Thursday, February 14, 2002
Do you want a better audio player?
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 03:35 PM
Once upon a time, in a land before Pocket PCs (the era of the Palm-size PCs), a little company named Conduits released a product dubbed Pocket Player. Pocket Player supported MP3 files, had a visualization option, and the developer actually listened to user feedback. Here's what the artifact looked like:
Conduits charged $14.95 for the player, and it was the most popular player around until Microsoft released their free player (Microsoft Mobile Audio Player) for the 2nd generation colour Palm-size PC devices. Still, the initial Microsoft audio player was very limited, and many users (myself included) kept using Pocket Player. Back in the day, we also had UtopiaSoft Hum, and a very basic, almost command line-like audio player based on the XAudio MPEG Audio engine that all these non-Microsoft players were based on.
Fast forward to February 2002, and what options do we have for audio players on the Pocket PC? We have the Windows Media Player 8.0 for the Pocket PC, but it's rife with frustrating problems that didn't get corrected from 7.1 to 8.0. Ever tried to build play lists off a 1 gig Microdrive with 300 songs? You need the patience of someone in a trance.
There's iPlay from 40th Floor Software, but it doesn't play WMA files, has a brutal user interface, and you need a degree in cryptography to figure out their web site (and the blessing of Buddha to get a registration key). That, and the author flames me publicly every chance he gets. Hi Cornel!
We have a combo video/audio player in Pocket DivX, but it's an evolving tool that isn't designed to work like a traditional audio player. It has promise, but I didn't find it very easy to use for audio.
And that's about it. I've emailed the makers of Winamp to ask if they have any interest in making a Pocket PC version of their software, but I've never received a response. So far, no one has stepped up to offer a Pocket PC audio player with the features that an audiophile like myself really needs.
Here's the point: if Conduits were to create an updated player that supported MP3, WMA, perhaps (??) Ogg Vorbis, and offered killer play list support, and other features, would you be interested in buying it? I'm not working with Conduits on this - this is a completely independent survey for my own information. Of course, the goal in doing this survey is to gather some information that might convince Conduits to invest the development time in creating the ultimate Pocket PC audio player. If anyone can do it, Conduits can. :-) Cast your vote! (I've opened up voting to unregistered users as well)
Conduits charged $14.95 for the player, and it was the most popular player around until Microsoft released their free player (Microsoft Mobile Audio Player) for the 2nd generation colour Palm-size PC devices. Still, the initial Microsoft audio player was very limited, and many users (myself included) kept using Pocket Player. Back in the day, we also had UtopiaSoft Hum, and a very basic, almost command line-like audio player based on the XAudio MPEG Audio engine that all these non-Microsoft players were based on.
Fast forward to February 2002, and what options do we have for audio players on the Pocket PC? We have the Windows Media Player 8.0 for the Pocket PC, but it's rife with frustrating problems that didn't get corrected from 7.1 to 8.0. Ever tried to build play lists off a 1 gig Microdrive with 300 songs? You need the patience of someone in a trance.
There's iPlay from 40th Floor Software, but it doesn't play WMA files, has a brutal user interface, and you need a degree in cryptography to figure out their web site (and the blessing of Buddha to get a registration key). That, and the author flames me publicly every chance he gets. Hi Cornel!
We have a combo video/audio player in Pocket DivX, but it's an evolving tool that isn't designed to work like a traditional audio player. It has promise, but I didn't find it very easy to use for audio.
And that's about it. I've emailed the makers of Winamp to ask if they have any interest in making a Pocket PC version of their software, but I've never received a response. So far, no one has stepped up to offer a Pocket PC audio player with the features that an audiophile like myself really needs.
Here's the point: if Conduits were to create an updated player that supported MP3, WMA, perhaps (??) Ogg Vorbis, and offered killer play list support, and other features, would you be interested in buying it? I'm not working with Conduits on this - this is a completely independent survey for my own information. Of course, the goal in doing this survey is to gather some information that might convince Conduits to invest the development time in creating the ultimate Pocket PC audio player. If anyone can do it, Conduits can. :-) Cast your vote! (I've opened up voting to unregistered users as well)
