Database Info

TURORIAL: Listening to Sirius Radio on your handset

Now that I’ve published the Radio Stream Transcoding Bible (which has, in the meantime, been frontpaged by MoDaCo and All About Symbian!), I’ve received several questions and a lot of help requests on listening to Sirius streams on all mobile platforms (Windows Mobile, Symbian etc.) This article will surely help them a lot. (Note that I’ll also publish a similar article on XM Radio very soon).
Sirius Satellite Radio is one of two satellite radio services operating in the United States and Canada, along with XM Satellite Radio. It also has Internet streaming, which needs specialized clients because of the need for authorization. (Sirius’ streams aren’t free.)
1. If you have a Windows Mobile device...
... then, all you’ll need (unless you have VERY specific needs – more on them later) is SiriusWM5 downloadable HERE for free, for both Pocket PC’s (Windows Mobile 6 Professional / Classic) and MS Smartphones (Windows Mobile 6 Standard).
This app, which is just a front-end for either the built-in (Pocket) Windows Media Player, is really easy to use – you just fill in your official, Sirius login / password credentials in File / Settings (Guest accounts are disabled – don’t tick in “Guest”):
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/SiriusWM5Credentials.png
and, after saving this info, select the channel you’d like to listen to, enter the captcha text (alternatively, you’ll can also click Play (right softkey) and enter the number it says) and the playback will begin, with the song metadata (artist / title) displayed at the bottom of the screen, while the channel image in the top left corner.
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/SiriusInsideAChannel.png
Note that the metadata is only displayed in the GUI of the app, not inside the player:
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/SiriusWM5TCPMPBackgrounPlayback.png
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/SiriusWM5NosoundMetadataInWMP.jpg
Also note that, while you can use TCPMP to play back the stream, you may have a little less power consumption and a little quicker handset if you just stick with the default WMP. The reason for this is that TCPMP consumes about 4% more CPU cycles at 624 MHz than WMP when playing back WMA. Note that, fortunately, SiriusWM5 itself doesn’t contain about anything: when run in the background, about 0.1% CPU cycles and, in the foreground, with activated song metadata, about ~1%. (Again, on a 624 MHz Xscale PXA-270).
1.1 Additional goodies
In last September, the developers of SiriusWM5 started working on a vastly enhanced (and also XM Radio-compliant) version of the app. See for example THIS for more info. THIS thread may be also of interest: it elaborates on what the developers plan: transcoders running on the clients’ PPC’s etc:
1.2 When NOT to use?
If you have a Windows Mobile device, in most cases, SiriusWM5 will just suit you great. In some cases, however, you’ll want to use a transcoder to be able to listen to high-quality (!) Sirius streams over a slow GPRS connection. This is what SiriusWM5 can't provide - after all, WMA itself is useless when it comes to delivering quality sound at GPRS (read: 32 kbps bitrate at most) speeds. Then, you'll need to turn to a HE-AAC v2-capable solution.
2. uSirius-based transcoding
To be able to transcode Sirius on your desktop computer, you’ll need uSirius, which is a free download and is, in some respects (except for preserving the song metadata / other textual broadcast info), better than SiriusWM5. It’s available HERE; the latest, tested version is 1.0 Release Candidate 5.
Note that, in order to be able to access the high-quality, 128 kbps original streams, you need to subscribe to the CD-quality additional pack - currently for $2.99 a month. If you aren’t a subscriber, I don’t see much point in trying to running a local transcoder for you as that of SiriusWM5 doesn’t degrade the sound quality much – using a 32 kbps stereo WMA as can be seen in HERE, its sound quality is acceptable. As it’s transcoding a stream of already-degraded sound quality, you won’t get far better sound quality with a transcoder running on your device either.
However, Palm, iPhone, Blackberry and Symbian users, who don’t have a native front-end for Sirius, MUST rely on local transcoding. For them, the following three sections will be essential. As you’ll see, I provide you with an in all cases (even over NAT’ed connections!) working and fully remote controllable (you can listen to any of the original Sirius channels) solution.
2.1 Using uSirius
After you install and start uSirius, click the Settings button and fill in your username / password pair:
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/UsiriusProvideLoginPwd.png
Press OK and click the now-activated Start (the mouse is hovering over it in the next screenshot):
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/UsiriusStart.png
Now, click the XBMC button (the fifth from the top) and select a target directory to export the local URL’s the streams of uSirius can be accessed at by the external transcoder tools:
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/xbmcURLExport.png
and rename them to *.m3u:
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/RenameStrmToM3U.png
(a Total Commander screenshot of doing this)
Now, you’ll need to change all occurrences of http:// to mms:// in all these files. You can do this by hand; however, if you prefer automatizing this task, download Replace in Files from HERE. Install it and let it start; quickly fill in the fields as in the following screenshot:
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/repliaceInFilesInAction.png
and press Replace All. You’ll be shown a success report:
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/repliaceInFilesInAction2.png
You’ll need to import these m3u playlist files in the different transcoders – either Orb or Winamp. In the following section, I elaborate on both.

2.2 Transcoding with Orb
Importing the playlists prepared in the above way is pretty easy: as has already been explained in the Radio Transcoding Bible, right-click the Orb icon in the system tray, select Configure, go to Media and click Add in the Music folders group. Select the directory you’ve stored your M3U’s:
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/adduSiriusExportToOrb.png
and you’re set – they should, sooner or later, turn up under Audio / Playlists / Imported Playlists on your handset.
2.2.1 If mass m3u playlist importing doesn’t work...
Note that the current beta version of Orb may refuse importing the M3U files for no apparent reason. If you in no way can make your files visible, you’ll need to manually add your favorite stations to Orb. This, unfortunately, involves a lot of work if you have many favorites.
To do this, go to the configuration Web page of Orb (by, for example, double-clicking the Orb icon in the system tray) and select Open Application / Audio:
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/POrbOpenAppAudio.png
In there, click “Internet Audio” and, when the new (top) context-dependent toolbar is displayed, click Add custom at the top (in the following screenshot, the mouse is hovering above it):
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/POrbOpenAppAudio2.png
A new pop-up window, Add a custom channel, comes up; in there, you’ll need to fill in the station name you’d like to listen to and the local URL (to path). You can enter anything in the former field; to fill in the latter, you’ll need to do the following: in the uSirius client, click URLs (the third button from the top), select your favorite channel from the Channels drop-down list. Now, highlight the entire contents of the non-editable URL text area and right-click to access the context menu. In there, select Copy:
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/POrbOpenAppAudio4.png
Note that you shouldn’t ever tick in the “Sonos / MPlayer Compatible URLs” checkbox. Then, you’ll be shown two external (as opposed to local; in these screenshots, 169.254.2.2) URLs; one of them, the MMS one, working only, but only resulting in a runtime, client-side error message like THIS. The local addresses (again, addresses starting with 169 like 169.254.2.2) will work just fine.
Note that you can do the same with the exported M3U files - just copy their contents to the clipboard. Then, you can entirely avoid having to copy all the URL's from inside uSirius.
Switching back to the browser instance running Orb configuration / maintenance, fill this info into the Path field of the Orb custom URL dialog (also fill in the “Name” field!):
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/POrbOpenAppAudio5.png
Click Submit. After a quick test, it’ll be added to your Orb internet stream favorites.
Now, you can go on adding your favorites in the same manner; for example, the following screenshot shows the state after also adding Sirius 0 – The Bridge (in the foreground, I also show the uSirius URLs screen, ready for copying the next URL to the clipboard for a later import to Orb; in the background, you see the IE browser instance with the Orb configuration dialog):
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/POrbOpenAppAudio6.png
Now you’re done (of course, you can still add additional Sirius stations); when you fire up your Orb client on your handset, you’ll already see the just-added streams under Audio / Internet Radio Favorites:
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/OrbClientListing.png
(VGA WM5 PPC)
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/OrbClientListingSym.png
(a Symbian screenshot of the same, with an additional station)
… and can start listening to it; a Symbian screenshot of this:
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/OrbSymListen.png
(Again, on Symbian, you can only use non-NAT’ed connections to access Orb.)
Unfortunately, as can be seen, the song metadata (the title / artist of the current song) isn’t displayed in either Windows Mobile or Symbian – unlike with the native WM client, SiriusWM5.
3. Non-Orb-based transcoding (Winamp)
Should you want to avoid using Orb for the reasons I’ve explained in the Radio Stream Transcoding Bible (no support for Symbian-compliant SHOUTcast; no support for the GPRS-friendly HE-AAC v2), your best choice is Winamp + the Oddcast plug-in. Then, you can dynamically switch between the stations (assuming you’ve added the local uSirius-generated URL’s to Winamp manually) with a Winamp remote controller (of which, again, there’re several – also for Symbian and Palm, if you use a Web-based controller) and can enjoy the advantages of Winamp + Icecast2-based transcoding as opposed to that of ORB, particularly if your handset is able to play back HE-AACv2 (currently, Windows Mobile handsets with TCPMP).
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/WinAmpIceSiriusTranscodeSM2.jpg
(click the thumbnail for the full-size image; it shows all components of the Winamp-based transcoding, including uSirius as the source, Winamp as the player, Oggcast as the transcoder, Icecast2 as the streaming server and a mobile client, CorePlayer, running in SOTi Pocket Controller, the, in my opinion, best, highly recommended remote controller for Windows Mobile)
Note that you can’t use VLC because uSirius just refuses to accept its incoming requests as can be seen in the following screenshot:
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/usirisNonVLCCompl.png
Unfortunately, in VLC, it’s not possible to modify the MMS user agent (unlike that of HTTP(S) – screenshot HERE and HERE of this, respectively).
You can’t use StreamTranscoderV3 either because it doesn’t accept MMS (WM) input, only that of SHOUTcast / Icecast.
3.1 Importing M3U files into Winamp
Importing the M3U files exported from uSirius into Winamp is, fortunately, much easier than with Orb – with guaranteed results. In the Media Library view, right-click Playlists and select Import playlist from folder:
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/WinampImpPlaylist.png
Select the directory and all your stations become promptly available:
Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/WinampImpPlaylist2.png
waiting for playing back / transcoding via, for example, the OddcastV3 plug-in.
Again and again, please DO read Radio Stream Transcoding Bible for more information on the secrets of transcoding and Winamp remote control so that you can have the same freedom of switching channels any time as with the Orb client or with SiriusWM5. You’ll find an answer to all your questions in there. Just keep trying to digest the vast amount of info I’ve presented in these Bibles – you’ll, finally, succeed, I’m absolutely sure

I think an easier solution would be to download SiriusWM5...

The Definitive Multiplatform Multimedia Metatag & Library Tutorial & Bible

Compared to the capabilities of desktop multimedia players (see for example the excellent WMP vs Winamp vs iTunes vs MediaMonkey for more info on their capabilities), the mobile ones certainly lack when it comes to fetching, searching for, editing, storing and, in several cases, even accessing / displaying different kinds (album art and/or other images; textual genre / composer / title etc. info; lyrics etc.) of information in audio files. In this Bible, I explain what the non-audio information you can store in an audio file is, how you can easily and quickly find missing information and store them in your songs and what mobile players are able to access them.
What’s the point in all this?
Current media players coming with non-Windows Mobile (WM or WinMo for short) players don’t any more support direct file system access. (And Windows Mobile’s approach requires quite a few taps / button presses too, as opposed to just selecting something from its library.) This is diametrically opposed to the approach of older or not very sophisticated players, where all you needed to do is going to Open File, and you could browse the file system of your handheld right away, changing directories and selecting files to play. In some of the recent built-in multimedia players (for example, on BlackBerry (BB for short) and Symbian S60), this is plain impossible and you MUST rely on the library functionality, which is pretty much useless if your audio files don’t have metadata in them. Actually, in these cases, it's much worse than the old, library-less approach where you just opened a directory for playing back all songs in there. If you made sure your directories contained only one album, this was an adequate solution for most needs.
When you rip an audio CD in Windows Media Player (or any similar CD rip-capable app; for example, my personal favorite is CDex; see my remarks & quick tutorial HERE), WMP may not be able to fetch any information on the songs themselves.
There are major disadvantages of not tagging your songs. First, on all the operating systems, several library-based media players will list the similarly-named and non-tagged music inside only one (All music) category:
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(WMP, showing the filenames. As can be seen, not even the file directories are shown. You can, fortunately, still see them by tap-and-holding a song, selecting Properties and checking out the Location attribute. In THIS screenshot, the path \Storage Card\UUSNAM is clearly visible. Still, you won’t be able to (easily) play unnamed files in a directory, unless you manually pick every, say, third 13 Track 13, 14 Track 14 etc. file and add it to a playlist. It’s really complicated. Alternatively, you can still initiate playing a file in a specific directory using [Menu/][Library/] Menu/Open File and this allows for switching between songs in the directory, but it’s still pretty awkward.)
(BlackBerry 4.5 shot. By default, it lists the files using the same name stored in different directories one after another and only Options / Properties (see the content of the pop-up dialog screenshot) can be used to make a distinction. In addition, the BlackBerry operating system doesn’t have a built-in file explorer tool; that is, you can’t start playing a given song in a given directory by simply navigating to it with a file explorer tool. Finally, the multimedia player in BB doesn’t let for selecting an individual file from inside either, unlike Windows Mobile’s media player.)
(Nokia N95 (Symbian S60v3 FP1) shot. There’s no way of getting the directory of a given file (Options / Song Details only lists – and lets for editing – the ID3 tags and doesn’t show the file system path of the song, unlike under BB or WinMo. You can’t force the player to play a given file from inside either. When you start playing back a file from File Manager, the player 1. won’t play back other songs from the same directory (unlike the case of opening a file from the WinMo WMPM, using Menu/Open File from the Library view) 2. won’t provide you access to the menus (like the equalizer or the stereo widening settings) – all you’ll see instead of the menu is THIS).
All in all, in all the three covered operating systems, NOT having tags in your audio files severely degrades the usability and flexibility of the built-in (and, at least with Windows Mobile and Symbian, some other) media player. When your songs do have metadata in them, separating different genres, albums, artists and, in some, more advanced players, even more sophisticated attributes like years etc. becomes a breeze. This is why you do want to read this Bible thoroughly to find out how this can be accomplished. Learning to make your songs tagged will save you a lot of frustration and greatly enhances your enjoying music. And don’t think it’s hard and complicated! Not in the least, particularly not with the latest tools.
Turning back to the question of current, (in cases, strictly) library-based built-in factory players on all the three platforms, all you see, when you transfer some new songs to the card or insert a completely new one is the player creating / updating the library when you start it and/or it senses a card insertion and/or you explicitly force it to update / refresh the library (Symbian: Options / Refresh on the Library screen; Windows Mobile: Menu / Update Library…; on the BlackBerry, it’s not possible to manually initiate a refresh):
(BlackBerry)

(Symbian S60)
(Windows Mobile)
Don’t think of the recent, library-based approach is a bad thing. Just the opposite. If you do make sure your files are correctly identified and tagged (metadata added), your life becomes much easier and everything you can do with your repository of songs becomes much more flexible.
With traditional (non-library-based) media players all you could do was using (multiple) playlists where you could collect some songs based on some criteria (for example, a given album of a given artist; all albums of a given artist; all songs belonging to a given genre, your top 50 songs you prefer listening to etc.). This all required a lot of work, particularly if you didn’t use the advanced auto-playlist creation features of more advanced desktop media players. By this, I’m referring to creating playlists exactly using some / all of the above criteria. An example screenshot of the auto-playlist creator of the desktop WMP 11, available under Library / Create Auto Playlist:

For example, in the above three screenshots, I’ve shown a way to create a playlist containing the songs of a Finnish pop band (here, referred to as "2n maanantai") which is rated at at least 4 stars. The playlist is named Best of 2n maanantai and can directly be used on mobile clients after synchronizing them there.
Auto playlist creation is, generally, non-existing on mobile devices. Doing the same manually, in general, involves considerably more work.
With the library-based approach, you can do, essentially, the same on mobile devices as with auto playlist creation: you can select what you want to listen to based on several factors. With simpler approaches employed by most players (except for CorePlayer, which has an even more advanced approach), you can traverse in at least the categories Artist, Album and Genre and select the artists, albums and/or, inside them, the songs you’d like to play. You can play the entire (sub)category too – as with all songs.
This in no way involves playlist creation. You only need to create playlists in a library-capable app when you need to express some logical functionality otherwise not playable using the traditional library approach. For example, if you have albums A, B and C of, say, the Artist X, and you’d only want to listen to two of the three (and not the third) albums, you can’t easily do this using the standard library functions of any of the three operating systems (none of them support multiple selections) – you must create a playlist, putting the two favorite albums in it.
The even more advanced (but, unfortunately, for a newbie, pretty much convoluted) CorePlayer is an exception: with it, you can make multiple selections, which helps in not having to make playlists at all to account for logical decisions like the above. For example, to select three of the five artists to play back, you only need to check in the checkboxes in front of the given artists:
(WinMo screenshot; the same is done in exactly the same way under other operating systems)
This will make sure the playback will only iterate over the songs of the three selected artists, not all of them. You can’t do the same in other, non-multiple selection-capable players – again, in them, you could only select one artist to play back. In this respect (too), CorePlayer is vastly superior to all the (current) alternatives. Unfortunately, this also means people do complain about CoreTheque’s (the name of CorePlayer’s library system) being overly complicated. I thought exactly the same when it was first released – it took even me a bit of time to learn it and to understand in what ways it’s superior to the single-selection, far more restricted library system of the other players.
Now that you see the point in having correctly built-up and managed libraries, let’s take a closer look at how you can actually provide your songs with this metadata.
1.1 WMP tag finding & reading
Fortunately, you can save yourself some hours of entering all the metadata (genre, artist, album, song title etc.) by using automatized tools. Of them, I recommend Windows Media Player (WMP) the best for looking up and entering at least textual, non-lyrics data (artist, genre etc.). (Please don’t come telling me why I don’t recommend other tools instead. For example, THIS thread states WinAMP also has auto-tagging capabilities. I want to keep the size of this Bible acceptable; this is why I don’t review other tools in this chapter.)
When you let WMP to read all your (still untagged) audio files into its library (and you do have an Internet connection), WMP will automatically connect to its database back-end to try to recognize your songs. (Please consult THIS tutorial on how the library should be operated in WMP. I do not elaborate on the basics of it, only the advanced features like auto playlist generation.)
To do this, it in no way tries to make use of the current filenames or the directory name your files are stored in. Instead, it compares how the song sounds to the stored songs in its library. (While I’m also a DSP engineer and am pretty well versed in everything physical telecommunication, I don’t know how exactly this is done other than it should be some kind of a simple time-domain or a combined time & frequency-domain pattern matching, also making use of the actual song index inside an album. One thing is certain: WMP doesn’t upload the full song to an approximate comparison to the database, only a small "blueprint" of it.)
This library is based on customers’ existing tag (and album art) contributions. Just for a check, to see whether I have better results with a locked-in, fully commercial system like the Zune, I’ve tested the same with my Zune to see whether being commercial and only available to paying Zune customers. The desktop Zune app (which is definitely inferior to that of WMP – as is, in my opinion, ALL the media manager apps coming with ALL non-Windows Mobile platforms) only found few additional titles; 9 of them was a false hit (for example, mistaking nine of the songs for Snoop Dogg’s The Blue Carpet Department), only a few OK (Ismo Alanko; Juliet Jonesin Sydän - Helppo Elämä – Haluan olla poikaystäväsi; Leevi & the Leavings; Raggars). In some cases, it found the artist (SIG) on compilation disks but took it for another song based on the index of the songs. An example of this is SIG’s Hyvää Syntymäpäivää, which it mistook for Purppura – Paratiisikesä because the former’s index was 9. It didn’t find more album arts than WMP either. Frankly, I would have thought Zune’s desktop manager fares better than the free WMP in this respect.
After WMP has found all the missing info, sooner or later, it updates the original song files (MP3 and WMA only; it’s only with additional plug-ins like WMP Tag Support Extender that it becomes able to write - and, with some formats like OGG, only read - tags) with the just-found info on the hard disk. (On my HP TC1100 tablet PC with 1 GHz CPU, 1.5G RAM and 160GB HDD & no other programs running, this happened almost instantaneously, on my IBM Thinkpad a31p with 768M RAM and 120 GB hard disk, only after some days. I couldn’t find a way to force WMP to do this – "Apply Media Information Changes" doesn’t seem to do the trick.)
Before this physical file update takes place, it’s only WMP’s own library that has the newly found tags, not the physical files themselves. During this, you can only make your only media files that you synchronize with your handset with WMP have all the newly-found tags. In addition, this information will be strictly available for the built-in stock player only (on Windows Mobile, WMP Mobile; on the N-series Symbian S60v3, Music Player), not other third-party players (or at least not the ones I’ve tested) - not even CorePlayer. The reason for this is simple: WMP uses a special library descriptor format not compatible with most? all? third-party multimedia players.
This also means non-updated files that you physically copy to your handset (through, say, a card reader with a simple file copier app like Total Commander or the built-in File Explorer) won’t have any tags in them. Therefore, you should wait until WMP does update the song files physically with the song metadata. You can easily see this because, then, their timestamp changes (and their size may also increase). After this, you can safely use any tool to copy your files – all third-party apps will be able to read and process their tags. Library-capable apps will be able to create a library very similar to that of WMP; non-library-capable apps (the majority of the players) will, at least, display this info and use it for other, dedicate functionalities like looking up lyrics or album art. I’ll later elaborate on the library-capable, advanced mobile multimedia applications.
1.2 Searching for missing tags not found by WMP
There inevitably will be cases when your desktop WMP doesn’t recognize your songs, particularly when they aren’t English or they aren’t stored in an album but are separate songs. Then, you’ll need to do some extra work. Don’t be afraid: it’ll be much easier than you think! There will be almost absolutely no manual work and tedious metadata entry involved.

Probably the best tool to look for & quickly enter / transfer missing tags is the free MP3Tag. (See for example THIS for other choices.) It’s capable of both importing the song titles and other metadata, including album art, into files from the Web and – which is really useful! – convert metadata stored in the filenames to inline ID3 metadata and vice versa. The latter will be really useful when you have a bunch of files only containing song metadata in one form but not in the other. It’s pretty useful to have accordingly named files for, for example, file sharing and handling with non-library-capable multimedia players (the desktop WMP doesn’t have auto-renaming functionality – in this regard too, MP3Tag IS better). On the other hand, library-capable players only take into account the contents of ID3 metatags and NOT the filename when building up the library. With a song that only has the song metadata in its filename, it’ll keep the song as "Unknown" in the library. You will most definitely want to avoid this. That is, the cases when you will want to use the two-directional conversion are:
- The files have ID3 tags only (filled in by, say, WMP’s auto-find), but are still named, say, 10.wma because they’re CD rips made with WMP. WMP, as has already been mentioned, isn’t able to rename these files based on the ID3 tags and give them a more meaningful name. Then, selecting Convert / Tag - Filename will convert these tags into files. Note that it’ll use spaces upon encountering characters incompatible with the file system; for example, slashes (/).
- The files have all the album / artist / title metadata in the filename but not in the metadata. This is pretty common particularly with old files. Then, Convert / Filename – Tag will help. Here, you may end up having to modify the default %artist% - %album% - %track% - %title% filename parsing scheme. For example, if your filenames are names like "Värttinä - 1st Album - 01 - Ruskie neitsyt.wma" (where Värttinä is the artist, 1st Album is the album name, 01 is the track number and "Ruskie neitsyt" is the title), then, you can do the conversion right away. With filenames different from this, you may end up having to edit the filename parser string before the conversion.
Note that you’ll want to use mass-selection (Shift + up/down with the cursor keys or Ctrl-Shift + left click with the mouse) to make the conversion much easier.
Looking up song metadata at freedb.org is equally easy. You manually navigate to freedb.org, enter for example both the artist and album name in the "Search the freedb database" textbox at the top (here, I entered "Varttina" to look for Värttinä’s albums). In the result list, just click (open) the album. If that’s what you’re looking for, look for the "Disc-ID" attribute (in THIS screenshot, it’s just to the left of the mouse cursor). You’ll need to pass MP3Tag both the unique ID given in hexa numbers (here, bf0b160d) and also set the genre when populating songs with ID3 metadata. It’s very easy – the rest will be done by MP3Tag. (Also note that MP3Tag is also able to play back songs – it just uses the system-level player to do the trick.)
Now, let me show you a thorough example of doing this all. Let’s assume we have an album WMP didn’t find any info on and is in, therefore, its just-grabbed state with filenames XX Track XX.wma (again, without any inline metadata; that is, tags). Start MP3Tag and make sure you make the directory having these files visible to the program. To do this, just enter (copy) the home directory of your files to the bottom-most "Directory" input field. In the following screenshot, it’s c:\TYO\080805\full id3\Suomen laulu - kotimaan kasvot:
Press OK. Now, you’re presented a filename-metatag pairing dialog. In this window, you need to make sure the records in the two lists at the bottom mutually coincide. In this case, they do. There may be cases when they don’t; for example, when instead of 01 Track 1.wma, 02 Track 2.wma etc. files, you have 1 Track 1.wma, 2 Track 2.wma etc. (Notice the lack of the leading 0!) Then, you’ll need to manually rearrange the list by selecting a record in the right list and pressing Up / Down to move it one step up/down, respectively.
Also make sure the metadata in the uppermost textfields is OK. Soemtimes you will need to adjust the Genre drop-down list.
Now, just press OK; the tags will be updated:
Now, you’ll still want to accordingly rename your files so that their filename also reflect their contents (unlike the output of WMP’s CD grabber). To do this, keep all the files selected and select Convert / Tag - Filename:

if the (standard) %artist% - %album% - $num(%track%,2) - %title% naming convention is OK with you (the results can be seen underneath the text input field), just press OK in the following dialog:
As can be seen in the Filename column, the files have indeed been correctly renamed:
That’s all – this is what you’ll need to do with most grabbed and, by WMP, not recognized files.
Let me also show you an example of filling in the ID3 tags based on the filename (that is, the exact opposite of the work we’ve done in the last few steps). Do the same as in the first step to make the files visible to MP3Tag:
Select all the files and, then, Convert / Filename - Tag:

We’re lucky: the default format string, %artist% - %album% - %track% - %title%, just matches the filenames of the files; you can make sure this is the case if you look at the area under the text input field:
After this (checking the conversion will be successful), just press OK; the ID3 tags will be created, as can also be seen in the following screenshot:
Let me know if you need a more thorough tutorial on using this excellent tool. Also note that several similar questions have been answered by the tutorial HERE (posted in the official FAQ section of MP3Tag).
1.3 Searching for Album Art
Another thing you may want to consider adding to your music is album art, which, in most cases, is just the front of the CD leaflet (but can be anything else, based on your needs).
Physically, there are two kinds of album arts: inline (stored inside the files) and folder-based; the latter can use the WMP format (using "Folder.jpg") or its own (like (on Windows Mobile and Symbian) LCG Jukebox’s Artist – Album.jpg filename convention). Both the inline and the folder-level approaches have their advantages, problems and (with the mobile players,) incompatibility issues.
The compatibility matrix with these two kinds of images is as follows (given for WMA and MP3 "only"):
(HTML original HERE)
(Note that, on Windows Mobile, Lyrics Magic, WinVibe, Pocket Music, Resco Audio Recorder and GSPlayer don’t support any kind of album art.)
The desktop WMP can also fetch album art automatically and will certainly do this with commonly known albums (but don’t except almost anything for sparse languages like Finnish). For example, it found the Madonna and Värttinä CD covers at once. After finding the images, it’ll store them in the directory first as a separate Folder.jpg file (which is compatible with most players compatible with directory-level images except LCG Jukebox) and, then, also include the inline version in the sound files themselves (a little later – again, in this operation, lagging may occur, as is the case with other tag update operations).
If, on the other hand, you look for an album art not found by WMP, you’ll need to use third-party tools.
1.3.1 Third-party tools
1.3.1.1 MP3Tag
First, you can use the already-mentioned MP3Tag to include not only textual metadata, but also images. To do this, just search for the given album art in, say, Google Images (or any, similar service), right-click the image and select Copy:

Now, right-click the empty disc image in MP3Tag and select Paste Cover:
And, to save the image, select File / Save Tags:
It’ll save the images as an inline one in each of the selected files. Note that it won’t create a directory-level one; if you don’t want to download the image and rename it to Folder.jpg, you’ll want to play at least one of the converted files in WMP. It’ll create this file, along with AlbumArtSmall.jpg, automatically.
(You may want to check out THIS for additional, related tips; note that this tutorial no longer has the inline images.)
1.3.1.2 Other tools
In addition, there are a lot more utilities; some automatized, some not. The automatized ones are mostly commercial but, if you have hundreds or thousands of albums to quickly download album arts for, may still be purchasing – you save a LOT of time if you use them (no manual searching, file downloading and dragging will be necessary – everything is done automatically, you only need to issue 1-2 clicks per album to accept an automatic album art selection or select another one). The best list of these tools is HERE.
1.3.1.2.1 Strictly iTunes-only plugins
Most of these tools are for iTunes only; for example, iArt, TuneSleeve and iAutoArtwork. The first also downloads lyrics (more on lyrics in my dedicated Lyrics Bible). Note that some of the links are dead; for example, iTunes Art Importer, which is no longer available (the old link doesn’t work).
1.3.1.2.2 Standalone
As far as standalone (that is, non-iTunes plug-in) products are concerned, I recommend two of them (in addition to the akready-shown MP3Tag, of course).
1.3.1.2.2.1 Album Art Downloader
Album Art Downloader is a free, self-contained app and searches everything (not just Amazon); however, it doesn’t parse sound files (Artist and/or Album name must be manually entered) and you can’t easily paste the resulting image into WMP either (need to save it first to the file system and paste from there). This can be pretty awkward with several albums (but is still definitely better than the fully-manual way). And, again, it’s free!
1.3.1.2.2.2 MuvUnder Cover
MuvUnder Cover is, as opposed to Album Art Downloader, commercial; the trial version supports saving up to 15 albums. It’s REALLY easy to use and saves album art right inside files. It can’t be instructed to save dir-level thumbnails instead, though (which isn’t a problem because, if you really need them, you can still load your songs into WMP; it’ll make sure it creates the necessary Folder.jpg files based on the inline images).
Note that, by default, it doesn’t search Google Images and, as it doesn’t search for example amazon.de, it won’t find many European non-English titles (like Finnish ones). Fortunately, you can easily make it search Google Images too by enabling "Automatically search for Google Images for artwork if not found from default source" in Options / Artwork. After this, about 70% of my Finnish album art images were found (while only one or two, out of the 30-40 tested albums, before enabling this). Note that it restricts the number of hits to 5. This can be a problem in many cases (Google Images, in general, has far more hits; some of the real hits ranked lower than the fifth). In this regard, some other solutions (even LCG Jukebox) is much better.
Note that, in cases, with images (only) available at Google Image, Album Art Downloader (see above) didn’t find anything, while MuvUnder Cover did. An example of this is Vesa-Matti Loiri - Eino Leino (Google Images link). This may signal a problem with Album Art Downloader’s Google Images search module.
Finally: another famous title, Album Cover Art Downloader 1.6.0 (ex-home) doesn’t exist any more. The Romanian server linked from HERE hosts a version with a CRC error. I could only find it HERE. Unfortunately, I continuously had problems with all the files I’ve thrown it at – it complained about "junk" in the album art. It seems it’s useless.
1.3.2 LCG Jukebox
LCG Jukebox (available on WM and Symbian) is famous for its built-in capabilities of album art searching capabilities over several album art sources, including Google Image (and several others). Fortunately, it doesn't limit the number of hits, unlike the desktop MuvUnder Cover (see section 1.3.1.2.2.2), as can be seen in the following screenshots:

(WM VGA (as can be seen, it makes use of the high resolution) screenshots; it’s exactly the same on Symbian)
Note that it also saves the image file in the file system using the Artist – Album.mp3 file name convention.
Also note that you can also set a JPG file in the file system on Symbian (Options / Album Art). The player, however, has no support for searching the Web for album arts – you need to do the same with an image saving-capable browser like Opera Mini. In addition, unlike with LCG’s app, it doesn’t store the associated album art image in the file system either – the changes will only be reflected in the library.
1.4 Media manager apps coming with mobile devices; synchronizing with desktop WMP
Under WinMo, you don’t get another media manager software. Not that you would need any: the desktop WMP is one of the best tools for this, particularly if you use additional apps like MP3Tag to find / set info WMP couldn't find.
You can find a tutorial on using its built-in mobile synchronization capabilities (which works with all the reviewed three mobile operating systems: WM, Symbian and BB) HERE.
Note that the article discusses WinMo as a client. If you connect a Symbian handset and want to be able to synchronize it with the desktop WMP, select Media Player upon connecting from the list:
With BB, you’ll need to select Mass Storage Mode upon connecting the USB cable:
Otherwise, they remain invisible to Sync in the desktop WMP.
As far as the additional multimedia apps coming with non-WinMo OS’es are concerned, I don’t really recommend them.
I don’t at all recommend Roxio for BlackBerry coming with the (pretty big) download of the BB Desktop manager – it’s far less featureful than WMP and has severe CPU usage problems (RoxMediaDB9.exe using the CPU at 100% even after exiting the main app). Other BB users have found out to be equally bad; see for example THIS and THIS. All in all, never ever even think of even downloading it. WMP is WAY better.
As far as Symian is concerned, Nokia Music Manager (part of PC Suite) is a bit unfriendly too. The new Nokia Music for PC (now in beta) will replace it; it starts shipping with the brand new Nokia N78. I haven’t still tested it; hope (but, sincerely, I doubt) it’ll be on par with the desktop WMP.

2. Main chart
In the following chart, I provide you with a VERY detailed comparison of the currently available, library-capable multimedia players on all the three mobile platforms. Note that the links lead to several screenshots demonstrating the usage of a certain feature.
Library based on…: the categories you can select from. The more, the better. They can be based on either existing tags and the data auto-added by your listening habits. For example, CorePlayer remembers how many times a given song has been played (which may be related to it being popular) and also lets you select the songs to play back based on this frequency.
"All songs" view: if you plan to have access to all songs on your device at once without artist / genre / album etc. restrictions and without having to create playlists and all, you’ll certainly welcome the fact that all of the reviewed players support this operation.
Library scanning: ex/including folders?: for some reasons, you might want to opt for excluding some directories from scanning when building up the library structure to avoid, for example, game sound files being included in the library. (That is, you might want to exclude \Program Files (on Windows Mobile) and the like on your storage cards.)
Only one library, necessitating a card re-read after swapping?, MP3 scanning speed (2136 titles taking up ~7.5G on a 8G class 4 Sandisk microSD card)? and HE-AACv2 scanning speed?: In the chart, I also explain a common test: swapping cards. I have three different microSD cards: a 8GB, a 4GB and a 2GB one. I mostly use the 8GB one in my digicam (so that I can always make sure I have sufficient storage for even longish video recordings), leaving the 4G and 2G cards for my microSD-only WM, Symbian and BB handhelds and handsets. As my music library (even in the super-small, 48 kbps HE-AACv2 a.k.a. aacPlus format) takes up about 7 GBytes, I needed to put one half to the 4GB and some of the rest to the 2GB card and rely on swapping the cards when needed. The need for doing this may be pretty frequent with other users too. In this regard, it’s essential to look at the "Only one library, necessitating a card re-read after swapping?", "MP3 scanning speed" and "HE-AACv2 scanning speed" rows, which (as far as the latter two benchmarks are concerned) compares the speed needed for a full library-(re)read. The former row, "Only one library, necessitating a card re-read after swapping?", elaborates on whether the given player needs to re-read the entire library (which can be very time-consuming with some players / platforms – see for example the HUGE time needed to do this on the Symbian Nokia N95, with CorePlayer!), or, does it have card-specific, stored libraries. As a rule of thumb, players that store their library on memory cards are very fast at swapping cards. In this regard, Nokia’s Music Player and the built-in WMP in Windows Mobile are certainly the best. Some other (Windows Mobile & Symbian) players store their library in the built-in storage and fully recreate it when you insert a new card and initiate a library refresh. However, if you follow my instructions on locating and renaming these library files before inserting the new card, you can avoid all this. Just use a quick, file rename-capable scripting language / environment like nScriptm or MortScript. Search my earlier articles (for example on my blog) for more information on these two scripting languages. They make library switching really-really easy.
Background file / library scanning supported?: Some (not all) players allow for scanning for changes in the background, while letting you do anything else (for example, playing music, traversing the already-built library etc.)
Auto / manual scan? With the latter, scanning initiation?: all the players support automatic scanning when they notice the card has been changed, (re)inserted or a synchronization has taken place. In addition, most of them (except for that of, for example, the BlackBerry OS) also allow for explicit, manual refresh.
Speed of library traversing with a lot of entries: some players (for example, Pocket Tunes on Windows Mobile and, to a lesser degree, Music Player on Symbian) can be / are pretty slow when traversing a library with several hundreds or some thousands of entries.
Again, remember that with the two players mentioned, it’s only over several hundred songs that you’ll start encountering slowdowns while traversing the library, not with fewer ones!
Social networks: Song transfer options from inside the library: Nokia’s Music Player allows for directly uploading your songs to social networks from inside the library view. In this row, I elaborate on the comparable features of other players.
Auto / manual ranking system? If supported, can it be synched back to desktop WMP? Ranking may be very useful, particularly if you restrict playing music only to titles you’ve previously, manually ranked high. Unfortunately, very few players allow for this on mobile platforms: only CorePlayer (WM and Symbian) and WMP (on WM) and neither of them support synchronizing the rating back to the desktop WMP. This should be fixed at least in WMP Mobile!
Manual database comment adding / tag editing?: Symbian’s Music Player and CorePlayer allow for editing tag info (or, with the latter, at least adding a keyword you can use for searching later). Unfortunately, neither player allow for storing the changes back in the files, "only" in the library.
Artist, Album / Contributing Artist separation? : in cases (see the URL in the chart), it might be useful to separate Artist and Contributing Artist. Unfortunately, very few players have so sophisticated a categorizing system in their library.
Multiple same-level category selection to greatly speed up creating playlists / selecting multiple categories to listen to: I’ve already explained the advantages of the multiple category selection capabilities of CorePlayer. As can clearly be seen, not any of the other players are capable of this.
Creating playlists based on library?: all players allow for creating playlists based on the library. In this, I explain the player-specific additional features or problems you may encounter.
Other playlist goodies: sort (TCPMP: only title, of course) Speaking of playlists, some players lack even the most basic sorting capabilities when it comes to playlists. In here, I explain based on what you can do this. As is stated right in the header of the row, TCPMP (for Windows Mobile and Palm) is only capable of sorting by title. Compared to this, CorePlayer’s dedicate sorting capabilities are quite big a leap ahead.
Quick find: particularly with huge libraries (multiGigabyte cards and/or supersmall formats like HE-AACv2), you may have a very hard time finding your stuff if you, for example, forget the artist and, consequently, can’t use the Artist view to find your tunes. Then, some kind of a searching functionality might be advantageous. In this row, I explain how each player fares in this respect.
(HTML original HERE – it’s only in this version that you can click the links!)
Note that on Windows Mobile, HTC Audio Manager (I’ve tested version 1.02.919713) is also library-capable. As it uses the same library as WMP on WM (and is, therefore, fully compatible with the library format WMP creates / uses), I didn’t see the point in including it in the chart. That is, if you insert a card with a WMP library, HTC Audio Manager will also be able to use it. Otherwise, the player is very simple and definitely inferior to Microsoft’s built-in WMP Mobile.
3. Some other links
Use metadata to organize digital media in the Player's library
Alpha Geek: Whip your MP3 library into shape, Part III: Metadata
Symbian: music players: 1 2 (both a bit outdated and lack for example CorePlayer)

I've decided to stick my latest Bibles & tutorials in the General forum for some days in a round-robin fashion. That is, I stick some 2-3 articles at a time and, after some days, I stick another set. This way hopefully everyone will notice them without even searching and they get the exposure they deserve.
All in all, don't be afraid: it's only some days that a given article remains sticky - after that, I stick another one.

UPDATE (09/07/2008):
1. PocketMind's Pocket Music (starting with version 4) is also able to use a full library via Menu / Playlist Organizer:
There, it allows for quick export to the current playlist (which can also be saved to the file system). That way, it only takes some taps to quickly start playing a library selection (select the files you'd like to listen to, tap the rightmost icon at the bottom (with the folder and the arrow), switch to the Curr. Playlist tab and, there, click the leftmost, playback icon. Note that, in this tab, you can also make mass selections using the righmost two icons (checkbox and list):
You'll want to use these before adding to a playlist that already has some elements and you'd want to easily (to avoid having to check in their checkboxes one by one after the addition) delete them before adding the new songs.
Unfortunately, Pocket Music (as opposed to ALL the other, reviewed apps), as of the current, 5.1 version, in no way allows for saving the library info anywhere. This means it'll always rescan your library upon invoking Menu / Playlist Organizer if you, in the meantime, restart the player:
This can be pretty annoying, particularly if you don't want to create playlists but want to dynamically, based on the library, select what you would like to listen to. Also, reading the library isn't very fast either: reading all the metatags of the 4GB HE-AACv2 test suite took 6:49, which is clearly worse than most alternatives on Windows Mobile.
Note that, as with CorePlayer, it supports multiple selections as it uses checkboxes. Note that it allows for switching between different views (Artist / Album, Album / Artist and these prefixed by Genre as in Genre / Artist / Album and Genre / Album / Artist; in addition to this, plain Album title and Artist name catch-ups) using the second icon:
Unfortunately, in addition to the lack of storing the library to avoid having to rebuild it after restarting the player, it doesn't offer too many additional features either. For example, it completely lacks sorting and quick searching capabilities. This was the main reason I haven't included it in the main comparison chart.
2. The just-released Windows Mobile version of Kinoma Play also supports libraries. I'll publish a full review (probably with another update to this bible) later.
3. The recently-released, 3.7 version of Conduits Pocket Player has some enhanced library functionalities. An excerp from the "what's new" list:
"Pocket Player 3.7 enhances the engine that powers its media library and browser in several ways; performance has now been improved through database and file system optimizations, which lead to faster scanning times and fewer track-to-track delays when listening to music.
The Pocket Player 3.7 media browser has also been refined, and is now fully configurable, allowing control over browsing behaviors, such as whether to include local content, network content, or both in the media listings. Users can reorder the browser’s category screen; for example, it can be configured such that the ‘Albums’ option is at the top of the list, and the ‘Songs’ option is on a second page.
Additionally, the media browser now recognizes certain context-sensitive touch gestures, such as swiping left-to-right on an item, or touch-and-holding on an item. These gestures cause actions to be performed, such as adding an item to the current playlist, popping up a menu, or selecting the item for playback. In previous versions of Pocket Player, these actions were not configurable; for version 3.7, these actions can now be remapped based on user preferences."

4. I was wrong about the BlackBerry Media (in BB OS 4.5+): it is able to explore the file system without having to resort to building the library (and/or correct metatags). Just press the Menu button after starting Media and select Explore:

5. (Windows Mobile only) Some clarification about Conduits Pocket Player:
1. Pocket Player supports opening a folder or browsing by metadata
2. Pocket Player has Auto Playlist functionality (but doesn't have an Auto
Playlist editor yet)
3. according to the developer, Pocket Player's metadata support is far more extensive than CorePlayer
4. You can use the Media Browser to play single selections by tapping on
them, or enqueue whole artists or albums by swiping on them (the HTML
summary has a '-' in that box).
5. Pocket Player has integrated album art downloading support (provided by
Amazon.com, which unfortunately disallows the developers to save the images).
6. Pocket Player also parses M4A, Ogg, APE, and FLAC tags. AAC/M4A files are
auto-added to the library if the device has a built-in decoder (most HTC
devices).

[APP][5.0+][v3.8.0.2] BubbleUPnP - UPnP/DLNA/Chromecast Control Point and Renderer

BubbleUPnP on Google Play [current version: 3.8.0.2, released on March 18th 2023]
BubbleUPnP on Amazon appstore [current version: 3.8.0.2, released on March 16th 2023]
BubbleUPnP latest APKs, Google Play version (notably for side-loading on Android TV)
BubbleUPnP latest APK, Amazon appstore version (notably for side-loading on Fire TV)
BubbleUPnP 'Audio Cast' Xposed Module. Only needed on Android < 10. (current version: 1.1, released on April 28th 2021)
BubbleUPnP Server home page (download and documentation) [current version: 0.9-update46, released on February 4th 2023]
BubbleUPnP home page
Stream all your music, videos and photos to various devices in your house:
Chromecast
DLNA TVs
gaming consoles: Xbox, Playstation (from XMB)
UPnP/DLNA renderers: XBMC, WDTV Live, other Android devices, ...
various HiFi gear from Sonos, Denon, Pioneer, Onkyo and many more
local Android playback
BubbleUPnP can access your media from a lot of sources, including:
UPnP/DLNA media servers: most NASes, XBMC, Plex, Twonky, Serviio, Windows Media Player and many more
local media stored on your Android device
cloud media: Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, Google Music, Google+
SMB Shares
WebDAV (ownCloud, NextCloud, webserver...)
media from other apps such as web browsers and file managers, using Share/Send
captured audio from most other apps. Requires Xposed (root)
Shoutcast radio (with XiiaLive)
BubbleUPnP is a versatile app packed with many features for you to discover, some of which are:
extensive Chromecast support: play incompatible Chromecast media with transcoding (*), subtitles, audio/video track selection (*)
fast and secure Internet access to your home media while on the go, from mobile and WiFi networks (*)
playback queue, editable playlists, scrobbling, sleep timer, various shuffle modes
integrated full screen image viewer and controller
media download to your SD Card
...and much more!
(*) Some features are provided by BubbleUPnP Server, an optional software that can be installed on any machine on your local network to provide additional services. To learn more about BubbleUPnP Server, visit https://bubblesoftapps.com.
Some features are restricted and can be unlocked by purchasing the BubbleUPnP License app.
If something is not working, you can record a log file and mail it to me at [email protected]:
- launch the app
- go into More > Gear icon > Control
- Enable "logging to file" (at the end of the page).
- IMPORTANT: Exit the app (More > "X" bottom left icon)
- restart the app
- run the app and trigger the problem to troubleshoot
- exit the app
- email me the files found on internal storage:
On Android 10 and below:
/Android/data/com.bubblesoft.android.bubbleupnp/log.txt
/Android/data/com.bubblesoft.android.bubbleupnp/prev_log.txt
On Android 11 and higher:
/Documents/com.bubblesoft.android.bubbleupnp_log.txt
/Documents/prev_com.bubblesoft.android.bubbleupnp_log.txt (if present)
You can access them with a file manager app and share them to your email app for sending them.
IMPORTANT: Make sure to not restart BubbleUPnP until you have sent or saved the log file as it is overwritten on app startup.

Looks like an awesome app - all the features I want... BUT it is not currently recognizing my Synology NAS (upnp/dlna). Win 7 media player works great.
EDIT - Sorry it did eventually show up. It would be nice to have some asynchronous loading notifications. Also, if I queue up an entire genre, for example, it takes a looong time to load/start playing (thousands of songs). Otherwise looking good.

radeon_x said:
Looks like an awesome app - all the features I want... BUT it is not currently recognizing my Synology NAS (upnp/dlna). Win 7 media player works great.
EDIT - Sorry it did eventually show up. It would be nice to have some asynchronous loading notifications. Also, if I queue up an entire genre, for example, it takes a looong time to load/start playing (thousands of songs). Otherwise looking good.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the feedback.
I'll think again about async loading notifications (I suppose you mean loading of folders here), but I do not like the additional clutter they involve.
For the second point, the playlist is not designed to handle thousands of tracks. What what your exact use case ? Doing shuffle on an entire genre ?
--------
I updated the first post with an Android Market link to install the app.

bubbleguuum said:
For the second point, the playlist is not designed to handle thousands of tracks. What what your exact use case ? Doing shuffle on an entire genre ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, exactly. But after using it for a while, I don't mind the delay all that much since it only happens on the initial adding the songs to the playlist. Once the songs are added there are no slowdowns.
No other complaints really - hands down the best functioning and looking UPnP audio player on the market.

excellent app, works great with PS3MediaServer
minor issues:
reports search as not supported but I guess that's a PS3MediaServer problem?
doesn't show any album art
I have a DLNA TV (LG_42LD790) but it doesn't show up as a renderer, only local renderer available
how much are you going to charge for the unlocker?

jonengland said:
excellent app, works great with PS3MediaServer
minor issues:
reports search as not supported but I guess that's a PS3MediaServer problem?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, it doesn't support searching at all.
I tried PS3MediaServer and it is not the best server you can find for audio (only folder browsing, no search, some bugs in returned data).
I found 2 bugs in less than 1h usage
doesn't show any album art
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It likely doesn't expose any album art to the app.
I have a DLNA TV (LG_42LD790) but it doesn't show up as a renderer, only local renderer available
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most DLNA TV are not remotely controllable to push content. You can just browse from their interface to play content.
how much are you going to charge for the unlocker?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Undecided yet but it won't break the bank .

Correction: album art is working ok with ps3mediaserver, think I must have been playing tracks without art, doh!

1: has the potential of being better than upnplay (although the latter is free & ad-free)
2: needs a landscape mode (or use system/sensor detection)
3: exit on back key press
4: ability to add WAN server
5: use built-in player (like you already do for music types) for divx+mp3,x264+aac,mpeg2 files (detect via 4cc and/or extension - avi,divx,mkv,mp4,mpg,mpeg,vob,m2v)
open external player for other file types (mov/qt/rm/ac3); the system, hardware renderer should be able to decode most of the aforementioned files, thus eliminating the need for an additional app expressedly for that purpose (vplayer/mobo etc)
This COULD give you an edge over the other upnp/dlna solutions, since none of them provide this functionality (yet).

My Setup: Twonky Media Server and WD TV Live as Renderer!
This setup works fine with other apps, also on iOS...
BubbleUPNP looks really good, BUT:
- the timeline / song progress bar (dont know how you call it) doesn't work (even if use the setting 'use other...')!
-> so as a result, the next song in the playlist doesnt play
So by now, the app is useless. Would like to use yours, all the others work, but yours seems more smooth and has a better usability.
Looking forward to some updates!
Would def. pay for this if the issue gets fixed!

adwinp said:
1: has the potential of being better than upnplay (although the latter is free & ad-free)
2: needs a landscape mode (or use system/sensor detection)
3: exit on back key press
4: ability to add WAN server
5: use built-in player (like you already do for music types) for divx+mp3,x264+aac,mpeg2 files (detect via 4cc and/or extension - avi,divx,mkv,mp4,mpg,mpeg,vob,m2v)
open external player for other file types (mov/qt/rm/ac3); the system, hardware renderer should be able to decode most of the aforementioned files, thus eliminating the need for an additional app expressedly for that purpose (vplayer/mobo etc)
This COULD give you an edge over the other upnp/dlna solutions, since none of them provide this functionality (yet).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the feedback
2. Not a priority for the initial stable version but in consideration for future versions. Landscape is mostly useful for tablets as it is the natural orientation.
3. You can exit the app via the "Exit" menu action found in the Now Playing tab.
4. definitely on the todo list although probably not in the first stable version
5 in consideration for a future verson

debay said:
My Setup: Twonky Media Server and WD TV Live as Renderer!
This setup works fine with other apps, also on iOS...
BubbleUPNP looks really good, BUT:
- the timeline / song progress bar (dont know how you call it) doesn't work (even if use the setting 'use other...')!
-> so as a result, the next song in the playlist doesnt play
Would def. pay for this if the issue gets fixed!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for reporting, it is a sign that the app has trouble getting timing info from the WD TV Live. There's logging inside the app that should be able to tell why and allow me to fix it. Can you record a log file following the step below, and send me the log to [email protected]:
- launch the app
- go into the Settings page (Menu > Settings) and then in the Advanced Settings section
- check "Enable logging to file".
- IMPORTANT: Exit the app using the "Exit " menu item found in menu of tab "Now Playing"
- restart the app.
- handle the app to trigger the problem
- connect your phone to your PC or MAC and mail me the file /Android/data/com.bubblesoft.android.bubbleupnp/log.txt found on the SD Card

Using as Renderer and Controller on two devices
Hi,
I am using your app to control my old HD2 (CM7) connected to external speakers with my Galaxy S2.
I am having some issues that when I start it up to control the renderer and the renderer have been running for some time, sometimes it will not find/connect to the renderer.
If I restart both apps then they will usually pick up and connect to each other again. I am not sure if this is my HD2 going to sleep in some way that makes it not being visible. But it will still continue to play music from my upnp server (WMP7) though I can't control or add new tracks...
I will put both devices to log when I am home later tonight and send you some log files that hopefully will help.
Thanks for all the hard work!
Cheers
Jonas

jonolo said:
Hi,
If I restart both apps then they will usually pick up and connect to each other again. I am not sure if this is my HD2 going to sleep in some way that makes it not being visible. But it will still continue to play music from my upnp server (WMP7) though I can't control or add new tracks...
Jonas
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just upgraded my SGS from stock 2.2 to CM7 and fixed today a WiFi connectivity issues that is related to sleep mode. It is not CM7 specific but related to how the WiFi chipset operates when going into power save mode.
So look forward to the next beta which should be out soon.

Using WMP as media player
Hi,
I just installed BubbleUPnP, and it looks really great. I already tested a few similar apps (2Player, Andromote, etc) but it's definetely the most impressive and promising one.
I just encounter a small problem when I enqueue a few music files and then launch the playlist. it sends each file to WMP but directly goes to the next one until the last one. So, only the last file is read.
A workaround is to launch the playlist with only 1 item, and then add other items while playing. Don't know if the problem comes from BubbleUPnP or WMP...
Also FYI, my Synology is well recognized, as well as my Samsung LED TV.

[email protected] said:
Hi,
I just encounter a small problem when I enqueue a few music files and then launch the playlist. it sends each file to WMP but directly goes to the next one until the last one. So, only the last file is read.
A workaround is to launch the playlist with only 1 item, and then add other items while playing. Don't know if the problem comes from BubbleUPnP or WMP...
TV.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for reporting, I can reproduce this issue so it will likely be fixed in the next beta.
Can you try playing a video on your Samsung TV an tell me if it works ?

I haven't tried it as there is no point, being a BubbleDS user already (and loving it, might I add...feels like a factory app and works far better than anything on the Apple side). But just out of interest, will this be a separate product or will BubbleDS be merged with it?
Sent from my Desire HD

lambomanx1 said:
I haven't tried it as there is no point, being a BubbleDS user already (and loving it, might I add...feels like a factory app and works far better than anything on the Apple side). But just out of interest, will this be a separate product or will BubbleDS be merged with it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
BubbleUPnP and BubbleDS will remain separate apps (mostly to avoid to clutter BubbleDS with unneeded stuff).
The next major version of BubbleDS will be updated to use the same codebase than BubbleUPnP, which will bring some fixes and even some new functionnality (Shuffle Library).
As a bonus, BubbleUPnP will be a free app to use for BubbleDS owners, as it will act as an unlocker.

Thanks for the clarification
Sent from my Desire HD

bubbleguuum said:
Can you try playing a video on your Samsung TV an tell me if it works ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I tried. It works like a charm. Furthermore, my TV shows SRT subtitles as if I launched the video from the TV itself.

0.9.9.1 available on the Market.
WDTV Live as a renderer may be partially or totally fixed, needs testing.
Library: fixed "Browse timeout" errors specific to Android 3.0.1+ (tablets)
Library: faster browsing
Library: display spinning wheel while loading folders / searching
Library: browse compatibility fixes with some Media Servers
Library: tweaked album list layout to make more of the album title visible
fixed wifi issue (on some devices) preventing from playback advance in playlist (and possibly other network issues) after screen has turned off
fixed track advance in Playlist not working correctly with WMP and likely other renderers
videos can now be downloaded in the Videos subfolder of the download folder
Now Playing: display container format of videos
Settings: added rate app button, known issues button
obscure crash fixes

[Q] The features you miss in the TF101 (compared to a notebook)

Hello Guys!
I am planning to get one of the Transformers (probably 32G+dock) and sell my notebook (will still have a desktop computer).
Now, I'm on a performance notebook (with piss-poor battery life), but I do not use it - only for web surfing, chat, watching movies, sending stuff & downloading - and maybe some games (1x a month LOL)
So my question is - what are the features you like or MISS in the Transformer compared to a notebook.
Thank you!

1) Proper browser with adblock.
2) Proper audio player (like Amarok/Clementine/Exaile etc.).
3) USB port for attaching keyboard (I don't have the dock).

Better task swapping(alt+tab) or windowed view.
Text selection. Android NEEDS a better text selection desperately.
Other than that it makes a pretty good laptop replacement for simple things. Using remote desktop to a windows machine, greatly improves #1, and moderately improves #2.

Magnesus said:
1) Proper browser with adblock.
2) Proper audio player (like Amarok/Clementine/Exaile etc.).
3) USB port for attaching keyboard (I don't have the dock).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
firefox is available in android, and you can add the adblock plugin.
also a system-wide adblock via apps.
i have no idea what you would qualify as a "proper" audio player. unless you're refering stictly to that list as "proper", the stock player is also a proper player, as well as plently you'd find in the market.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

gottahavit said:
Better task swapping(alt+tab) or windowed view.
Text selection. Android NEEDS a better text selection desperately.
Other than that it makes a pretty good laptop replacement for simple things. Using remote desktop to a windows machine, greatly improves #1, and moderately improves #2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Alt+tab works with the keyboard dock.
Windowed view won't happen until there is a significant increase in system resources available to these devices. Everything currently runs in full screen because 1GB of RAM is just barely sufficient for most of the current apps, and Android devices don't use swap, which means apps get flushed out of memory if the system starts running low on RAM. Windowed apps would crash or degrade under the current Android memory management scheme, which was instated because phones and tablets are so starved for resources when compared to traditional desktops and laptops.
Text selection requires a long press because click and drag on a touchscreen handles panning. I'm not sure what else you're expecting from text selection when many apps allow you to modify the size of the selection to your heart's content. Those that don't integrate nicely with Android's built-in text selection are the fault of the developers.

Thank you for the replies.
Well, Just as finalhit said - firefox has a plugin, and AFAIK Dolphin Browser, too. And by the way, Ad-free is not working on these devices? Like on my rooted Desire?
Proper audio player - I saw the transformer in action and the stock player is great, also have purchased PowerAMP for my phone and the developer says, it'll work on HC 3.2, too. Will see.

Carrying on with Text Input ~
Android needs to be able to support Rich Text in Browser Email Apps (e.g. Yahoo) and also Copy/Paste text into an Email.
Copy/Paste works in Gmail but not in say Yahoo Mail.

What I miss most, is that the TF does not have a digital audio output via USB.
A notebook can simply be connected with a DAC by USB and I can listen to MP3s over my Hifi system ...

FrankRr said:
What I miss most, is that the TF does not have a digital audio output via USB.
A notebook can simply be connected with a DAC by USB and I can listen to MP3s over my Hifi system ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd like that too, I tried plugging my USB SoundBlaster in but nothing happened.

What I miss most is a decent productivity suite, WP & Spreadsheets. I am using the beta of SoftMaker Office & it will do the job when it's released, but at the moment it crashes a lot & isn't mainstream.
Printing isn't that easy either ....

1) Definitely better text selection/manipulation - it works, but it doesn't feel right
2) Right mouse button - yes, it has long press, but it's long press, meaning it's not very fast. Make the right track pad button function the same as long press, and it will feel almost like a notebook.
3) Better file manipulation/transfer speed. Copying and pasting/moving files is a pain and is very very slow. Astro works, but it's nothing compared to the ease of windows/linux.
Android has all the functions I want, a lot of them just don't feel natural, or are cumbersome to use.

I like my TF, but I think it can't replace a notebook, unless we can port windows 7 on it..

mikelt89 said:
I like my TF, but I think it can't replace a notebook, unless we can port windows 7 on it..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Windows 8 might run on it, as it has arm support and the TF meets the minimum requirements that MS has released so far.

cottinghamm said:
What I miss most is a decent productivity suite, WP & Spreadsheets. I am using the beta of SoftMaker Office & it will do the job when it's released, but at the moment it crashes a lot & isn't mainstream.
Printing isn't that easy either ....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Documents to Go works well (given the limitations of the input methods, screen size, etc.)
Printign is a major issue. There are paid apps that I hear do printing OK, but they require a server program to run on a computer already connected to the printer. I have yet to find one that works well with a networked printer (either shared through the native Windows functionality or a dedicated print server).

FrankRr said:
What I miss most, is that the TF does not have a digital audio output via USB.
A notebook can simply be connected with a DAC by USB and I can listen to MP3s over my Hifi system ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can indirectly output to a DAC if you use the HDMI port. I have an Asus VH238H monitor that includes a SPDIF out, so I just hook up the Transformer via HDMI and have the monitor output the sound to my DAC.

For printing I use CloudPrint So far it works greatly (home & office) on my Desire - so that won't be a problem.

finalhit said:
firefox is available in android, and you can add the adblock plugin.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Firefox for Android is very far from a proper browser (in my opinion, proper browser is for example Google Chrome and desktop Firefox) and it's adblock is far from it's desktop counterpart. Maybe the new version will be better. In my opinion actually Firefox is worst browser for Android (the best being Dolphin Pad).
i have no idea what you would qualify as a "proper" audio player. unless you're refering stictly to that list as "proper", the stock player is also a proper player, as well as plently you'd find in the market.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try using Amarok, Clementine, Exile or sth similar (or Foobar if you only have Windows, but it's quite bad looking). I tested most the music players in the market and none of them are even comparable. So I resigned from using Tranformer for listening to music and bought USB sound card for my laptop instead (without it the sound quality of my laptop was... well quite horrible ).
Amarok/Clementine/Exile have clear interface with your files or library on the left (you can use both) and a playlist on the right. You can add tracks to the playlist, remove them, shuffle them, star songs, generate playlists based on the stars, select to repeat a track or repeat the whole playlist, filter the library (for example - you type John and you get all John Williams albums listed), the playlist is created by drag and drop etc. Also they play all music formats (flac, mpc included). If you never used a music player like this - try them, they are really good.
Most (all of them?) players in android market are designed for playing one album at a time (no playlist), have interface more suited for phones than tablets and no ability to use folder view (some can but are regenerating the index every time I unmount my samba share - and it takes ages). If I'm wrong - and there is sth like Amarok on the Market - please tell, I'll buy it in a second.

Magnesus said:
Try using Amarok, Clementine, Exile or sth similar (or Foobar if you only have Windows, but it's quite bad looking). I tested most the music players in the market and none of them are even comparable. So I resigned from using Tranformer for listening to music and bought USB sound card for my laptop instead (without it the sound quality of my laptop was... well quite horrible ).
Amarok/Clementine/Exile have clear interface with your files or library on the left (you can use both) and a playlist on the right. You can add tracks to the playlist, remove them, shuffle them, star songs, generate playlists based on the stars, select to repeat a track or repeat the whole playlist, filter the library (for example - you type John and you get all John Williams albums listed), the playlist is created by drag and drop etc. Also they play all music formats (flac, mpc included). If you never used a music player like this - try them, they are really good.
Most (all of them?) players in android market are designed for playing one album at a time (no playlist), have interface more suited for phones than tablets and no ability to use folder view (some can but are regenerating the index every time I unmount my samba share - and it takes ages). If I'm wrong - and there is sth like Amarok on the Market - please tell, I'll buy it in a second.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just because the default Music player doesn't show the now playing and playlist views on the same page together doesn't mean you don't have such functionality. Remember what you're dealing with here; it's just a 10.1 inch screen. It doesn't take much to clutter the UI with a lot of menu options, especially when all the UI elements have to be doubled and tripled in size in order to be legible on the tiny screen.
Now, as far as the features of the default Music app, there's plenty to keep most listeners happy. Upon starting the app, in the upper left hand corner you have the ability to sort your music collection by New and recent, Albums, Artists, Songs, Playlists, and Genres. On the right, you can Search through all of your music, refining your results by the previously mentioned sort categories. Once you choose a specific artist, for instance, you can tap once on the "All songs" option to play all of the artist's selected music, or you can just select one album of theirs to play, either of these options taking you to a list of songs added to the queue. Long press will allow you to add the selected songs to the playlist of your choice. Once in the now playing queue, you can sort the songs by name or by album, or shuffle the whole thing. Then once you finally play a song, the now playing screen allows for toggling shuffle and advanced repeat functions just like what you're used to with other applications. The default player also supports mp3, ogg, and flac, and probably some other formats that I haven't tried yet. The only thing missing is the ability to "star" your music, which is a feature I always saw as pointless.
Seriously, why would you even bother with third party music apps at this point?

And what about the microSD slot on the tablet? I'm planning to get a 32GB A-DATA - will it work normally like with my Desire?

rtadams89 said:
Documents to Go works well (given the limitations of the input methods, screen size, etc.)
Printign is a major issue. There are paid apps that I hear do printing OK, but they require a server program to run on a computer already connected to the printer. I have yet to find one that works well with a networked printer (either shared through the native Windows functionality or a dedicated print server).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
printing works well for me, but yes, requires a server at this point -- free app: https://market.android.com/search?q=printershare&so=1&c=apps
I do use it as a laptop replacement. I find that 95% of the time I do not need to go back to my laptop; however, I do miss the ability to have more than one app on the screen at once (chatting and browsing at the same time is annoying). I also miss a full office program. I have tried DTG and polaris, and both work quite well by comparison to other office apps, but are not a replacement for MS Office or Libreoffice.
I also have a server in the basement for media serving running ESXi 4.1. I have 2 VMs on it: File/media server running ubuntu 11.04 and a windows VM for running various other things like video transcoding. I would not want to do either of those functions on an android tablet either.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

[APP][4.0+][V2.1.4][Free/AdFree/Open Source][Chromecast][Wear] Voice Control for Plex

Control Plex with your voice! Voice Control for Plex allows you to use Voice commands to play and control media on various Plex clients. Root is no longer required!
{
"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"
}
Requirements:
Android 4.0+
A Plex client
Optional:
utter! (and Tasker)
AutoVoice (and Tasker)
Xposed Framework and Google Search API
Android Wear
There are four ways to trigger Voice Recognition:
1) Simply install the home screen shortcut via the menu button from the Main Settings screen (or manually).
2) Use utter! to pass voice commands to Tasker, which passes those commands on to this app.
3) Similar to #3, but using AutoVoice instead of utter! AutoVoice allows input through Google Now (no root required)
4) If you are rooted, you may install the Xposed Framework (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1574401) and the Google Search/Now API (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2554173) to have your voice commands passed from Google Now into this app.
Upon first launch, you will have the ability to login to Plex. This is recommended as it will allow you to stream from any shared servers you have access to, and your own if it requires Plex login. After initial scanning for servers and clients, you can select your default server via the left navigation menu (if you have multiple PMS's, you can leave this setting to "Scan All" so that all of the servers are scanned for media. If you only have one PMS, however, you should set it here as scanning all servers will cause a delay in starting playback.) Then, select a Plex client via the Cast button in the Toolbar. You can trigger voice recognition via the app logo on the main screen, or via a homescreen shortcut (which you can create via the left navigation menu). Simply start up your chosen Voice Recognition method, and speak any of the below examples to trigger playback on the chosen Plex client. You can also specify a client to stream to by adding "on <client name>" to what you say to Google Now.
Version 2.0 features Android Wear Support, for an in-app-purchase of $2. Once the app detects your Wear Device, it will give you the opportunity to purchase support. If this doesn't happen automatically, just check your Wear Device for the "Wear Control for Plex" app and run it - then check your handheld. Your Wear Device can trigger voice input by running the Wear app. If the paired handheld is connected to a Plex client that is currently playing some media, the Wear app will instead show a now playing screen, with the following functionality: play/pause, stop, and trigger voice input. The primary function showed in the default Wear notification can be set via the handheld options menu - you may choose either Play/Pause, or Trigger Voice Input.
If you find this app useful, please consider purchasing the Donate app to support further development! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atomjack.vcfpd (If you purchase this app and have it installed on your device, Chromecast and Wear support will work without having to purchase either)
Also, if you'd like to help translate this app into other languages, please see the wiki article: https://github.com/atomjack/VoiceControlForPlex/wiki/Localization-Instructions
Usage:
For Movies:
"Watch Aliens"
"Watch Children of Men"
"Watch movie Fight Club" (I guess specifying "movie" would only really be useful for a movie with "Episode" in the title?)
For TV Shows:
"Watch season 1 episode 5 of Homeland"
"Watch The Newsroom Season 1 Episode 2"
"Watch Breaking Bad season 5 episode 8"
"Watch episode Once More With Feeling of Buffy The Vampire Slayer" (Specifying the name of the episode)
"Watch Game of Thrones episode The Rains of Castamere" (Alternate)
"Watch the next episode of The Walking Dead" (uses Plex's "On Deck")
"Watch the latest episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" (plays the most recent episode by air date)
For Music:
"Listen to Black Sands by Bonobo" - play a single song
"Listen to the album Drink The Sea by The Glitch Mob" - to play an album
"Listen to the album Music Has The Right To Children" (Artist is optional. Specify if more than one match is found)
"Listen to Pinback" (play all songs by an artist, shuffled)
For playback:
"Pause Playback"
"Resume Playback"
"Stop Playback"
Seeking:
"Offset 1 hour 15 minutes 30 seconds"
"Offset 30 minutes 5 seconds"
(Any combination of hours, minutes, and/or seconds, in that order)
(You may also use 'timecode' instead of 'offset')
Audio/Subtitle Streams:
Cycle Subtitles
Cycle Audio
Subtitle/Subtitles Off/On (anything with either "subtitle off/on" or "subtitles off/on" will work, e.g. "turn subtitles off", "subtitle on", etc)
It does some fuzzy matching on movie/show/artist/album names, and will prefer an exact match if one is found.
Clients support:
Plex Home Theater (OS X, Linux and Windows)
Android
iOS
Roku
Chromecast (in-app purchase)
Download: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atomjack.vcfp
(Note:If you have been using a previous version < 1.5, please uninstall it as the package name has changed)
Also, I'll be pushing betas out from time to time, so if you'd like to try them you can opt in here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.atomjack.vcfp.
Source: https://github.com/atomjack/VoiceControlForPlex
Changelog:
Code:
[b]Version 2.1.4[/b]
Added local media playback. This feature is locked to one minute at a time, and can be unlocked via an in-app purchase (Navigation Menu->Settings).
Chromecast playback can now be previewed for one minute at a time, and can be unlocked via in-app purchase (Navigation Menu->Settings).
Fixed display of cinema trailers.
Cinema Trailers setting is now used for PC, Roku, etc. Plex clients, to provide a more consistent experience.
Clicking the mic on the now playing screen will pause playback, then resume once voice input is done (if media wasn't already paused).
Redesigned the layout of some now playing screens to get rid of superfluous information.
Sped up server discovery, especially for servers that are external to the local network.
Added tutorial overlay to main screen to point how how to start using the app.
Fixed playback of music on Plex Media Player clients.
Changed higher end bitrates to 1080p for local video playback.
Fixed display of dividers in big notifications.
Added bitrate selector to local video player controller.
Fixed specifying "on this device" when triggering playback.
Squashed various other bugs.
[b]Version 2.1.3[/b]
Added usage hints to main screen. Use Navigation Drawer->Settings->Usage Hints to disable.
Added option to not show Now Playing screen when receiving voice input from Google Now.
Bug fixes.
[b]Version 2.1.0[/b]
Material Design UI Overhaul
Added volume control for Chromecast clients
[b]Version 2.0.8[/b]
Added audio/subtitle stream support for Chromecast clients.
Other fixes and improvements related to Chromecast.
[b]Version 2.0.7[/b]
Added Subtitle/Audio Stream support (NOTE: Does not work on Chromecast clients yet).
Fixed manual login.
[b]Version 2.0.6[/b]
Fix crash from using Scan All Servers.
Added notification when a local server that denies access is found.
[b]Version 2.0.5[/b]
On Now Playing screen, tap to pause and swipe left/right to seek back/forward.
Added support for audio-only Chromecast devices.
Fixed playing all songs by an artist.
Fixed using the mic button on the now playing screen to trigger new playback, when used with Chromecast.
Fixed display of notifications (background color).
Fixed bug that caused inconsistent connection to non-Chromecast Plex clients.
Better support for Plex Media Player.
Other minor bug fixes.
[b]Version 2.0.4[/b]
Added Swedish translations (Bjorn Komlanz).
Cinema Trailers will not play for movies that are resuming progress.
Added ability to email device logs.
Added Chromecast Video Options.
Handle invalid access token properly.
Fixed seeking when using Chromecast.
Seek to relative position with forward/rewind.
Fixed integration with Google Search API.
Various bug fixes.
[b]Version 2.0.3[/b]
Added German translations (Claas-Thido Pfaff).
Playback can now be adjusted by saying "Pause", "Play", and "Stop".
[b]Version 2.0.2[/b]
Support for setting number of Cinema Trailers to display before a movie.
[b]Version 2.0.1[/b]
Support for displaying fan art slideshow on Chromecast
[b]Version 2.0[/b]
Added Android Wear Support.
Consolidated Server/Client scanning, which will run smoother.
Plex Server Connections will now expire an hour after discovery. This allows using a local server then moving to another location and accessing that server remotely (previously, you'd have to scan for servers again so that the remote connection would be used instead of local).
Various bug fixes and enhancements.
[b]Version 1.9.4[/b]
Specifying a client in the spoken query now works again.
[b]Version 1.9.3[/b]
Bug fixes.
[b]Version 1.9.2[/b]
[Chromecast] Fixed rewind/fast forward buttons.
[Chromecast] Fixed crash when using a shortcut with a Chromecast specified as the client.
Bug fixes.
[b]Version 1.9.1[/b]
Added Chromecast support (in-app purchase)
Now Playing screen is now a full remote control.
Added Spanish translations (berzhot).
Lots of bug fixes.
[b]Version 1.8.4[/b]
Fixed crash when scanning all servers.
[b]Version 1.8.3[/b]
Added Pin login.
Subscribe to player and exit from Now Playing screen if the player stops.
Improved local client discovery, including support for Roku and clients that have no local server.
Scan all of a Plex Media Server's connections to find one that works. This will enable viewing content from a server you own but are trying to view from remotely.
Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented playback when a client is specified in the spoken query.
Bug fixes.
[b]Version 1.8[/b]
Added Plex login, including support for shared libraries.
Added ability to hardcode server and client into a homescreen shortcut.
Don't ignore Plex clients < 1.0.7 unless they are a desktop client (was hiding Rasplex).
Increased support for localization.
Added French localization (Gostron).
Fixed Scan All functionality.
Various bug fixes and enhancements
[b]Version 1.7.1[/b]
Fixed bug that prevented Install Tasker Project action from being shown in the menu unless you have both utter! and AutoVoice installed - it should show if you have either installed.
Fixed hardcoded value in strings.xml
[b]Version 1.7[/b]
Added homescreen widget & shortcut.
Added support for utter! and AutoVoice, in combination with Tasker. To use Voice Control for Plex with utter! or AutoVoice, import the Tasker Project via the menu button.
Use separate feedback for informational messages and error messages.
Added pause, resume and stop playback support.
Added ability to seek to a specified time. See Usage Examples for details.
Various fixes.
[b]Version 1.6[/b]
Fixed Plex Home Theater version number checking.
Added Google Search incompatibility message when Google Search > 3.3 is installed.
[b]Version 1.5[/b]
Changed name of app.
Show client type when choosing one.
Added support for playing an album by an artist.
Removed feedback selection - only Toast notifications are used.
Bug fixes.
[b]Version 1.4[/b]
Changed "watch latest episode" to show most recently aired episode, and added "Watch the next episode" to use Plex's on deck, instead.
Fixed a few bugs.
Added BugSense.
[b]Version 1.3[/b]
Fixed bug when client was a Roku, which was causing search to hang.
Fixed bugs that would cause search to hang when scanning servers that have 0 tv/movie sections.
Added initial music support, but only for playing a single song.
[b]Version 1.21[/b]
Bug fixes.
[b]Version 1.2[/b]
Added ability to scan all available Plex Media Servers.
Added ability to specify client when specifying media to play.
Added help buttons to settings screen.
Moved usage examples into a popup.
Added now playing screen.
[b]Version 1.1[/b]
Added option to use Voice or Toast feedback.

Thanks for the thread!.
I installed this, but on my local wifi, the app is not seeing my plex server. I have a couple of Roku's using it as well as multiple Android devices. Do I need to do anything special to get the app to see it?

trunzoc said:
I installed this, but on my local wifi, the app is not seeing my plex server. I have a couple of Roku's using it as well as multiple Android devices. Do I need to do anything special to get the app to see it?
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You shouldn't. It's not even seeing your Plex Media Server? What platform/version?
The only clients that are supported right now are Plex Home Theater (Windows & OS X, and perhaps Linux?). I'm going to venture a guess that the Roku Plex client isn't able to listen for remote commands like PHT is.
It looks like the Android client is visible to the server (unlike Roku), however I'm not yet sure if it's possible to trigger playback on it remotely like it is with the desktop application. I'll see what I can figure out.

I understand about Roku probably not working, but as a huge Plex fan and Tasker fan, I need to make sure you are able to get this to market, hehe.
I am using Plex Media Server for Windows Version 0.9.8.17, on Windows 7.
I hit search and get the popup saying "Searching for Plex servers", but then it just says "No Plex Servers Found"
I think the issue is that I have it setup to require login on local networks. I turn that off and I can see it.
Update:
I turned the local logic requirement off and installed Plex Home Theater on my PC. I was able to connect to it with your app and start a few movies. Interestingly, it did show Several of the Android clients as well, but I didn't try them.
It's awesome. worked well. nice and simple.
Suggestions...
1) Work in a way to enter a username/password for local authentication
2) Please add an option to turn the voice confirmation on and off.
3) Maybe add an option for toast instead?
4) Perhaps tasker integration. What's I'm envisioning is this operating completely as a plugin that will allow you to set the client and/or server dynamically.
i.e. "Watch Blue Velvet on PC1", "Watch Captain America on Xoom", "Watch American Horror Story Season 3 Episode 9 on LivingRoom PC"
I could then setup a task where I split the command into "Watch <whatever>" and "on <whatever>" I could then pass the "watch" part as the actual command and the "on" part as the client"
Does that make sense?

Update again. It DOES work with my Android clients.
Does it also work for music?
Sent from my AT&T S4 running KangaKat.

Awesome! I hadn't thought of trying my Xoom.
I think first I'll add the option to choose between voice and toast feedback.
I don't think Tasker integration will be needed. What I'm thinking is for it to just scan all available servers for the media. Perhaps the option to choose a default client when one is not specified, but it will be easy enough to listen for "on (.*)" at the end of whatever is spoken to specify which client should be used for playback.
I can probably get the voice/toast option done later tonight (I'm out atm) and will work on the other stuff after that.
Edit:Voice/Toast option done, new version in OP.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Great little plugin for the Google Search API this mate, great work.
You say you'd love suggestions, well OK then, what would it take to be able to ask it to open a tv show from a plugin like LetMeWatchThis. Is that a hell of a lot of work or just not doable?

mickeyjaydee said:
You say you'd love suggestions, well OK then, what would it take to be able to ask it to open a tv show from a plugin like LetMeWatchThis. Is that a hell of a lot of work or just not doable?
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Hmmm. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to trigger playback of something from that plugin, but wasn't able to get it to work. It might be doable, but I noticed that each movie or tv show episode you try to watch has several different sources to choose from, not all of which work. Seems like it would be a lot of work to implement that. If someone wants to fork my repo and give it a try they're more than welcome to, but right now I'd like to focus on other aspects of the app first.
I've working on a big update to allow having the app scan all available media servers on the network, as well as specifying a client to play on (by appending "on <client name>" to what you say). It's pretty close to being ready, hopefully sometime this week.

No worries mate I thought it might be a lot of work.
Looking forward to your next update.

New version in OP. You can now have the app scan all available plex media servers on your network when you do a search, or set one to always stream from (if you only have one PMS, I suggest you set it, as scanning takes longer to trigger playback). You can also specify a client to stream to, e.g. "Watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones on <some plex client name>".
I also added a now playing screen. Here's two examples of what that looks like:
Happy New Year!!

Nice.
I have a couple questiosn though...
1) Why are there now 2 icons? One is the setup, but the other opens a blank screen. I was thinking it was the "Now Playing" info, but it never seems to populate for me.
2) Maybe related to 1,,, When I use the app, it finds and plays the video on the proper device, but I sticks at a window with a "Searching" popup that never goes away. Sometimes it FCs after it starts playing before the "Searching" popup comes up. Is that supposed to be the "Now Playing" info screen searching for the info?

trunzoc said:
1) Why are there now 2 icons? One is the setup, but the other opens a blank screen. I was thinking it was the "Now Playing" info, but it never seems to populate for me.
2) Maybe related to 1,,, When I use the app, it finds and plays the video on the proper device, but I sticks at a window with a "Searching" popup that never goes away. Sometimes it FCs after it starts playing before the "Searching" popup comes up. Is that supposed to be the "Now Playing" info screen searching for the info?
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1) Woops. Manifest file was configured wrong. I've updated the OP with a new link for 1.2, so try that instead (such a small change I didn't see the need for a new version #).
2) Hmmm not sure. Can you attach a logcat? You can filter by "com.atomjack" so it doesn't show extraneous stuff not related to the app.
But yes, when the app first launches after you do a query, it'll load a blank screen with the searching box, and then it should change that blank screen to be the now playing screen. Looks like something is messing up and FC'ing it before it can load that screen, though.

atom_jack said:
1) Woops. Manifest file was configured wrong. I've updated the OP with a new link for 1.2, so try that instead (such a small change I didn't see the need for a new version #).
2) Hmmm not sure. Can you attach a logcat? You can filter by "com.atomjack" so it doesn't show extraneous stuff not related to the app.
But yes, when the app first launches after you do a query, it'll load a blank screen with the searching box, and then it should change that blank screen to be the now playing screen. Looks like something is messing up and FC'ing it before it can load that screen, though.
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Here you go. I hope it helps. This is a great project. I hope others start showing up to spread the word and get you some fame and glory!

trunzoc said:
Here you go. I hope it helps. This is a great project. I hope others start showing up to spread the word and get you some fame and glory!
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Actually, could you do it again without the filter? I forgot that the app name doesn't show up on every line. I should be able to figure it out manually.
Also if you could tell me something about your settings - set a specific server, or scan all? Did you set the client or were you specifying it in your spoken query? And what exactly was the query (or queries) that FC'd? "Watch season 1 episode 1 of show", for example.
And thanks! I hope so too
Edit:Actually, if you're using adb to get the logcat you can run this to only show the output the app is logging:
Code:
adb -d logcat VoiceControlForPlexHomeTheater:V *:S
Edit2:I found some bugs with the now playing screen, which might hopefully solve your problems. Give the new version 1.21 a try and if you still run into problems go ahead and post a logcat

thanks bro

I can't seem to get adb to actually give me a lot at output. It's not a big deal. Is there anyway you could add an option to just turn the now playing section off?
Sent from my AT&T S4 running KangaKat.

trunzoc said:
I think the issue is that I have it setup to require login on local networks. I turn that off and I can see it.
Update:
I turned the local logic requirement off and installed Plex Home Theater on my PC. I was able to connect to it with your app and start a few movies. Interestingly, it did show Several of the Android clients as well, but I didn't try them.
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im having the same issue cannot find my local server. i checked and i already have local login turned off as well. still cannot find any servers. does anyone have any advice on how i could get this to recognize the server on my local network?

IKROWNI said:
im having the same issue cannot find my local server. i checked and i already have local login turned off as well. still cannot find any servers. does anyone have any advice on how i could get this to recognize the server on my local network?
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What platform/version?
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

atom_jack said:
What platform/version?
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
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im not sure what you mean but im using a nexus 7 1st gen with cyanogenmod newest stable version.
im about to root my nexus 7 2nd gen as well ill report back if its having the same issue.

IKROWNI said:
im not sure what you mean but im using a nexus 7 1st gen with cyanogenmod newest stable version.
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The server. What platform (Linux, Windows, OS X) is it running on and what version is it.