA current.
It can clearly be stated that, battery usage-wise, prefetching is WAY better than streaming solutions. The following screenshot shows Nero Mobile Pro (in minimized state – let’s not forget that its graphics takes a LOT of CPU cycles, resulting in even worse figures) streaming (MP3’s from Orb) on the Dell Axim x51v (run without a charger). As can clearly be seen, the average Amperage was around 450 mA’s, while the CPU usage at around 60% - that is, not much higher than with Rudeo (let alone the N95, which has by far the best power management). Yes, prefetching surely has definite advantages.

The situation is similarly bad with Pocket Player, which also uses streaming:
As can clearly be seen, the Amperage has always been around 380 mA (with the lowest backlight level and default Wi-Fi sensitivity setting) – which is still about 100 mA’s more than with Rundo and its Wi-Fi power saving by pre-fetching contents. The somewhat lower CPU usage of Pocket Player doesn’t really help in this respect.
Note that the previous screenshot has been made on the 520 MHz HTC Universal because, on the x51v, for some reason, PP has produced far worse results, where the CPU usage is way more as can also be seen in HERE. Frankly, I don’t know what this is caused by.
Note that both Nokia’s engineers and Rudeo’s developers allow for continuous playback: Nokia pre-fetches the next song while still playing the last one and Rudeo fetches all the songs (and writes to the storage card) while playing the first (few) song(s). This results in no pauses between songs (if there are more than one of them) – only the starting of the playback of the first song will be delayed.
1.3.2 Remote controlling
The situation with pure remote controlling is pretty much the same as with above. The power saving feature of the Nokia kicks in quite fast and results in about 0.15-0.17W generic power usage (that is, about 0.07 Watts more than without Wi-Fi remote control activated). Windows Mobile-based devices, in this mode, fare far better than in the previous case as can clearly be seen in the following screenshot:
As can clearly be seen, the average current is 130-150 mA (just slightly more than without doing anything and a LOT less than the ~400 mA average of active Wi-Fi streaming), which clearly shows the Wi-Fi unit is idling and the CPU usage, which is very low, doesn’t contribute much to the overall power usage.
1.3.2.1 Try disconnecting / powering down your handset when not actively remote controlling!
Finally, a quick tip. As has also been explained in the RMC Bible, you can safely disconnect / power down your handset after initiating a (fully) remote playback – that is, between, for example, a NAS and a flat TV. Then, when you need remote control again, you just power on your device, let the Wi-Fi unit reconnect and you'll almost promptly be able to regain remote control on both the server and the renderer. This is pretty much the same as with traditional, non-UPnP RMC applications and, again, is thoroughly explained in the RMC Bible.
1.4 Networking
If you plan to use your handset in a “real” home environment (to, for example, control the multimedia data flow between a flat TV and a Network Attached Storage), you’ll end up having to use Wi-Fi.
You may (depending on whether your clients are Bluetooth PAN – see below – capable) also want to use Wi-Fi if you “only” have computers on your network. Then, you’ll have somewhat more choices: you can use both infrastructure and peer-to-peer (p2p) mode between the devices. The latter doesn’t require an access point and is supported by both Windows Mobile and Symbian.
However, if you strive for better battery life, you can also use Bluetooth (BT) Personal Area Network (PAN) if and only if all your UPnP components support it. Unfortunately, there’s no widespread support for BT PAN. Symbian devices don’t support it at all; neither do Windows Mobile ones with the MS BT stack in client mode (and, unrestricted, in server mode only with an additional hack). That is, it’s only with Windows Mobile devices with the (in cases, “hacked”, post-installed) Widcomm (Broadcom) BT stack that you can use this form of very battery-friendly form of multimedia sharing / control.
Please also see the related section in the old RMC Bible for more info on all these networking-related questions. Also, let me know if you don’t know how to set up these kinds of networks - but, of course, before asking, first, read the linked article (and all the backlinked ones - I've publsihed several, extensive tutorials on creating for example peer-to-peer Wi-Fi networks).
2. Desktop UPnP apps
Should you want to play with desktop (Windows, Linux, Mac etc.) servers / controllers / renderers, you’ll want to check out the following section. Note that you will in no way need these applications for your mobile UPnP clients to operate in an already-deployed UPnP home network; I’ve only presented it to you so that you know where to look for, say, a pure, but decent and free (!) controller running on any desktop or server OS (for that, I recommend Cidero’s app). These can help a lot with quickly seeing whether a given server is accessible / visible on the network, what content it offers etc.
Another great use for these apps (in this case, Nero MediaHome) is seeing what’s happening in the UPnP network, how many users / clients have connected to your server from which local IP’s. These apps greatly help in tracking down possible networking problems. For this kind of problem fixing, I recommend Nero MediaHome the most.
In the next three subsections, I elaborate on the three main components of the UPnP architecture: (Media)Server, (Media)Controller and (Media)Renderer. In general, there’re no software products implementing all these three functionalities (unlike, say, Conduits Pocket Player on Windows Mobile). There’s On2Share Pro - UPnP AV Suite that promises to implement all of this (it has a 14-day trial and is pretty cheap: only 19.95 euros), but I’ve never managed to make it really work – neither under Windows XP nor under Vista. (I’ve tried to do this on two different desktop PC’s, using two different networking topologies – both peer-to-peer Wi-Fi and using a standard access point. A no-go. While it did list the other UPnP-capable, visible (either a server (upper listbox) or a renderer (lower listbox)) participants:
(another screenshot of the lower part of the server list)
it wasn’t able to communicate with them in any way. (Note that the screenshot has been taken under Vista, using large fonts (a must on a 15" UXGA screen); this is why the lower left buttons are messed up; on XP, with normal fonts, it's correctly rendered. Also note that it displays 127.0.0.1 as the local IP, that is, localhost. This shows the computer had no active Internet connection when the app was started (I've, later, set up an Internet-less p2p Wi-Fi connection manually). Don’t let this make you think I’ve messed up the setup – in other tests, I’ve restarted it so that it received a real LAN IP address. Then, it didn’t work either.)
2.1 (Pure) Servers (MediaServers)
2.1.1 TVersity
Along with Sling (which I haven’t been able to test because it’s still not available in Europe, except for the U.K.) and Orb, TVersity is the most popular remote (WAN; that is, non-local (LAN) UPnP) streaming server, allowing for a lot of niceties; for example, dynamic radio / media transcoding. If you already know this app (because, for example, you’ve used its streaming capabilities over remote mobile networks), you’ll certainly welcome its UPnP capabilities.
(the share config screen; the second tab, with the list of the contents on the server, looks like this – as can clearly be seen, it’s pretty complicated to navigate between the server multimedia contents as there’s no scrollbar. A screenshot of browsing TVersity on a Symbian device is HERE)
TVersity, of course, has its own discussion forum; of it, I recommend THIS thread.

2.1.2 Orb
This is probably the most widely known, free (!!!) home streaming server also compatible with Windows Mobile. It also supports UPnP. It comes with UPnP enabled by default:
Unfortunately, it doesn’t have as nice debug / client configuration capabilities as Nero MobileHome either. But, at least, it’s free and, when it comes to transcoding, definitely more capable than the latter. All in all, highly recommended.
2.1.3 Nero MobileHome
It’s part of the, if you’re into AVC (H.264 / MPEG-4 Part 10) video encoding, pretty much recommended Nero 8 Ultra Edition.
Compared to the first two servers listed above, it has some goodies. For example, with the two servers, it’s impossible to see what clients have been connected, what they’re listening to / watching, what client they use etc. For example, HERE is a list of the renderers found.
The following screenshot:
shows a case in where it’s even more useful: it shows what clients have connected, what they’re streaming / downloading, what they really are etc. In the shot, the first client is Conduits Pocket Player running on my x51v and streaming “02 Track 2.wma” (at 35%); the second is Nero Mobile Pro running on another Pocket PC in the network and streaming “06 Track 6.wma” (at 14%). Also, it lets you define what network interface to use for streaming.
Otherwise, it has pretty much the same capabilities as the former two servers:
- manual addition of shared media directories (note that it also supports automatic refreshing via Nero Scout)
- streams TV
- supports a remote UI
- supports transcoding
(Note that in my forthcoming Multimedia Bible I will continue elaborating on these three products: they have excellent, remote (non-UPnP), smart phone-compliant transcoding and TV/radio streaming capabilities well worth exploiting.)
2.1.4 Other servers
MediaTomb: free, open source, non-Windows
TwonkyVision Media Server (the forum is worth checking out for generic UPnP-related discussions too)
DLink Media Server
Philips Media Manager
JRiver Media Center
Note that Windows Media Connect (still recommended on the Rudeo page) 2.0 is no longer available because the same functionality is built into Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP or Windows Vista
2.2 (Pure) controllers (MediaControllers)
Cidero - Java-language, multiplatform controller. Don’t be afraid of it being written in Java – it’s very easy to install: just download the installer EXE, run it and you’re set.
It’s a very nice and free app. As it has no built-in renderer, you must use an external one to play back multimedia content.
2.3 (Pure) Renderers
Probably the most important is the Un*x-based GMediaRender; unfortunately, it has no desktop Windows version.
Hardware-wise, Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) is generally considered one of the best media clients / AV (for example MP4 HD) renderers.

Whoa, AMAZING!
thank you!
this is very much to digest all at once, but i'll get into it and start trying it for myself

UPDATE (12/23/2007): There’s a nice quick summary of how a mobile device can be used for in a home environment HERE, in the first post of the thread. It’s worth a read if you still don't really understand what UPnP can be used for in everyday life. (Note that it discusses the Nokia N95 in this scenario. Of course, any other, UPnP- & remote control-capable mobile device can be utilized in exactly the same way. Also note that it still discusses the old, pre-v20 firmware of the Nokia N95. As has also been mentioned in the (currently) last post of the thread, the N95 has received real renderer capabilities in the meantime.)

Omnia
The Samsung Omnia now comes with uPnP control point software.

yannick said:
The Samsung Omnia now comes with uPnP control point software.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
cool, thanks, in a subsequent update, I'll post this piece of info.

By wikipedia, a list of hardware and software UPNP media server/player/renderer/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPnP_AV_MediaServers
It hasn't a seccion for windows mobile, anyone for add our seccion for PDA?

great write up!

Great sound enhancer SRS WOW HD released for all Windows Mobile devices!

Anyone having had a O2 XDA Flame have already seen SRS WOW HD, which helps at both widening the stereo (a particularly useful technology on handsets with stereo speakers like the Flame, the HTC Wizard or the HTC Universal) and enhancing / modifying the sound in other ways as well. For example, it adds the, for lon-time audiophiles / Hi-Fi geeks, the well-known loudness-based bass control.
One of the reasons I love the Nokia N95 are the built-in, loud speakers with extremely good frequency response. In the N95, the built-in Music Player has a dedicated stereo widening mode, which can be en/disabled from inside the player:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Its results, when used together with the built-in stereo speakers, are simply phenomenal. It really widens their stereo, making listening to music via the built-in speakers a true pleasure (also taking the very good quality speakers into account, unmatched by any Windows Mobile device so far). This has been one of the main strengths of the N95.
Up until now, there wasn’t a generic, non-OEM, similar solution for Windows Mobile-based devices, except for the built-in applet in the already-mentioned O2 XDA Flame. The multimedia players available haven’t really supported stereo widening either, the only exception being Conduits’ excellent Pocket Player, which does support stereo widening at External Pitch/Echo/Stereo Wide DSP (listed as “DSP Stereo Example”). While it lets for the settable widening of the stereo:
it’s in no way as good as on the N95. It certainly makes the stereo a bit wider. No effect at all on mono sounds (as opposed to Nokia’s widening). (Note that, in Pocket Player, there’s another, similar DPS, but it doesn’t do any widening, just makes the center far quieter than the two sides. It’s, strangely, a bit more useful than the first DSP with the built-in speaker.)
Now, the plug-in that has only been available for the Flame has been released for the entire public. It can be installed on any WM5+ Pocket PC and Pocket PC Phone Edition. I’ve tested it with the following Pocket PC (phones):
Dell Axim x51v (A12 official ROM)
HP iPAQ hx4700 (WM5 AKU3.5.2 ROM)
HTC Universal (Midget’s WM6 AKU0.2.0 ROM)
HTC Wizard (mfrazzz’s XDA Mobile 6 Release 3)
and it worked just great on them.
Note that it isn’t compatible with MS Smartphones (WM6 Standard) and Pocket PC’s with operating systems prior to WM5.
(screenshot of the 3D parameter setter tab)
(screenshot of the Truebass tab – it’s here that you can set the bass level)
Additional screenshots:
it’s HERE that you can switch between headphones and internal speaker output. The two have entirely different stereo widening characteristics: while headphones, in general, don’t benefit much from stereo widening, especially built-in stereo speakers benefit a lot from them.
Unfortunately, the switching isn’t automatic – that is, the controller doesn’t notice when you switch back to either wired or A2DP headphones from using the built-in stereo speakers and vice versa.
The lack of the automatic switching is indeed pretty annoying: the contraphase effects are, in general, are pretty bad when played back in headphones and it’s only with fully mono signals that they don’t have any bad effect on.
This is also a problem with the Nokia N95, even as of firmware v20, by the way. In there, enabled stereo widening has a definitely nice effect if and only if you play back mono contents. Then, it prettily widens it so that it is no longer in the center of your head, but somewhere in there. Stereo sources, of course, are pretty much messed up when played back via headphones.
HERE and HERE, you can see two (of the several) pre-defined profiles. Of course, you can also play with the sliders yourself.
Resource usage
Based on my past articles (see for example THIS), you may already know that
software-based equalizers can require a lot of additional CPU time and, consequently, radically decrease the battery life on older and, in this respect, inferior platforms (most importantly, Windows Mobile devices based on the Intel Xscale PXA-2xx CPU series - see THIS for more info on how they compare to other CPU's; most importantly, Samsungs and TI OMAP's)
hardware equalizers (see for example THIS) don’t result in a decreased battery life (not even on the PXA-2xx CPU’s) but aren’t compatible with several models and can only be used with wired (!) headphones. Finally, unless the player plays special attention to NOT closing the channel between songs, you will end up having to re-enable some of them manually (!) after a song switching. (See the "Hardware equalizers (HTC Equalizer) keep their settings when switching songs? Tested on HTC Universal" row in the chart of THIS article for more info if interested in which players do this.)
Fortunately, this app, while it has pretty nice equalizer capabilities, doesn’t really cause any really bad CPU usage increase. I’ve measured the following results (these figures were largely independent of the active profile / output used):
HTC Universal (520 MHz): CorePlayer: +5%; WMP: ~7-8%
Dell Axim x51v (forced down to 208 MHz) CorePlayer: +5%; WMP: +13%
HP iPAQ hx4700 (624 MHz): WMP: +5%
HTC Wizard (195 MHz TI): WMP: +14%
As can clearly be seen, the music player will have a somewhat increased CPU usage but it’s in no way as drastic as with some players out there. As a rule of thumb, the already CPU- and battery-friendly players like CorePlayer fare definitely better than the built-in WMP.
Getting, installing
If you have a XDA-Devs forum account, you can download the CAB file right from the related thread (which is, BTW, worth reading!). If you don’t have an account and won’t bother to register one, download it from my mirror. Transfer it to your handset, tap the CAB file and soft reset the device. After rebooting, go to Start / Settings / System / WOW HD Settings and you’re set.
Using, tips
If you have stereo headphones, make sure you only use it in the Headphones mode (see the upper drop-down menu; it’s activated in THIS screenshot). Otherwise, the sound quality will be plain awful. Again, there’s no sound source type it can enhance when it’s in speaker enhancement mode and you listen to it via headphones, unlike with the Nokia N95, where strictly mono sources become definitely more pleasing to listen to (again, via headphones) with widening enabled.
If you have a handset with only one (mono) speaker (the vast majority of current Windows Mobile handsets belong to this category, excluding for example the HTC Universal, Wizard and the O2 XDA Flame), there isn’t much point in using it at all.
If you have external speakers, you may want to give it a try. Note that if they aren’t close to each other, you may want to refrain from using the loudspeaker mode – switch to either the headphones mode (if you need for example the support for extra bass) or deactivate it entirely.
Evaluation on the HTC Wizard / Universal, using the built-in stereo speakers – compared to…
… the Nokia N95: there isn’t much competition: the Nokia N95 has still better stereo, is much louder (when it needs to be) and has much better frequency response.
… Conduits Pocket Player: on both the test devices, WOW HD delivered better (wider) stereo than Conduits Pocket Player, even with the latter set to 100% stereo widening. You, however, will want to make sure you, in some way, decrease the treble level. With the thin, bass-less speakers of both the Wizard and the Universal, the treble-rich sound of WOW HD will quickly become really tiring.
the default mode: the Wizard has almost no stereo sound – only when you have a (not very close; for example, a wall) surface reflecting the sound back to your ears. WOW HD definitely helps this – again, better than Conduits Pocket Player. The difference between the default (non-WOW HD’ed) and the widened mode isn’t that articulated with the Universal, which, particularly if you keep it pretty close to your face, was already able to generate some kind of a stereo field.
(Note that, naturally, in this test, I’ve only tested handsets that do have stereo speakers as it’s mostly on them that, unless you have headphones, you’ll want to use this tool.)

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=1772622&postcount=29 <-- maybe this post is interesting for you.

LordDeath said:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=1772622&postcount=29 <-- maybe this post is interesting for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! BTW, hacks / software like this should also be announced in the Dev & Hacking forum as well - I rarely visit the Prophet forums and, therefore, don't notice local development there.

UPDATE (01/07/2008): as my original review mostly concentrated on stereo widening with handsets with stereo speakers, I need to re-emphasize that this app isn’t only useful for stereo widening or adding (comparatively) CPU-friendly loudness+megabass support. It can also be used to enhance the sound (make it more characteristic), which works even on the built-in mono speakers. See the comments for example in THIS and THIS threads.

i have tested this on a spm m3100 with wm6 rom and i noticed that it does change automaticly from internal(speakers) to headphones and vice versa...

at10ti0n said:
i have tested this on a spm m3100 with wm6 rom and i noticed that it does change automaticly from internal(speakers) to headphones and vice versa...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the update; I'll post this info in the next update .

Menneisyys, did you try it over BT?
The instructions on the other thread aren't very clear:
Alexx~ said:
That worked through BT headset it is necessary to copy all parameters from [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Drivers\BuiltIn\Wave Dev] in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Drivers\BuiltIn\BtA2dpSnd
Except for value of parameter "OldDriver", he should be such, as was "DLL"
For example:
Before
"DLL" = "bta2dp.dll"
After
"DLL" = "WOWHD_ARM_WCE_PPC2005_Driver.dll"
"OldDriver" = "bta2dp.dll"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not giving Alexx~ grief, quite the opposite, much appreciated... but if you have anything to add it would be appreciated.
-Richard

rpodos said:
Menneisyys, did you try it over BT?
The instructions on the other thread aren't very clear:
Not giving Alexx~ grief, quite the opposite, much appreciated... but if you have anything to add it would be appreciated.
-Richard
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope; will give it a try.

rpodos said:
Menneisyys, did you try it over BT?
The instructions on the other thread aren't very clear:
Not giving Alexx~ grief, quite the opposite, much appreciated... but if you have anything to add it would be appreciated.
-Richard
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I concur with this statement. It would be good to know how well and consistently it works with A2DP.

For those with 240*240 screens and cannot see all of the WOW HD gui settings, the registry values are stored in:
HKLM\Software\WOWXT\WaveDev
Just in case it was not obvious straight off...

I´am using the MDA Compact III (its the same as the HTC P3300 or Artemis, branded by T-Mobile Germany) and I installed SRS WOW. It works fine with MP3-Files but it does not work together with the integrated FM-Radio.
Is there any posibility to "arrange" the registry to make SRS WOW working with the radio?
Thanks for answers.
roadrunner159

Does anyone know if this has any (positive or negative) effect on the A2DP skipping issue experienced for example on the Hermes?

roadrunner159 said:
I´am using the MDA Compact III (its the same as the HTC P3300 or Artemis, branded by T-Mobile Germany) and I installed SRS WOW. It works fine with MP3-Files but it does not work together with the integrated FM-Radio.
Is there any posibility to "arrange" the registry to make SRS WOW working with the radio?
Thanks for answers.
roadrunner159
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Probably not. The sound from the FM-radio goes straight from the receiver to the speakers/headset without entering the digital part of the device. Meaning that no signal processing algorithms can be applied as these all take part before the signal goes analog.

UPDATE (02/27/2008): see THIS thread on making it work on the MS Smartphone platform.

SRS, tytn ll, bluetooth and phone
I've been playing around with this, and when I've had it working over bt to my Jabra Bt3030 it sounds great, however, it kills my ability to make phone calls - phone works but I can't hear anything, through the headset or the handset.
Anyone had this working?
Cheers, A.

SRS WOW HD v. XT?
Menneisyys said:
Fortunately, this app, while it has pretty nice equalizer capabilities, doesn’t really cause any really bad CPU usage increase. I’ve measured the following results (these figures were largely independent of the active profile / output used):
HTC Universal (520 MHz): CorePlayer: +5%; WMP: ~7-8%
Dell Axim x51v (forced down to 208 MHz) CorePlayer: +5%; WMP: +13%
HP iPAQ hx4700 (624 MHz): WMP: +5%
HTC Wizard (195 MHz TI): WMP: +14%
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello. I'd be interested to see a comparison of its CPU utlization (v. WOW HD) to the ealier SRS WOW XT for Mobiles? Are Motorola e.g. well-founded to continue XT in their MotoQ handsets?
WOW HD was towards PMP or high-end Windows Mobile devices in 2006/07, whilst XT for Mobiles included "special capability for mobile phones with ultra-wide stereo imaging and optimized single speaker playback" optimized for "low-MIPS, low-memory" plus "TI's OMAP processors have been a key platform".
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=356589 (binary for WOW XT for Mobiles)

Does this work on Atom black, WM5? Not the Atom Exec, the model before the Exec. The plain Atom Black.

wm2003 dont working

I get driver issue errors. Is there a reason for that. I have a samsung and a htc wing.

UPDATE (02/27/2008): WMExperts frontpage (http://www.wmexperts.com/improve-your-wm-sound-srs-wow-plugin ); definitely worth checking out.

At last: resume support for Windows Media Player!!

The built-in Windows Media Player has always suffered from a major flaw: it didn’t support resuming the song from the last position after restarting the player. XDA-Devs forum member Wolfman-XP (the same guy that has also developed AVRCP support for GSPlayer) has fixed this: he has released a plug-in that remembers the last position where you press(ed) the Pause button. (Note that you MUST press Pause; as opposed to players natively supporting resume, this is a restriction – but not that a big one.)
Compatibility
I’ve tested it on the following devices:
- HTC Wizard with AMP’s WM6.1 ROM and custom WMP skin
- HTC Universal with WM6.1 Tomal’s ROM version 7.7
- HTC Vox / s710 MS Smartphone with the factory WM6.0 ROM (this January)
- HTC Oxygen / s310 MS Smartphone with the factory WM5 AKU3 ROM
- Dell Axim x51v standalone (no-phone) PDA with WM6.1
- HP iPAQ 210 standalone (no-phone) PDA with factory WM6.0
Of these devices, it was only on the HP iPAQ 210 that it didn’t work at all; all the others did, even the WM5-based models and the non-phone x51v.
Installing, using
Just download the hack HERE, in the first post, install it and off you go. Remember pressing Pause at the position you want it to remember.
After restarting WMP, it’ll take you to the Library (and not the Now playing) screen. To quickly return to the latter, on touchscreen-enabled PPC’s, click the Back arrow in the upper right corner; on MS Smartphones, just press the Back hardware button. (Alternatively, you can go to Now Playing / Play.)
Restrictions
In addition to not being compatible with the HP iPAQ 210 (and, possibly, some other devices), it isn’t able to correctly re-position in AAC files (I’ve tested both standard and HE-AACv2 files). WMA’s and MP3’s, on the other hand, work just great.
Note that...
I’ll publish a LOT of multimedia-related articles in the near future – stay tuned!

Opps! wrong place...

nice... Wolfman-XP you are the man
but Menneisyys what do you think how many people do use wmplayer...because of his pretty dumb,not flexible,and not natural interface,or the usage
tcpmp (called the core player these days) really put the standards high (supported files and intelligent interface without too much crapping around)
pocketmusic is also great...but wmplayer seems to be out of date and overcame

farukb said:
nice... Wolfman-XP you are the man
but Menneisyys what do you think how many people do use wmplayer...because of his pretty dumb,not flexible,and not natural interface,or the usage
tcpmp (called the core player these days) really put the standards high (supported files and intelligent interface without too much crapping around)
pocketmusic is also great...but wmplayer seems to be out of date and overcame
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With this hack, it became pretty much usable. Of course, it sitll has major problems.

Menneisyys said:
With this hack, it became pretty much usable. Of course, it sitll has major problems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah you are right and i really really appreciate people's work around here
but it's MS it can't be that good anyway,untill there are about10-15 hacks which our good people developed and not MS
so we have a WMplayer mutation...a player that evolved from wmp ...and in the end after many hacks it will be a whole new player on a totally different base and with different features
i can't be that reckless (because my programming level is average) and ask if it would be better to make a new one instead of developing wmp
but thanks guys people don't forget good stuff and good guys

farukb said:
yeah you are right and i really really appreciate people's work around here
but it's MS it can't be that good anyway,untill there are about10-15 hacks which our good people developed and not MS
so we have a WMplayer mutation...a player that evolved from wmp ...and in the end after many hacks it will be a whole new player on a totally different base and with different features
i can't be that reckless (because my programming level is average) and ask if it would be better to make a new one instead of developing wmp
but thanks guys people don't forget good stuff and good guys
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is worth fixing what already exists and supports video as well as audio. It may not be the most intuitive design (simplicity is better) but it is what comes with windows and works with most codecs. mainly important for familiarity, and audio video capabilities.

compatability with IPAQ 210 series
I just wanted to say that I have an IPAQ 214 and the resume plugin works OK.
It wasnt a surprise when I read it wouldnt work- loads of software seems to be unable to cope with HPs install of WM6 - but I am happy to say this isnt one of them (at least for me ;-) )

Does the plugin also work on a htc diamond??
thanx...

Kaiser here, WM 6.1
While all the options work fine, I was curious to see if it worked with shuffle switched on. While you keep your playlist, you lose the last spot on launch and you get a re-shuffle. I can understand why. Any chances of getting an option to disable Shuffle on launch? When listening to a two hour long set losing my position can be a little annoying.
Despite this, very good plugin! I was looking for a way to get around the Camera closing Windows Media Player when it opened. While this doesn't fix that, it solves the missing playlists for when it does! Sweet work.

Was wondering if this will work with WMP 12, if so could someone please help this rookie as how to get this loaded into WMP. Thanks in advance....scotty

Is there any new audiobook software then???????????

scotty47 said:
Is there any new audiobook software then???????????
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Damd good question.