TCPMP
WM 6.0 Direct Download (Download Page)
For the past couple week’s I’ve been trying to do my part and take mass transit to work. Its only a 15 minute ride on the bus, which happens to the perfect about of time to toss on some tunes, check my favorite RSS feeds and respond to e-mails. The first couple of days I used Windows Media Player 10 Mobile for mp3 play back, but soon got annoyed at the controls, and song/album selection. I finally caved and dug up the CAB file for TCPMP (I was holding out until the BetaPlayer is released) and I was very pleasantly surprised.
TCPMP’s interface doesn’t look as slick as Windows Media Player, but I love all the features and extended functionality.
Pros
- Easy selection of files in the file system for playback. Select entire folders or individual files for playback.
- Easily create/save/manage play lists on the fly by selecting individual/groups of files from the file system.
- Doesn’t rely on ID3 tags (Unlike Windows Media Player’s library which lists by file meta-data ie. Artist, Album, Genre, etc.)
- Easy to track/scrub through a song.
- Plays a boat-load of media formats, including DivX. This makes it great for playing your movies/tv shows that are encoded with non-Microsoft codecs (aka pretty much everything oput there)
- Handles album artwork.
- Can create shortcuts for almost everything in the “Settings” menu
- Tons (and I mean A LOT) settings that allow tweaking audio and video playback.
Cons
- Interface could be more polished/slick.
- Music playback sometimes stutters when I’m running a couple apps and typing a text message (this is due to lack of resources).
- Doesn’t automatically mute for the duration of the phone call. It will must when you get the call, but when you answer the call it will resume playing — strange behavior.
- Not skin-able?
There are also additional playback plug-ins available at bottom of the TCPMP Download Page that allow you to play FLAC, AC3, FFMPEG, VORIS, and other file formats.
Depending on the size/quality of your videos you may have to decrease the Video quality to “Low” or “Lowest” .. this shouldn’t make much of a perceivable drop in video quality (the Blackjack 2’s screen is so small that any decrease in “source” quality is washed out by the small resolution) , but the playback will be much smoother. I had to do this for my Flight of the Conchord’s clip (as seen above in the screenshot) which was 240MB for a 26 min file @ 624×352 .. I think videos that have a native resoluton of 320×240 will play back without issue but I have yet to test this theory.