Hi,
I'm planning on writing a new media player for Pocket PC based devices, I just wanted to ask what everybody wanted.
This is what I currently have planned:

* MPEG Audio support
* OGG Vorbis support
* Full skin support
* Visualisations (Spectrum analyzer/etc)
* Full equaliser
* Today screen controls
* Screen off (think winamPAQ)
* Alarm clock function
* RS232 Remote control support


I'm not going to support winamp skins since i find the winamp layout fine for pc's, but too fidley for pocket PC's
I'm not going to support WMA/RA since the less these proprietry formats are used the better.
It will be FREE (as in beer) and probably open source too. (it will all be C code with a dash of arm assembly for speed)

Anyway, say what else you might want, so its not too much of a b***h to implament it later when i have a full code base

--jbit

Is that a PC in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

the only reason i really use pocket mvp is because it plays .avi's and all divx movies. i've been able to take my whole dvd collection and thurn them into tiny avi's with V Dub, and play them on my axim. it rocks

poppaj

I'd love WMA support, if you could provide that on a free player. I've done numerous listening tests, and to my (old) ears, WMA 9 sounds better at low bit rates (under 96kbps) than Ogg.

I'd also like to see WMV support, but could live without it. Why WMV when there's so much mpeg-1 and Divx software out there? Ease of use! The WMV freeware encoders are SO simple that I still enjoy experimenting with them on occasion.

WMA support would be great, I agree. I've converted most of my 192kb mp3's to 128kb wma because I can't tell the difference and I save space.

Also, would you be interested in coding an alternate interface that was similar to the ipod? The sad thing about all these winamp skin clones is that there is no variety. What we need is a good jukebox layout similar to playlist ce but with more pizazz and it needs to actually play the music. Someone take up my righteous cause!

Stephen Lease

Axim Basic, 256mb CF, 64mb SD, Rhinoskin Case, Pocketop Keyboard.

<a href="http://www.stephenlease.com/">My Homepage</a>

I won't be adding any Windows Media support since you need a development license to do so legally (AFAIK), the same with Real Audio/Video. (If i don't need a license, it might be added later on, since its not my priority)

There won't be video playing capabilitys at first (for simplicity) but they will be added later (hopefully full MPEG[1/2/4] support, so DivX and XviD will play)

I'm also using the Intel Primitives for xscale optimization (AFAIK no media player has done this yet)

--jbit

Is that a PC in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

cant wait sounds wicked...

It will be *fully* skinable, so the layout can be how you want it, you could make it EXACTLY like the ipod interface if wanted

Winamp rules on pc's but as said before is WAY to fideley and anoying on pocketpc (ever tried seeking using the seek bar and accidently turned the volume up to max???)

If you want to do some skin/layout designs just make a picture that is about 240x300 with all the layout/style you want and email it to me

The skin format also has animation support too I thought it would be cool to have like a bubble effect on the play button whilst playing, and no bubbles when its stopped (for example)

Is that a PC in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Wow sounds awesome....cna't wait to see what you come up with. GOOD LUCK!!!!!

Just incase anybody wanted to work on a skin heres some details:

Terminology:
Skin: Descriptor file that allows the players look and style to be changed at run time
Image: A file containing an image (BMP/PNG/ETC)
Sprite: A rectangular area in an Image (can contain animation)
Command: A direct call to an internal player command (play/stop/next/show window/etc)
Object: Uses multiple sprites or a stock object (lists, visuals, etc) which can be asphetic (backgrounds/decals/etc) or active (send Commands if taped)


* Player "Window" is 240x294 Pixels
* A Skin can use infinate Images
* An Images maximum size is 65535x65535 and can be upto 24bit colour (memory permiting)
* Each Image can contain infinte Sprites
* Sprites have a single colour that is fully transparent (no alpha blending, at the moment)
* Each Sprite can have upto 255 frames of animation
* Frames can follow horizontaly or verticaly (right or down)
* Delay between animation frames can be specified (10ms -> 2000ms)
* There can be infinate Objects on screen
* Objects can change their sprite on an event (mouse over, tap, play, pause, etc, etc)
* There are 255 layers which Objects can be on, which allows Objects to overlap each other


I think thats about it, unfortuantly I havn't fully sorted out the file format, but the above info should help anybody who just wants to know what they can do with it (which is, basicly anything they want

I would love to have a few designs i can play with (i'm not great at interface design, but i think i can whack up code pretty well

I'll probably release a binary of the "player" with a demo skin that will just run the skins, so people can be making some while I finish off the audio stuff

Any comments or sugestions are welcome

--jbit

Is that a PC in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

gotta play .avi's! i only use pmvp to watch my avi files, but it's slow as crap at loading them.

is there another ppc player that plays .avi files?

2x SimpleTech Bonzai USB2 mini-drive/SD card reader
2x Lexar 1GB (Non-Hi Speed!) SD (USA): write speed = 5.5MB/sec (37.5X) Space avail. (formatted) = 975MB
1x SimpleTech 512MB SD (Taiwan?): write speed = 5.3MB/sec (36.4X)...... Space avail. (formatted) = 489MB
RMA'd: SimpleTech 512MB SD (Japan): write speed = 3.9MB/sec (26.6X)... Space avail. (formatted) = 491MB
Sold: Viking 256MB SD (Taiwan): write speed = 1.5MB/sec (10.2X)........... Space avail. (formatted) = 241MB
Sold: Viking 128MB SD (Japan): write speed = 1.5MB/sec (10.2X)............. Space avail. (formatted) = 120MB

I'd be nice if you could support ID3v1 tags, and the .ogg tags. And perharps an infomation thing like in WMP when looking through the playlist?

sounds like the new pocket player actually....

remote option sounds interesting, how would that work exactialy?

what ide like to see is a player that could be controlled via a normal infrared remote....would be awesome to be able to control my axe using my creative remote or what not.

wow, yeah, could u add .avi support. and asf would be good 2. SOunds awesome.

There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary, and those who don't.

I was waiting for somebody to ask about the remote thing
Basicly, my freind has a clie and it has an inline remote control thing and i've always been so jealous of that, so i'm gonna hack up a slimline remote (maybe using the actual sony one) that sits on the rs232 port

Infrared support wouldn't be too hard to add in, so i'll look into it, definatly a cool idea

Current player status: Displays pre-compiled skins in both X11 and on pocketPC, plays ogg/mp3 under X11, working on "porting" ogg/Tremor/mad to pocketPC.
[Currently skins are bmps, but I'm looking at png since its so much smaller, jpeg is impossible, gif has too few colours]

I'll be using mad's id3 tag library, so i think thats virtually all id3 tags out there, and ogg has built in meta info, so i'll be using that obviously

I'm hopeing to have a (development) binary released for pocketPC by friday, so hopefully some people will test it for me

--jbit

Is that a PC in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

hey, if it will be ready for the pocketpc, I'll definitely test it. My axim is currently running 2002, though I have the update ordered. Email me at cjradek@hotmail.com please. I don't exactly understand what you mean by the remote though...

There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary, and those who don't.