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REVIEW: Two new media players: WinVibe and LGC Jukebox

In several of my articles (for example, ROUNDUP: Bluetooth remote control (AVRCP) compatible media players), I’ve reviewed several Pocket PC-based audio players. Now, I elaborate on two (with the second, brand) new Pocket PC players, WinVibe and LGC Jukebox.
WinVibe
This free, Korean player is pretty capable – just look at the feature list at the WinVibe homepage (BabelFish translation here).
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It supports Surround/Bassboost/Reverb/Echo effects, playback speed change (see the similar capability of VITO Sound Explorer), Support Showing lyrics when playing music (both ID3 Tag lyrics and LRC / TXT file), button reassignment (unlike LGC Jukebox), HTTP streaming playback (MP3/Ogg Vorbis) and SHOUTcast streaming playback (MP3/Ogg Vorbis). Pretty imporessive!
Unfortunately, it doesn’t support AVRCP (Bluetooth remote control).
Availability, compatibility
It’s available for download here (QVGA) and here (VGA) and, as has already been pointed out, is a free download. I haven’t had any problems on any of my WM2003+ devices. (HTC Wizard, Universal, PL720, WM5-upgraded hx4700, x51v.)
The default skin is Portrait-only; it automatically switches to Portrait when started in landscape.
CPU usage
In the related, recommended AximSite thread, many have complained about the CPU usage. With my standard test 112 kbps MP3 file (Värttinä: Oi dai) and with the default QVGA / VGA skins, I haven’t measured problematic CPU usage at all. It only consumes about 12-13% CPU on my x51v; with maximal reverb, about 14-15. With iPlay, the corresponding figures are 10-12 and 16%, respectively, with Pocket Player, 14-16% (about 1% less with no visualizations) and, finally, with WMP, 11.6-14%.
The case is similar on the overclocked (to 240 MHz) HTC Wizard; on it, the CPU usage is 27% (with reverb/echo at default: 34%; reverb at max: 30%). This is slightly lower than the, by default, 30-31% CPU usage of WMP.
All in all, unless you use custom skins (with visualization), you won’t have CPU usage problems – on the contrary, it’s slightly better than WMP.
Sound effects; their quality
It also supports echo and reverb.
The latter is, unfortunately, REALLY inferior to that of 40 iPlay, the best player in this respect (screenshot of enabling reverb is here). (Note that of iPlay, I could only test the October 2006 version of the player, due to the, to put it mildly, funny “protection” banning out most of the world and also discussed in this AximSite thread. This means I don’t know if the developer has come out a brand new version in the meantime.).
I’ve also compared the reverb / echo effect to the Conduits Pocket Player 3.01 Echo Effect DSP. I’ve found the latter much more unnatural-sounding.
This also means the reverb quality is around that of other reverb-capable Pocket PC media players (for example, Conduits’ Pocket Player).
LGC Jukebox 2.10
The developer of this title, Lonely Cat Games is well established in the Symbian world, unlike on the Pocket PC, where, so far, their only product is the (not-really-recommended) ProfiMail (see the Mailer Bible for more info).
The Pocket PC conversion of their well-known Symbian audio player LGC Jukebox is a brand new release; it’s so new the official homepage of the title doesn’t even show it; it must be downloaded from third-party sites like this. Note that the trial version will only work for 120 minutes.
Compatibility
I haven’t had any problems on any of my WM2003+ devices. (HTC Wizard, Universal, PL720, WM5-upgraded hx4700, x51v).
It’s Landscape-compatible (even left-hand one), unlike WinVibes.
Capabilities
While it supports radio streaming (and has a radio station manager) and offers quick positioning inside a track (as with WinVibe but unlike iPlay – he latter only has buttons for quick forwarding/rewinding), playback-wise, it pretty much lacks: it’s only capable of playing back MP3 and OGG files. No WMA, no Flac, no AAC.
Also, it has absolutely no DSP’s and pretty little visualization; all it offers is equalizer, album art display / download and lyrics display / download (more on this later) support. It doesn’t even let for reassigning hardware buttons (here’s the settings menu), which is a BIG minus – even the most basic players (including WinVibes and, of course, the built-in WMP) allow for this! Needless to say, as with WinVibe, it doesn’t support AVRCP either.
Lyrics support
One of the (not many) strengths of this application is lyrics display and download. Some examples: see this on online searching, this and this on the downloaded lyrics. As can be seen, this is pretty useful at quickly finding lyrics.
It’s also capable of auto scrolling the lyrics; or course, as it’s not Karaoke, it’ll only make guesses on what the current position in the song is. That is, in most cases, auto scroll will be useless.
CPU usage
It’s pretty good: definitely lower than that of WMP and most other players; on the reference x51v: 9.0-9.8%; with an activated equalizer (tested most of them), ~12.5-13.2%. The results were pretty similar on the HTC Wizard (27%, while WMP consumed about ~30-31%).
Verdict
Unfortunately, with WinVibes, you get what you pay for and the situation is even worse with the, in my opinion, pretty basic LGC Jukebox. I’m still waiting for a, battery consumption, AVRCP- and reverb-wise, iPlay-killer title.

UPDATE (02/12/2007): I’ve thoroughly tested the (offline) lyrics, MP3 tag and album art support of the two players.
WinVibe (as of the latest, 4.9.5 version) has turned out
not to support files with .lrc at all (you can, however, (mass-)rename these files to TXT files; then, all will work
to support lyrics .txt files flawlessly
its MP3 lyrics tag support is flawed as can be seen in here – the starting three “Kuin oisin omilla mailla / Oman pellon pientarilla, / Oi” rows are completely missing from the original lyrics. This means it may not display the start of other embedded lyrics either.
Unfortunately, it has absolutely no support for album art or MP3 tags at all.
LGC Jukebox, on the other hand, only supports .LRC files, not embedded lyrics or .TXT files. (The latter, again, can be very easily converted into .LRC files with a simple (mass) file rename.) I should also point out that, while it doesn’t support directory-level album art, it does show embedded thumbnails as can be seen in here. Unfortunately, it doesn’t display MP3 tags at all.

Menneisyys said:
UPDATE (02/12/2007): I’ve thoroughly tested the (offline) lyrics, MP3 tag and album art support of the two players.
WinVibe (as of the latest, 4.9.5 version) has turned out
not to support files with .lrc at all (you can, however, (mass-)rename these files to TXT files; then, all will work
to support lyrics .txt files flawlessly
its MP3 lyrics tag support is flawed as can be seen in here – the starting three “Kuin oisin omilla mailla / Oman pellon pientarilla, / Oi” rows are completely missing from the original lyrics. This means it may not display the start of other embedded lyrics either.
Unfortunately, it has absolutely no support for album art or MP3 tags at all.
LGC Jukebox, on the other hand, only supports .LRC files, not embedded lyrics or .TXT files. (The latter, again, can be very easily converted into .LRC files with a simple (mass) file rename.) I should also point out that, while it doesn’t support directory-level album art, it does show embedded thumbnails as can be seen in here. Unfortunately, it doesn’t display MP3 tags at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hallo,
please can you help me. I use Winvibe, if i click on show lyrics i see text of this song. But this text is not showed during the playing.
What do i do wrong?
File with the text has the same name as song and the end of name of file is .txt. it is in the same directory.
Thank for your answer and best regards
Petr

just try 40iplay...

brewde said:
Hallo,
please can you help me. I use Winvibe, if i click on show lyrics i see text of this song. But this text is not showed during the playing.
What do i do wrong?
File with the text has the same name as song and the end of name of file is .txt. it is in the same directory.
Thank for your answer and best regards
Petr
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
See http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=414279

nothin said:
just try 40iplay...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
...inaccessible for the majority of the world....

Audacity releases FREE (!) Audacity Personal DVR (Digital Voice Recorder) for the PPC

There are several sound recorder applications for the Pocket PC (please see the Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible for more info.) Now, the previously Palm OS-only Audacity Personal DVR (Digital Voice Recorder) has also been ported to the Pocket PC.
The title is available for all WM2003+ operating systems and is accessible here.
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In this review, I “only” provide a list of pros and cons and compare the title to other PPC sound recorders.
Pros
Filename may contain full date / time (screenshot 1 2 3. Very few other PPC recorders are capable of the same (see the “Additional recording features: Auto recording numbering?” test in the Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible and my Audio Memory System by Personal Memory Systems review). Currently, as far as non-MP3-recording (but either Speex or Ogg) is concerned, the best Resco is able to include both the date and time in filenames but it’s not so configurable as Audacity Personal DVR.
It can pause/resume (not possible with all recorders; see the “Recording pause/resume?” test in the Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible) and even append to recordings (even rarer; see the “Append new recording to file?” test in the Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible)
Alarms can be defined and added with your own recordings (as opposed to the built-in notification / alarm mechanism in Windows Mobile)
Buttons are freely redefinable for all the four types of dialogs / recording states. See here and here (button shortcuts on the Home dialog), here (Idle state), here (Record state) and here (Playback state). Note, however, that the hardware button support is certainly lacking; also see the Cons section on this.
You can start recording with a looooong-press of any (and the same) hardware button (after assigning Audacity to a button first in Settings / Buttons and assigning the same button to the Record functionality in the Home and the Idle dialogs / states and to either Stop or Pause/Resume for the Record and Playback states. (Remember, however, to disable the tutorial at startup by checking in the related checkbox!) Most alternative Pocket PC sound recorders require, in general, TWO button presses to achieve the same (see the “Buttons: One-button recording? Does it need to show the app window?” test in the Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible.
Free (currently)
Desktop-side file synchronization support
Cons
Exceptionally high CPU usage – much higher than with Notes or anything else only using built-in OS-level codecs (check out the related remarks in the Audio Recording Bible – you WILL see other apps, which are only based on the built-in codecs, consume far less power)! (Some figures: Dell Axim x51v: 25% at 624 MHz; Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 720: 60% at 416 MHz.). This, unfortunately, not only means vastly reduced battery life when you make a lot of recording (and even playback! – unfortunately, the CPU usage is very high even when you play back stuff), but also skips in the recording on some devices as is the case for example on the HTC Wizard, even when overclocked to 240 MHz. These problems render the application useless on some models.
Only built-in codecs may be used, unlike with the Palm version (see the codec chart at the bottom of the page). A decent sound reorder should support something better than PCM WAV / GSM; for example, MP3 or Speex.
Doesn’t see CF cards in devices sporting them – an example x51v screenshot is here (the situation is exactly the same on all other devices with a CF slot; for example, the PL720). This also means it won’t be able to make recordings into file stores on pre-WM5 devices (and unlocked Extended ROM’s on PPC PE devices) either – only (mini / micro) SD cards.
It doesn’t handle the two side buttons on the Dell Axim x51v and Pocket Loox 720; there is no support for the HP iPAQ hx4700 side button either (tested on a WM5-upgraded device). On the HTC Wizard, it only handles the Camera, Mail, Wireless and Notes buttons (that is, there is no support for the Explorer button and the two WM5 softbuttons); this means at least you’ll be able to use it in the one-keypress mode if you redefine any of the supported (preferably side) buttons. The button referred to as the “Side button” (the only one to have a record functionality assigned to by default) is not supported on any of these devices; this means you MUST redefine one of the accessible buttons (which will be one of the front buttons on non-PPC PE models and can also be the side buttons on PPC PE models) in order to be able to use it to start / stop recording. The developers, as with many others not having read it, should read on my past tutorials / articles on enumerating the available buttons on a given Pocket PC ( Where does the PPC Registry store button mapping info - a tutorial (alternatives: PPC Magazine, BrightHand; make sure you also follow the link to More Programmers'/Hackers' Stuff, along with some cool Pocket Loox 7xx Hold Button Tips: More on Pocket PC Hardware Buttons for more info.). I’ve discussed this problem with the developers; they have assured me support for all accessible buttons will be implemented really soon.
No built-in screenoff support; all the utility offers is backlight dimming (but NOT locking – now, compare this to how Resco allows for full even button protection!) the screen after 30 seconds (independent of the system setting; that is, you don’t even need to enable screen dimming on the system level at all); see for example the button reassignment list above. Of course, you can still use independent screenoff utilities even assigned to hardware buttons, as long as you don’t re-map these buttons inside Personal DVR to inner functions. The fact that only screen dimming takes place also means the graphics-related excess CPU usage will always be a problem.
On the 624 MHz x51v, it takes seven seconds for the application to start recording when started anew – in no way so fast as Notes (not to talk about its CPU usage) or even most other alternative recorders. In this respect, preferring a two-buttonpress-required, but much faster-to-be-invoked recorder may pay out.

Verdict
As with many other direct Palm (and Symbian – see for example Lonely Cat Games’ products like ProfiMail and LGC Jukebox) ports (see for example my review of mVoice 5 by MotionApps, which suffers from exactly the same problem – that is, a title that has been one of the best on the Palm can’t really be compared to the commercial alternatives on the Pocket PC), this application isn’t really a match for current top-of-the-line, commercial (!) Pocket PC sound recorders like Resco – the Pocket PC platform is just far stronger, software-wise, than Palm.
However, given that it’s free (and I’m comparing it to commercial titles like Resco Audio Recorder), I still recommend it, particularly if you’re looking for a one (as opposed to most alternative Pocket PC recorders which almost all require two (consequent) presses) button-press application if you can live with the (current) limitations and problems (no CF, no support for side buttons of non-Phone devices, very high CPU usage, lack of screenoff, long activation time when it needs to be loaded etc.). Hope the problems will soon be ironed out in subsequent versions.
UPDATE (02/03/2007): PPCT frontpage

Updated review posted.

New (final) beta of Resco Audio Recorder out with BRAND NEW,high q. MP3 & AAC support

New (final) beta of Resco Audio Recorder out with BRAND NEW,high q. MP3 & AAC support
Anyone into serious (!) audio and/or automatic phone call recording on Windows Mobile (Pocket PC only – Smartphones are NOT supported, unfortunately) knows Resco Audio Recorder, probably the best recorder application, only - in MP3 recording - matched by VITO AudioNotes (see review HERE).
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The developer of this excellent application has been continuously releasing beta versions of his forthcoming version 4. I’ve published several articles on these versions; the last is HERE. The reader is strongly asked to check out these reviews to see how for example the brand new call recording functionality works. In the current review, I only elaborate the changes.
The official “what’s new” is as follows:
New codec pack with high quality MP3 and AAC recording for higher ARM processors
Optimized version for Intel XScale devices
Automatic display off
Bookmarks visible on track bar
Bookmarks with optional text note
Automatic phone call recording works after soft reset
Gain control fixed
Bugs fixed
Yes, as can be seen, the MP3 encoder quality (which has always been the most problematic aspect of Resco Audio Recorder) has been dramatically enhanced and a brand new AAC encoder plug-in has been added, allowing for using even lower encoding bit speeds with approximately the same quality (and, for that matter, somewhat lower CPU usage, meaning better battery life).
This means using this recorder is, from now on, recommended when you want to record into MP3 - unlike with previous versions.
Installing, configuring
As opposed to the previous betas (and, of course, the old, 3.x series), you will need to download and install two files: Audio Recorder itself, and an additional codec pack. It’s the latter that has the two brand new, high-quality codecs. Both are availbale on the beta page of the 4.x series.
Note that you should ONLY install the new codec pack on XScale or TI OMAP CPU’s. It CANNOT be installed on (old; in general, pre-2003) StrongARM devices. Furthermore, it’s fully incompatible with the Samsung CPU. This means Samsung-based Pocket PC’s (for example, the HTC Trinity / P3600, the HTC TyTN / Hermes etc) won’t work at all and it’s absolutely useless to try to install the codec pack on them. They CAN be installed: the installer only stops the install process when it notices the current Pocket PC only having a StrongARM CPU. However, there are no install-time (or, for that matter, runtime) warnings upon trying to install codecpack on Samsung CPU’s. You will only see something has gone absolutely wrong when you try to switch to using the two new codecs (the old ones work without problems): then, the application will quit at once. This also means you won’t be able to restart it at all. You will need to completely uninstall the entire suite (not just the codec pack: uninstalling it will also result in the other codecs becoming totally inaccessible).
Note that you can install the two files in any order.
After the installation, select either the new AACv4I or MP3v4I encoders in the encoder drop-down list:
Note that, as far as MP3’s are concerned, it’s MP3v4I that is the new; “MP3” is still the old (and in no way recommended – not even on incompatible – StrongARM / Samsung-based – models) encoder.
Problems
Upon AAC playback, depending on the CPU speed, it starts to stutter after a while (almost instantaneously on 195 MHz TI OMAP's, in about 1.5 minutes on 520 MHz XScale and after about 4.5 minutes on 624 MHz XScale devices). This needs to be fixed as the CPU usage is linearly increasing during this time - must be a simple program bug. The developer has promised to look into the problem.
Recording stops after five minutes, unlike with previous beta versions, which allowed for unlimited recordings (and, it seems, don’t have timebombs either).
Benchmarks
As usual, I’ve made SEVERAL benchmarks and tests to see the CPU usage with the two new codecs to see their battery friendlyness, incompatibilities, usability on non-overclocked TI OMAP Pocket PC’s etc.
As can be seen, the new MP3 encoder is only a tad – about 4% - more CPU intensive than the old one. In addition, the AAC encoder takes about 14% less CPU time than the MP3 encoder and is, therefore, probably the best choice for long-time, quality recording where battery life is of extreme importance.
All in all, excellent results - kudos to Resco!
The future – Smartphone
The developer also promises an MS Smartphone version. Until then, your best choice is VITO AudioNotes (see review HERE) for quality MP3 / call recording.
Verdict
The most problematic part of Resco Audio Recorder is now fixed, making the application THE most recommended generic recorder application for the Pocket PC (unless you need the special call recording features – for example, the auto speakerphone mode – of VITO AudioNotes). Kudos to Resco!

BREAKING NEWS: Infamous, top Linux multimedia player MPlayer is being ported to WM!

MPlayer is one of the most popular Linux/Unix media player. Now, thanks to XDA-Developers forum member amitv_17, the porting to Windows Mobile has started.
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(the main screen on a VGA Pocket PC; as can be seen, the View menu doesn’t contain much; the Tools menu results in an immediate exit)
(176*220 screenshot; as can be seen, on the MS Smartphone platform, the left softkey’s Exit, as is expected)
Availability, compatibility, installation
It’s available HERE, in the official XDA-Devs thread (mirror HERE) and is, of course, a free download. It seems to be compatible with most WM5 and WM6 Pocket PC’s and Smartphones. It seems it’s incompatible with pre-WM5 operating systems (tested this on my WM2003 HP iPAQ 2210).
Unzip the contents of the file to anywhere on your Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone. Start it by executing mplayer.exe. Then, you can select local file or stream playback. Both are pretty straightforward; in the latter case, make sure you enter the direct RTSP URL as can be seen in HERE, not for example HTTP one. Let me know if you don’t know how you can get for example .RM RSTP URL’s from a HTTP .RAM file.
Supported formats
It’s, theoretically, compatible with several sound and video formats (see their list at the above Wikipedia page). In practice, playback is still hampered by the, in cases, VERY bad performance and compatibility.
In addition to my H.264 (video) playback tests, I’ve made pretty thorough CPU usage tests with the most important audio formats it supports. The following figures have all been measured on a Dell Axim x51v running at 624 MHz. As can clearly be seen (particularly if you take the MP3 playback CPU usage into account), the results aren’t particularly good – alternative (better) players all have lower CPU usage. See THIS for more information. Note that 11% at 624 MHz translates to 33% at 208 MHz – the forced CPU frequency in the tests used in the linked document.
Flac: 5%
M4A (AAC): 16%
Ogg: 30%
MP3: 11%
WMA: - (incompatible)
(I’ve used my standardized audio test files – they’re the same I’ll use in my forthcoming Multimedia Bible.)
Note that while the MP3 playback “only” requires about 11% CPU time at 624 MHz, it still has severe problems when running in the background: it stutters when there’s some additional CPU usage (for example, you open a menu or anything). That is, it’s basically useless when not run in the foreground, with nothing else running.
Video playback is much-much worse and practically useless, unless you try to watch really low-quality, low-resolution and low-bitspeed videos. TCPMP or, even better, CorePlayer (the latter is an undisputed king of video playback on all mobile platforms) are way better.
Finally, RealAudio steaming (one of the best features of even the current, initial MPlayer release) is a CPU hog too and is pretty useless on slower models (read: you must overclock your ~200 MHz TI OMAP CPU’s if you want to listen to RealAudio radio stations).
Let me present you a list of the strengths and weaknesses of the current version:
The good
a HUGE arsenal of codecs and communications protocols already available; in this respect, it’s even better than CorePlayer (which, as of now, doesn’t support RTSP, albeit it will really soon be added)!
supports even RealAudio / RealVideo, unlike CorePlayer / TCPMP / ANY other Windows Mobile player (other than RealOne’s own player, of course). Note that the CoreCodec folks have announced (before the port of MPlayer) that they would never add RealOne support to CorePlayer because it's a proprietary format.
alternative HTTP tunneling with RTSP; working just GREAT with RealAudio streams! In this respect, it’s even better than RealPlayer on Symbian S60v3 FP1 (for example, the one that comes with the Nokia N95), because not even the latter supports HTTP RealOne audio/video streaming, “only” for MPEG4 video streaming (unlike HTC’s own and, in this respect, really incapable Streaming Media on Windows Mobile – see THIS for more info).
supports real (UDP-based) RTSP, which means better bandwidth utilization than with HTTP tunneling. Of course, it also means you must have direct access or a capable Wi-Fi network. This will only later (hopefully still this year) be added to CorePlayer (see THIS recent announcement if interested)
supports both (most) Pocket PC and MS Smartphone models (unfortunately, WM5+ only)
given that it’s the first version, pretty much promising
The bad
HUGE CPU usage when playing back streamed audio! For example, on the 195 MHz HTC Wizard, the CPU used for about 100% while playing back streamed, while on the 520 MHz XScale HTC Universal, running at 520 Mhz, about 97%, as can also be seen in THIS screenshot. On the 624 MHz Dell Axim x51v, it was “only” 72%. This means it’ll chew through your battery VERY fast and you won’t be able to use additional goodies like A2DP encoding at the same time without introducing MAJOR skipping. Note that this CPU usage is independent of the networking protocol used: with both UDP/RTSP and HTTP, the CPU usage is equally high. (Tested by trying to play back THIS Finnish stream (direct RM link: rtsp://ra.yle.fi/live/radiopeili.rm ).)
bad MP3 playback, very sensitive to CPU usage peaks – the same problem as with NoteM and unlike ANY other MP3 player for Windows Mobile
no WMA support
very-very rudimentary interface (albeit the D-pad and the Smartphone dialpads work for control)
streaming MPEG4 videos doesn’t work (as opposed to RealAudio); screenshots (trying to play back the stream rtsp://rtsp.youtube.com/youtube/videos/_CUFEnZeeYw/video.3gp?warned=1 ): 1 2 3 4 5 6
local (as opposed to streamed) MPEG4 videos do work. They are, however, very choppily played back; on VGA devices, only part of the screen is used as can be seen in THIS screenshot. The CPU usage is pretty bad too: on the x51v, playing back a 640*480 30 fps 2.6 Mbps H.264 video (taken on the Nokia N95 in high quality TV mode) took 80% CPU time (and still produced between 1 and 5 fps video, the video absolutely lagging compared to audio). CorePlayer 1.1.1, on the same PPC, played back the video without any frame drop and excellent high-resolution VGA – using the CPU only at 60%.
Verdict
It’s certainly nice to welcome Mplayer on Windows Mobile. While it’s a far cry away from established media players, particularly video playback-wise (in which it’s (still?) orders of magnitude worse than both TCPMP and, particularly, CorePlayer),
hope the developer develops it further and/or
he joins the CoreCodec team or sells / gives them the RealOne decoders so that CorePlayer, finally, receives support for these, particularly in streaming, widely used formats (can you hear me, CoreCodec team?! Now, it’s time to add RealOne support to CorePlayer! We DO need HTTP-based access to streamed content, which the official RealOne player is incapable of!) and
currently (as long as you don’t use a hard-to-configure Virtual Private Network) it’s your only way to play back RealAudio-based radio stations (if you can live with the enormous CPU usage, that is)
Finally, please consider donating the developer (donation link in the original XDA-Devs thread) so that he will continue working on the port.

This is great news and is definitely something to keep an eye on! I've always been a big fan of MPlayer as it plays pretty much anything you throw at it. I even run it on my Windows boxes.

Menneisyys said:
Finally, please consider donating the developer (donation link in the original XDA-Devs thread) so that he will continue working on the port.
Click to expand...
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Where can i download the source code ?

SOTI Pocket Controller6.02 released+Full phone controller Benchmark Roundup published

Unfortunately for Windows Mobile users, a lot of developers have switched to other platforms (most importantly, iPhone) recently. This is one of the reasons there haven’t been, for example, any decent game releases for Windows Mobile for quite a long time, except for Gameloft’s products only available via mobile phone operators. (Check out PocketGamer.org, the leading Windows Mobile gaming news site for more info. Note that it’s just been gone through a serious facelift, also meaning many of my emulation-related articles have been frontpaged there.)
Unfortunately, almost the same stands for applications and tools. Fortunately, much more established WinMo developers have stuck with the platform than games developers. This also results in the remote device controller applications’ (still) being worked on. These programs let you control your Windows Mobile PDA or handset using the keyboard / mouse of your Windows desktop (or notebook) computer
There has been a lot of changes since I’ve published my last all-in-one roundup of device controller applications. (Note that I’ve also elaborated on these apps, at least as far as capturing screens is concerned, in my all-in-one bible “ALL Secrets of making Pocket PC screenshots – everything you will EVER need to know!“.) Several new applications (My Mobiler, EveryWAN Remote Support Personal Edition and mDesktop) with direct control capabilities have been released in the meantime and the already-existing ones (VirtualCE, SOTI Pocket Controller) have undergone a serious facelift. Now, there are much better and more sophisticated phone controller tools than in 2006, during the writing of the previous roundup; this is why I don’t elaborate on outdated and/or plain not recommended applications like rCE, VNC server-based ones, MS Windows Mobile Developer PowerToys and PDA Controller but only on recent and (with the exception of mDesktop) recommended ones:
VirtualCE 4
My Mobiler
EveryWAN Remote Support Personal Edition
mDesktop
and, last but in no way least, SOTI’s Pocket Controller, which has just been updated to 6.02.
As the last batch of my reviews doesn’t contain a well-documented performance comparison (it was back in 2005 that I published [a Pocket PC Thoughts frontpage] my last performance comparison with real videos), I found it necessary to augment my past reviews with a real performance evaluation.
This also means this roundup doesn’t really compare features and capabilities (just follow the My Mobiler, EveryWAN Remote Support Personal Edition, mDesktop and VirtualCE reviews for a complete overview) but another very important aspect: performance. (Except for a row dedicated to elaborating on the image capturing features of these apps.) When you control your phone with the mouse / keyboard of your desktop (notebook) computer, you’ll want to see as good performance and responsiveness as possible. With QVGA (low-resolution) screens and using standard operating system or utility / application (read: no games), this won’t really be an issue – all the current phone controller apps are able to deliver acceptable to excellent results, performance / responsiveness-wise.
Not so with the CPU usage of the controller app (which does need some handset-side processing – for example, compressing and send the current screen), which should be as little as possible (the more the CPU usage of the controller app, the less responsive the entire phone becomes). There are huge differences between these apps, even in QVGA mode (let alone the far more demanding high-res ones). This is why I paid special attention to measuring the CPU usage of the controllers.
And, there is a question of high-resolution (VGA or WVGA) screens and capturing game screens / videos, which, in cases, put an enormous burden on the phone (CPU usage-wise) and/or don’t result in any kind of usable control.
Test videos; evaluating them
I’ve, in addition to exactly measuring rendition speed with them, I’ve also published the benchmark test videos. They are at http://winmobiletech.com/012009PDAControllers so that anyone can evaluate / review my benchmark results him/herself.
There are several videos there for each of the five apps and the four test cases: two for QVGA, two for VGA and one-one for the GUI rendering speedtest with my benchmark tool elaborated on in my already-linked, 2005 benchmark article and another for the full-screen game animation test with Nanobotz. Note that while I talk about five apps, I offer six sets of videos: with SOTI’s Pocket Controller, for both 6.01 and 6.02 so that you can evaluate the performance differences yourself; note that with the two 6.02 gaming cases, I’ve also published comparative videos of an interim and the final 6.02 build for both QVGA and VGA.
The filename convention of the videos is as follows:
Phone name (either the VGA HTC Universal or the QVGA HTC Wizard) – either Draw (my tool) or Game (Nanobotz) – one of the five[/i] (six/seven) apps.avi
That is, Univ-Draw-mDesktop.avi means it
- has been taken on the Universal
- shows the GUI benchmark results (as opposed to the game)
- using the mDesktop remote controller app.
Evaluating interface speed; slowdown of the device
The easiest way to do this is playing back the counter benchmark videos slowed down and checking out how many figures are left out of the rendering. For example, if, in a video, all you see are 1, 5, 9, 13 etc., then, this means every fourth animation phase is displayed on the desktop.
The easiest way of slowing down the video playback is using Videolan VLC. Being playback and, then, right-click the 1.00x label on the bottom right, to the left of the elapsed/remaining time display. Drag down the slider so that the animation becomes far slower so that you won’t miss any number shown. This way, you can be absolutely sure you’ll see all (even the slightest) changes.
There is another issue some controllers (most notably, mDesktop on both QVGA and VGA and MyMobiler on QVGA) suffer from: the phone slows down because of them running. You can easily spot these problems too: just run the counter tests and check how much time it takes for them to get from 0 to 299. Basically, it should be 9 seconds; with the, in this regard, worse apps (most importantly, mDesktop), this can rise to as much as 14-15 seconds. Note that, in parentheses, I’ve also published these results.
Computing gaming fps
It’s pretty easy to compute the exact speed (frames per second, FPS) of rendering games: just divide the number of frame changes by the total time. For example, the VGA video taken with the current build of Pocket Controller 6.02 is 20 seconds long, and it contains 13 frame changes; that is, the net speed is 13/20 = 0.65 fps. Of course, the bigger, the better.
Key differences between SOTI Pocket Controller 6.01 and 6.02
As is pretty much clear from the performance results, (if you have the money,) the most recommended application is SOTI Pocket Controller. Let’s take a brief look at how the old (6.01; released about two years ago) and the brand new, 6.02 versions compare, performance-wise. (Feature / compatibility-wise, take a look at the list HERE) Note that the comparison chart contains numeric data on both versions (so does the video repository) in the second and third columns, respectively; here, I just emphasize the differences.

First, there is a notable CPU usage decrease on both QVGA and VGA devices. This is a definite plus as Pocket Controller used to have quite high CPU usage on particularly VGA devices. Now, this has been heavily decreased – without a (major) impact on the responsiveness and the speed of rendering the phone screen on the desktop. On the three VGA devices I’ve directly compared the CPU usage on (x51v, Universal – both in the chart – and the HP iPAQ 210, where SOTI 6.01 scored 23% [by clicking around, not significantly higher] and 6.02 scored a more than two times better result: 11% [clicking around: about 25%]), there is a definite CPU usage decrease.
Second, while standard operating system (non-gaming) rendering hasn’t really been sped up (see the counter test), the is a HUGE increase in the VGA gaming capture performance: the new version is about five times(!) better and more responsive. Incidentally, at this stage (and also the QVGA one), I’ve also listed (and published) the performance results (and videos – hence the “final” for the two [QVGA / VGA] gaming videos in the video repository; the other 6.02 videos apply to both builds) of an interim, non-public build, b1385, I’ve been using since January. As can clearly be seen, the biggest difference between b1385 and the current 6.02 build, b1426, is the VGA gaming responsiveness. In this regard, the final, public version of Pocket Controller 6.02 blows everything else out of the water.
Note that while the in-game speed and efficiency remained the same with QVGA and radically increased with VGA, I’ve measured a little bit of speed decrease in both VGA and QVGA with my drawing benchmark (counter) tool. Nevertheless, it’s still way faster than any of the alternatives.
The comparison chart
Note that I haven’t listed subjects that all the tested apps are capable of; for example, Windows 7 compatibility.
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Verdict
Basically, you get what you pay for. That is, if you want to control your VGA device and/or want to capture game screens, you’ll want to bite the bullet and purchase a Pocket Controller license. If, on the other hand, you only have a QVGA device and don’t want to take screenshots of apps / games making 100% use of the CPU of the phone, you can consider sticking with the cheaper (or free) solutions.
As a rule of thumb, however, you should avoid using the desktop controller functionality of mDesktop altogether.

Note that, as has already been mentioned in the mDesktop review, mDesktop isn’t just a phone desktop controller: it’s far-far more than that. Actually, directly accessing the desktop of the phone is just a subfunction of the app. This means you should still consider giving it a try if you, for example, want to quickly edit / write SMS messages, , manage files, make/receive calls, install apps, edit your contact list etc. on your desktop as quickly and conveniently as possible. The test results above only emphasize mDesktop’s phone desktop controller functionalities are definitely worse than that of “true” phone controller apps. The latter, however, don’t offer any ways of the other, direct control facilities.
Also note that the current version of mDesktop is 2.1. The version I’ve reviewed (and compared to Jeyo, its main alternative) in my previous review was 1.0. There have been some major improvements to mDesktop in the meantime (between version 1.0 and 2.1), which I couldn’t elaborate on in this roundup, as it’s all about desktop performance and CPU usage assessment and nothing else.
If you do find mDesktop useful (to, say, access your SMS messages etc.), you still may want to stay away from its direct access functionality and use something else for that purpose (only), particularly if you plan to use this often. This is what the results in the current roundup state. Nevertheless, the *other* functionalities of mDesktop are completely unrelated to the pretty bad-working desktop control and are pretty good. All you need to do is comparing it to Jeyo’s app and decide which way to go.

A brand new review & benchmark & comparison of REDFLY Mobile Viewer: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=3612241#post3612241