Database Develop

[Q] Media (audio) player

Can anyone recommend an audio player that is better than the SE one?
Happy to pay if it's worth it.
The one thing I do like on the X2 is it's ability to store a bunch of my CDs so I can play them.
I just wish the media player was a bit better:
- bigger pic of the CD cover would be nice
- more info about the CD (e.g. year released)
- better info on tracks (if the track is from a various artists CD let me see which artist the track is by)
That's all I can think of right now.
Thanks.

winamp for ppc perhaps
i think its called WinamPAQ

john3136 said:
Can anyone recommend an audio player that is better than the SE one?
Happy to pay if it's worth it.
The one thing I do like on the X2 is it's ability to store a bunch of my CDs so I can play them.
I just wish the media player was a bit better:
- bigger pic of the CD cover would be nice
- more info about the CD (e.g. year released)
- better info on tracks (if the track is from a various artists CD let me see which artist the track is by)
That's all I can think of right now.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nitrogen is a freeware player which isn't bad & has an EQ & is skinable. Now, Pocket Player is (IMHO) the absolute BEST player on Windows Mobile. It has an EQ & ability to do 'full-screen' Album covers. The only caveat: they are NOT on Windows Marketplace, and if you have to reset the phone & reinstall, you're going to have to beg them for another key. (I *HATE* that kind of crap, and I've gotten to the point where I go out of my way to AVOID anything that's not on Marketplace. Also, Marketplace lets you download on up to 5 devices, ...so for me: I don't have to re-buy all the stuff I bought on the X1 for my X2.)
Please AVOID at all costs the Kinoma (payware) player. Although it looks like you're getting a great bargain, it has a default setting to always "search the entire phone" for new content. And, even if you turn that off, every now-and-then it loses its cookies and forces you to unexpectedly re-catalog the entire phone (usually, when you MOST want to 'just listen to music').
PocketMusic is another freeware player, that supposedly supports WinAmp skins, and has an EQ. I found this one really flaky with a CLUNKY interface that was well-bested by Nitrogen.
...Now, after all was said-and-done, I'm back to using plain-vanilla Windows Media Player. This is for a number of reasons:
1) It's skinable, too. (Look for the toadlife_Sense25_WMP_Skin_signed.cab; it's HTC-like, but really clean)
2) It is fast at cataloging tunes, and I don't know how it does it, but doesn't take a gb or two to do it (Kinoma; I'm *****ing at you!), and it's completely at your discretion when you want to update it.
3) Album-size, while not as fancy as I'd like, is not bad.
4) Using the default X2 Saturn skin (MR2 firmware), WMP's library selection doesn't look bad (although it doesn't show album art like PocketPlayer or some others), and is fairly finger-able.
5) BOTTOM LINE: I noticed that (although it doesn't have a built-in EQ), the sound quality is actually noticeably better than Nitrogen & PocketMusic provided. It seems as if WMP engages some sort of noise-canceling when actual signal is produced. You can hear it kick-in when you hit play. And, this is not to say that dynamic range is reduced. I think it sounds better in-ear than on X1, in general, even though I was able to run the HTC EQ in the background on X1 (not compatible with X1, due to the hardware not being HTC).
For me, Slideview entirely crashes after a few mins anytime I run it. I have a 16gb card with LOTS of pictures, games, emus & music. Unfortunately, Slideview is very persistent and you can't hack the registry to limit what folders it looks in (it just HAS to look everywhere). There seems to be some files (possibly emus) that it thinks are Videos (but are not) and when it gets to refreshing them, craps out.
But, WMP works well for me. --If you can't live with it, go for PocketPlayer. I may go back to it someday, myself... but I want to be absolutely sure I won't do a full-phone-refresh someday. I've had the X2 for a little over a month, and am pretty well-settled, but ...there were a lot things I tried/uninstalled, etc. which have probably bloated my registry (I might have to break down and reload one day).

[Q] Video quality issues with Netflix and movie players?

Got the Nook HD+ rooted and installed the Play Store
After that I installed a file explorer and Netflix.
It was on playing Netflix that I noticed a big problem, the videos are distorted and pixelated massively. Having done some small web design projects I know that one issue with the retina displays on the newer Ipads etc is the DPI is increased and so normal pictures and videos tend to look washed out a bit. Is that an issue with the HD+?
If not that, could it also be that Netflix itself is thinking I am reaching them from a smaller screen device and streaming the smaller file/screen size which the Nook is expanding to fill the screen making it get pixelated (as happens when you zoom into a video)?
Regardless, I looked in other threads for this issue as I do not believe I am the only person to ever experience this - did not find anything. One last test, I logged into my own home file server and tried to play a movie in one of the folders. Sure enough, it looks fine on the TV and computer monitor but looks a little grainy by comparison - so I have to believe part of this is a DPI issue? Is there a suggestion to resolve this?
Would installing the "real" Netflix from the HD+ market solve this for at least Netflix? (I am going to assume that logging into the B&N site and installing an app that way does not endanger my root or access to GApps/Playstore?) Is there an easy way to get to the B&N app market from the modified dashboard (not CM10) or should I stay away from that if it makes the HD+ more apt to update/modify my current settings?
That is a lot of questions to solve a single problem so is there an existing solution I am overlooking? Or is this just the price of having the greater resolution screen?

That distortion and pixelating happens on all my devices with Netflix. It goes away after a minute or so. It is like the buffer has to fill up before it gets clear.
And I don't think it matters where you get the app, I think they are the same. And getting something from the B&N store has no effect on root or Play Store or vice versa. You are no more likely to get updated. You are already automatically logged in. That happened when you registered your device.
Sent from my Nook HD+ running rooted stock

[Q] Things to know before beginning a music player app for WP8

First of all, hello to everybody. I have just joined xdaDevelopers.
To business now..
I recently bought my first Windows Phone (Nokia Lumia 520). One of the reasons for getting it was for developing my own WP8 apps.
I would like to start with a music player app - one that can play mp3 files from phone memory and SD card; arrange songs according to name, albums and artists; create playlists; have capabilties of fast foward and rewind (seeking); and recognise album arts.
What do I need to know before I can start building it?
I have zero experience in app development; I am a web designer.
I noticed that there are very few "polished" music players (which function properly as well as have a nice UI) in the WP store. Any particular reason for that (other than the platform being relatively new)?
I created this post mainly because the lack of quality music players appeared a bit strange to me. I have heard that a particular file type can be accessed by only one app (please correct me if I am wrong). So does it mean that one has to somehow uninstall the default music player in order to use the newly downloaded one?
For instance, I have "Adobe Reader" which can read PDFs from my MicroSD card. But the "PDF Reader" app (which I installed just yesterday) cannot even find them! So I had to uninstall the latter.
So I wanted to know if there was something about WP8 that doesn't allow such things - if these "security measures", which render apps like file managers less useful, are also responsible for the lack of music players in this otherwise very fantastic platform.
Please note that I come from Android, and am very new to Windows Phone platform. So kindly point out if there's something incorrect about my assumptions.
Thanks and regards.

Hi,
Welcome to Windows Phone. The Lumia 520 is a great choice in my humble opinion. In regards to why there are so few music apps, there are probably several reasons. One such is the fact, that the easiest way to make one is to integrate with the built-in music features, which however limits you in several ways, like not being able to add more file types, not being able to customize the experience too much, playlisting is limit as far as I know, which basically puts you in the position, that the only actual improvement you can do upon that is implementing a new streaming service. The other route is to implement your own music player, but then you're going to have issues making it work in the background (not to mention, that implementing a music player isn't entirely simple).
gdebojyoti said:
What do I need to know before I can start building it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Make sure you have hardware for it. I recommend a minimum of Windows 8 Pro 64bit, but you can find instructions for Windows 7 on this forum as well. You'll need VT-x support on your CPU, plenty of RAM.
2. Download and install the WP8 SDK.
3. Once you open Visual Studio, you can start by creating a new project, you'll need a UI project (I recommend Windows Phone App or HTML5 App templates) and a music playback project (WP Audio Playback Agent -OR- WP Audio Streaming Agent).
4. For tutorials on how to get started I usually go to Pluralsight.com, because I have a subscription there, and they're plain awesome, but I'm sure there are a bunch of other sources as well, which are for free.
gdebojyoti said:
For instance, I have "Adobe Reader" which can read PDFs from my MicroSD card. But the "PDF Reader" app (which I installed just yesterday) cannot even find them! So I had to uninstall the latter.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have both Adobe Reader and PDF Reader installed, once you tap on a PDF file (say after downloading one in IE) an option should appear for you to select which app you wanna open it with.
gdebojyoti said:
So I wanted to know if there was something about WP8 that doesn't allow such things - if these "security measures", which render apps like file managers less useful, are also responsible for the lack of music players in this otherwise very fantastic platform.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can install and use as many audio/music apps you like, but obviously only one can have the background music feature used at one time. (You can only have one music playing in the background).
Also:
"Developers must pay an annual subscription fee of $99, (this, according to Todd Brix, the General Manager for Windows Phone Apps and Store team, is currently on an ongoing promotion at $19) to become an App Hub member and submit apps to the Windows Phone Store. There's no limit on the number of free submissions for paid apps. There's a limit of 100 free submissions for free apps; thereafter, there's a fee of $19.99 per submission for free apps." - Wikipedia
Hope I helped, and happy coding!
:fingers-crossed:

@TheGoldrocker: Thank you for your reply. It did clear up quite a few things.
As of now, I am okay with "integrating with the built-in music features" as you said.
What I want to do is modify the UI and UX a bit. Some of the features can be as follows -
1. Introducing a scroll bar;
2. Option to get rid of the grouping system by name;
3. Control over the font size;
4. Allowing the currently playing song to continue if I select the song (currently it starts playing from the beginning);
5. Enabling the seeking feature (tapping the timeline of the song so as to play from that point of time);
6. Having a tile feature in the start screen with options to pause, change song, etc (number of options would depend upon the length of the song);
7. Showing the album art of the currently playing song in the tile;
8. Having an animated background in the app (just a wide photo which slowly slides from left to right).
Am I allowed to do the above?

You're welcome.
"Integrating with the built-in music features" doesn't mean you get to rewrite the UI/functionality of the current Music+Videos app. What it means is, you get to use the built-in classes for simplifying music playback in your new app. You'll still have to build up a new UI around your classes, you'll also have to write quite a few lines of code for the playback functionality (but obviously way less than if you tried to write your own music player from scratch).
Now sadly I cannot answer all of your questions with absolute certainty, because I haven't tried writing a music player yet, but I'll give them a shot.
I numbered your list:
gdebojyoti said:
1. Introducing a scroll bar;
2. Option to get rid of the grouping system by name;
3. Control over the font size;
4. Allowing the currently playing song to continue if I select the song (currently it starts playing from the beginning);
5. Enabling the seeking feature (tapping the timeline of the song so as to play from that point of time);
6. Having a tile feature in the start screen with options to pause, change song, etc (number of options would depend upon the length of the song);
7. Showing the album art of the currently playing song in the tile;
8. Having an animated background in the app (just a wide photo which slowly slides from left to right).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Yes, since you'll have to make a new UI from scratch, and you'll have the ability to include any logic behind it you want.
2. Yes, the grouping can be avoided AFAIK.
3. Same as 1.
4. Same as 1.
5. Don't think so. Someone else with more knowledge will have to answer this to be sure, though.
6. If you mean a tile on the start screen, which, when tapped will play/stop/next/prev/whatever and STAY on the start screen? No. Tiles (sadly) always open a program (even if for only a millisecond). You can use this for deeplinking to favorite songs/playlists/streaming services though, which is cool.
7. Same as 1.
8. Same as 1.
Hope I helped.

Thank you for your reply.
TheGoldrocker said:
6. If you mean a tile on the start screen, which, when tapped will play/stop/next/prev/whatever and STAY on the start screen? No. Tiles (sadly) always open a program (even if for only a millisecond). You can use this for deeplinking to favorite songs/playlists/streaming services though, which is cool.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By "deeplinking", do you mean pinning songs to the start screen by 'long pressing' on them?
I do hope that Microsoft introduces interactive tiles in some future update. Sort of start screen widgets.

gdebojyoti said:
By "deeplinking", do you mean pinning songs to the start screen by 'long pressing' on them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Deeplinking is launching an app with a link toward a specific page with parameters. Imagine it as a URL to a specific page on a website. If your app and pages support it, you could tap on a tile (say on the start screen), which opens your app, and instantly navigates to a playlist, album, song, whatever you made that tile link to.
Pinning items to the start screen can be triggered by anything you want. You, the coder, decides how you're gonna allow the user to pin their songs/albums/playlists/artists/whatever.
Here's a little tutorial on this topic:
http://wp.qmatteoq.com/first-steps-...-links/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Okay, thanks. I'll have a look at that.

To make a media player for windows phone is to know insanity.
Why we no join forces?
There are a couple fo things the guys here forgot to tell you:
You can not read Mp3 files from SD card.
You can not read mp3 files from the user music folder.
You only have access to web resources or your app's isolated storage.
You basically have to engineer a way to get them to the app storage.

mcosmin222 said:
To make a media player for windows phone is to know insanity.
Why we no join forces?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think I have enough knowledge to be able to help you. I am just a beginner.
mcosmin222 said:
You can not read Mp3 files from SD card.
You can not read mp3 files from the user music folder.
You only have access to web resources or your app's isolated storage.
You basically have to engineer a way to get them to the app storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, that's why I will try to "integrate with the built-in music features". Hopefully it will be okay then.
I am not trying to make the next best thing in the music player app category.
I am just trying to make one which has a slightly different UI and is able to play mp3s.
Sort of a project of mine.
By the way, can someone please tell me if I can use technologies like HTML5 to create this app? Actually I don't know C#.
Or should I learn C# before attempting this app?

gdebojyoti said:
I don't think I have enough knowledge to be able to help you. I am just a beginner.
Well, that's why I will try to "integrate with the built-in music features". Hopefully it will be okay then.
I am not trying to make the next best thing in the music player app category.
I am just trying to make one which has a slightly different UI and is able to play mp3s.
Sort of a project of mine.
By the way, can someone please tell me if I can use technologies like HTML5 to create this app? Actually I don't know C#.
Or should I learn C# before attempting this app?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can not integrate with the built-in player.
There are too many limitations to explain. You will see.
Yes, learn C#

Okay.

Dolphin, YouTube, Flash (almost), etc.

I've installed and uninstalled Dolphin many times. It has some appealing strengths but also some annoying weaknesses on the NST. Here are the three big weaknesses as I see them (you can stop reading after that if they are "deal breakers" for you):
1. Like many browsers other than Opera Mobile, Dolphin has trouble updating an existing window with new content. For reliable browsing you need to open in new tabs which, sadly, are always behind the current tab.
2. Swipe scrolling in Opera Mobile is positively spritely compared to Dolphin and most other browsers. For Dolphin you have the option of using volume controls to scroll. I have set the lower hardware buttons to the volume controls using NTTM. I don't ever use them to change pages, preferring a gentle touch on the screen edge.
3. Dolphin is a pain-in-the-*** to zoom. Double tap has no effect. Turning on pinch-zoom button in Settings is ignored. Pinch zooming does not work (even with multi-touch enabled). The only way to zoom in or out is with a gesture. Took me awhile to even understand how that was supposed to happen. I finally made a "Z" for "zoom in" and a backward "Z" for "zoom out". The stock gestures for these functions are visually meaningless (to me).
OK,so why bother with Dolphin at all? First, let me add that the new version 11 does not work well with the NST. You need something in the 10.x series (some old versions here).
Dolphin is an HTML5 browser with some limited (on the NST) Shockwave and Flash capability. With the possible Flash installation for the NST (see here, post #4), you get the ability to access some .swf files (embedded Flash players are a kind of .swf file--more on that below) and Flash 9.1x (despite the claim that you are getting 10.1. Adobe identifies it as 9.1x and various sites that reject anything below 10 also identify it as such).
I used to think no embedded Flash videos would play in Dolphin.Then I discovered that in Desktop mode it would "work" with most embedded players and you could start the videos.But you could not play them through. Although the buffer continued to fill, the video itself stopped after 10-20 seconds and the little running circle appeared in the middle of the image. You can restart in different spots, but you still only get about 10-20 seconds at a pop (examples here).
I have some short little Flash videos in a very simple swf player which I use on an educational site. I thought these did not work at all but with some fooling around in FastMode I was amazed to see that the player actually can be coaxed into working and the entire video plays (example here). Of course, everything works a little bit better in FastMode (except for display quality) but you can, if you work at it a little, coax the player into working in regular mode.
So, Dolphin can play "some" embedded Flash video. But not much.
The Desktop mode of Dolphin makes YouTube nuts. It tries switching back and forth between the mobile and desktop site and never gets anywhere. Anyway, that is not the way to go because HTML5 is a better choice--if you have a cooperative external player.
I've tried a few players. RockPlayer Lite is popular for the NST but is difficult to exit (always full screen) and seems stymied by HTML5. It does play a lot of other stuff, including some streams. I finally settled on MX Player (save yourself some time and download the the ARMv7 NEON codec at the same time because it will just send you back to the Market when you try to run it the first time). It can pinch-zoom (RockPlayer cannot) and handles HTML5 well (yes, YouTube!). I have my two lower hardware buttons assigned for long press as "back" and "menu". This provides two ways to get out of MX Player if you don't want to watch the whole video. At the normal conclusion, the player closes and you return to Dolphin. Nice.
Such a set-up works for YouTube (the mobile version),or at least for as many videos as are now HTML5-ready. Of course, you can also access any Flash videos that allow for a breakout from the embedded player. MX Player handles .flv files fine without any Adobe plugin. And it plays just about any other direct-link video you can find. Videos in the BBC News app work fine.
Daily Motion, Vimeo, My Vidster, Hulu---the list goes on---are no-go with this set-up.
But really, with no audio......If just a little audio were accessible to us mere mortals, it would be nice, but that mod is beyond my geek level
One bad thing: for some reason, the NST refuses to make MX Player (or any other player I tried) the "default". So every time you want a video you have to select MX Player from a list of hopefuls (QuickPic? Really?????). I've inspected the file where this info is stored (/data/system/packages.xml) and even cleaned it up, but to no avail.
One last warning: don't try this with Opera Mobile. As far as I can tell, one of the three Flash installations, maybe FlashLite, has a player which is invoked by some embedded videos in Opera Mobile.You touch the play triangle in the video and are rewarded with a much larger triangle. Don't touch that one! It takes you to a Flash player of some sort (you can see some control buttons if you touch the screen) with a black screen and there is no way out except for a forced shutdown.

New Chromecast even more limited and closed than other android tv

Hello everybody.
For some time now I have the new Chromecast with Google TV and I would like to share my feelings on certain aspects that disappointed me and which scare me for the future of Android TV.
Android TV has always been a more closed system than Android but I have the impression with this new device that it is even more the case and that Google is trying to lock its system even more.
On the new device, if you want to install applications that are not on the play store, you must activate the options for developers, then start again several times to install these applications (it does not necessarily work the first time ).
I also noticed that a lot of Android apps didn't do image rotation or stretching and displayed vertically like a smartphone but with parts of the image cut off. Some Android apps are therefore not even usable now on the new Chromecast. I searched this new Chromecast for a setting that would help me display its Android apps properly but couldn't find anything.
Is there a setting to properly display its applications there? Are these only corrections that will be made in the next updates or is it, as I think, a desire by Google to limit Android TV more and more to Android TV applications?
Thank you for your many responses.

The orientation issue may have something to do with how the Android TV device is identifying itself. That could get fixed in a new release. Haven't dug in enough to know that yet. I haven't had any trouble installing stuff via side loading.
As for being locked down, Android TV certified devices are way more locked down than AOSP or even phones. I wish they'd put the Android TV portions (or even just the casting stack) into AOSP, but that ship has long sailed.

Averix said:
The orientation issue may have something to do with how the Android TV device is identifying itself. That could get fixed in a new release. Haven't dug in enough to know that yet. I haven't had any trouble installing stuff via side loading.
As for being locked down, Android TV certified devices are way more locked down than AOSP or even phones. I wish they'd put the Android TV portions (or even just the casting stack) into AOSP, but that ship has long sailed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ok so you had no problem with Android applications. I may have had no luck with apps that started badly. Perhaps it is not Google's desire to prevent or complicate the use of applications that are not from the Android TV Play Store.
We will see if other users have this problem.
I too would have loved to have the cast on Android box.
Do you know of an application that allows you to rotate the image like you can find in the Ugoos box system?

From what I can tell, it is just as open** as my Nvidia Shield. Installing sideloaded apps is just as simple. Apps that do not have manual rotation options can be tricky, or those coded to be used in portrait mode only. Other than that, sideloading works identically. PS, you still need something like Sideload Launcher to launch these sideloaded apps.
Android TV/Google TV has always been very limited when it comes to customizability. Probably has a lot to do with the fact that Google assumed, and rightly so that, most consumers just want to plug it in and watch stuff, not mess around with it. Do I agree with that? No, I love making devices do things they weren't designed to, but even I have no reason or motivation to root these devices.
** = Equally as locked down.

Have you tried using a sceen rotation app? I use to use a modded spectrum tv app on fire tv and to fix rotation issue you had to use a screen rotation app.

jkbee26 said:
Android TV has always been a more closed system than Android but I have the impression with this new device that it is even more the case and that Google is trying to lock its system even more.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I feel your pain.
That's Google 2020 for you, get ready for Google 2021 and 2022

I am thinking of replacing a fire tv stick 4k with the new Chromecast, hoping to gain bitstreaming audio from 3d party apps. It won't work for me on the amazon device.
I want to continue using wolf launcher and some sideloaded apps, which are not all available on the play store.
How much of free storage is available on the Cromecast?

Hey folks
I bought a Chromecast with Google TV and I am experiencing this same issue. I am trying to use an app which I know it wasn't developed for this device, but I know it works because have it installed on an Android TV. The difference is that on Google TV it opens as portrait and sits in the middle of the screen, where in the Android TV it expands and takes the whole screen. Same thing happens, for example, with Instagram. I've tried a dozen of apps that supposedly force the orientation, but it never worked.
Is there anything that can be done or am I am chasing ghosts?
(p.s. is it worth to post this as a new thread?)