First off the article that I was reading was:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...spx#experience


Control playback functions with hardware buttons - Using button mapping, you can easily assign hardware buttons on their Pocket PC to do common Media Player tasks. Assign standard functions such as Play, Pause, Stop or Fast Forward to a hardware button on the Pocket PC, or even map a button to toggle off the screen to help preserve battery life while continuing to listen to music.

-That sounds pretty cool if I understand this correctly, microsoft is saying that you can use any of the mapped out buttons to "Play, Pause, Stop or Fast Forward". But hopefully what they mean by this is while your in the program these buttons preform these actions but they will not outside of the program....see what im saying?

-Second GOOD BYE "SCREEN OFF"! I love screen off for pocket pc, it allowed me to save battery by turning of the screen but still allowing me to play music (BTW this helpped me out a lot with my battery draining micro-drive).

-New Mute Button is always helpful.

-You can custumize skins like you could in the older version but btw there are a few new skins microsoft made located:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...et/custom.aspx

Suprise suprise they have X-BOX in the background (have to try to sell a drowning system some how!).

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Smoother video playback - uses an enhanced algorithm to smooth video playback of broadband content from the Web as well as local video content that is processor-intensive.

Now just woundering will wmp be able to access my network and stream video/audio like netrunner did?

Dell Smart Phone!

Media Player already allows programming of buttons, including turning the screen off...

GSPlayer allows the button override to NOT function when GSPlayer is not that active app.. Interesting to see if they've added that.

   

Guess what? That is already a function of WMP in PPC2002 as well, just tick the unmap buttons during background play at the bottom of the button mapping screen. The big change in WMP for PPC2003 for me will be allowing the use of Windows media encoder to make videos that work with sound if you have WMP9 installed on your PC.

I'm looking forward to the improvements as I spend more time using my Ax for music now than any other use.

I've already WMP9 installed in my PC and made video which I can play in PPC2002.
One thing I can't play is video from Microsoft website which is specified for PPC2003. So, I've to upgrade for that?

does wmp9 support mpeg4 vids?

Looks like that would be necessary. Sisnce its backward compatible, what's the problem?

Did you use windows media encoder to make the video? When I did that I couldn't get the sound to work on the axim, the video played back but without any sound.

Media Encoder works fine with all PPC2002 OSs with the PPC template. Only problem is, you have to change the preset audio setting to 44Khz or less. This is the hardware limit of Pocket WMP 8.5.

Bring on 9.0 woohoo!!

I also am able to play videos I made using Windows Media Encoder 9, and it plays at pretty good quality. I use the mapped buttons as well, along with the Screen-Toggle feature. I personally use Pocket TV and TMPGenc to convert the movies from AVI to mpg files. (www.tmpgenc.net ).

Had an X50v. Tired of carrying two devices.
imate SP5 - I'm waiting for the Sony M600i
Old PDAs: 2x Palm V, Jornada 545, Palm m100, Axim X5 , iPAQ h1930, h2210, h4355, XDA II Mini, imate KJAM, CLIE NX70, Axim X50v
MCE PC: Pentium D 805, 1024MB D-C DDR2, 200GB HDD, DVD+/-RW, 19" WXGA, Dual HDTV Tuners, nVidia 7600GS 256MB, Windows XP MCE 2005
Laptop: Dell Inspiron 710m, P-M 2Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 100Gb HDD, DVDRW, 108Mbit WiFi
Old Laptops: Toshiba 200CDS, Toshiba 2750DVD, Thinkpad 380D, Inspiron 5100, Insprion 8600
iPod Video 30Gb