Review: Pocket Player 3 — Raising the Bar to a Better Media Player

Posted by: dgoldring on Nov 07 2006 - 17,919 views

I have a confession to make.  I was not enthusiastic about Conduit’s latest release of Pocket Player.  To be honest, I had used previous versions of Pocket Player and they never seemed to work well for me.  So, it was with little enthusiasm that I approached the new Pocket Player release.  I expected more of the same; a program that would be deleted from my Pocket PC faster than a drive through a one stoplight town.  Then, a funny thing happened.  The more I used it, the more indispensable I found it.  This is not the same Pocket Player I had tried and rejected before.  This latest version, offers significant updates from Pocket Player 2.7, including new features, options, bug fixes, and most importantly, a considerably faster user interface.  Additionally, unlike previous versions, Pocket Player 3 is now a true all-in-one media player.  It can easily handle audio, video, podcasts, web radio, and playlists.  It even offers a today screen plugin.  Far from being rejected from my Pocket PC, Pocket Player has quickly become one of my most important programs. 

Installation and Registration: Once you have downloaded Pocket Player, simply click the icon on your desktop to install it through ActiveSync.  Once installed, you will have a fully functioning trial version of Pocket Player for 30 days (an unusually long trial period).  Every time you run the program during the trial period, a registration screen will be displayed.  Once you purchase the program, simply click register and enter your registration code.

Interface: One of the biggest draws Pocket Player offers is the simple, yet effective user interface.   The default screen, which is fully skinnable, is shown in the screen shot, below.  The playback buttons are large enough to allow one-handed control, but not so large that they take over the screen.  You can also fine tune your playback experience with an amazing ten-band equalizer.  This equalizer allows you to customize each of the bands’ settings, or select one of the numerous presets.  From here, you can also access the media library and other media and playback options.  The most important feature of the interface, however, is its customizability.  Every aspect of the Pocket Player interface is fully skinnable.  This is a necessary, albeit often forgotten feature in any media player.  In addition to its own native skin format, Conduits has also designed Pocket Player to be compatible with Windows Media Player skins.  Given the number and variety of skins available for Windows Media Player, this was clearly a smart decision for Conduits, which greatly increases the usability of this feature.  Additionally, a variety of different skins are available at the Pocket Player skinning web site.  While some of these skins were developed by Conduits, many of them were developed and submitted by other users.

 

Audio: I use a media player almost exclusively to listen to music.  So, the quality of audio playback is extremely important to me.  Because I had not found Pocket Player to be a satisfactory music player in the past, I admit to having somewhat diminished expectations when I initially began listening to music with this latest release.  My previous experience, however, proved to be no indication of how the latest version would operate.   Not only was the sound quality crystal clear, but it was also able to sort and play all of the songs in my vast (1500 songs) music library (stored on a 4 gb Compact Flash card).  Furthermore, the number of supported formats has been significantly improved.  Pocket Player now supports all of the major audio formats including MP3, WMA, Ogg, and more. 

Video: The demand for video playback in portable media devices has been rapidly growing.  It is among the most requested features today.  It is also one of the most overlooked features, with many players focusing almost exclusively on audio.  Conduits heard this demand and responded in kind.   With Pocket Player 3, Conduits introduces video playback capabilities.  I played video from several different sources, including my digital video camera and some Internet downloads.  I found the quality of the playback to be more than acceptable.  I was not, however, impressed with the full screen playback mode.  When I tried to use it, the image did not stretch to fill the full screen, as would occur with most video players.  Instead, although it opened to a full screen, the image stayed the same size in the center of the screen.  With this initial offering, Pocket Player also does not support as many video formats as other media players.  However, because Pocket Player is built on a plug-in based architecture, many more formats are and will be available from Conduits’ online plug-in library.

Podcasts and Web Radio: I’ve never been a big fan of podcasts.  But then, I have also never been a fan of talk radio or books on tape/CD.  That being said, I think I am probably the last person in the mobile market who does not listen to Podcasts of some kind.  Conduits did well to recognize the increasing importance of Podcasts and other online broadcasts to the mobile media market.  With Pocket Player 3, not only does Conduits now offer full streaming Podcast functionality, but also a complete web radio.  Just input the link to the Podcast, and it will be streamed directly to your device.  Podcast links can also be saved in your media library for easy future reference. Streaming media can often provide nothing more than a recipe for disaster, forcing you to suffer through a myriad of pauses, skips, and even complete failures maintain the connection.  Pocket Player, however, faced these challenges admirably.  I was extremely impressed with the quality of the stream produced by Pocket Player, I was able to play numerous podcasts from a variety of sources with minimal skipping and no interference or loss of signal.  One feature that is missing, however, is a Podcast aggregator.  It would be nice if Pocket Player had the ability to download, aggregate, and store Podcasts for offline listening.

In addition to the Podcasts, Pocket Player also offers an impressive array of web radio stations.  In addition to the library of preset stations, you may also add a link to any other web-based radio stations to your library.  The web radio is a creative feature, which I have never seen built into a media player before.

Bluetooth Compatibility: Any media player I use must be compatible with my Bluetooth headphones.  Too often, I have found good media players, which jump, skip, pause, or generally do not broadcast well to my Bluetooth headphones.  Pocket Player had none of these problems.  My music came through to my Bluetooth headphones with fantastic clarity.  Additionally, once the high quality audio drivers were installed (these do not come standard with Windows Media devices), Pocket Player was easily controlled with AVRCP hardware controls on the headphones.  I am truly impressed by how seamlessly Pocket Player adapted to my Bluetooth settings.

Universal Plug-and-Play (UPnP) Connectivity: One of the fastest growing means of  downloading and obtaining content for the Pocket PC media player is Universal Plug-and-Play (UPnP).  UPnP connectivity allows Pocket Player to connect, browse, and play networked media content.  There is an increasing number of UPnP compatible devices, that can serve a variety of functions.  Pocket Player supports three UPnP connectivity standards: Media Renderer, Media Controller, and Media Server. 

Library: One of the most important features on any media player is the media library interface.  This is where the player connects with your media and selects the files to play.  If the library interface is not well designed, it can make for an extremely frustrating experience.  Pocket Player’s redesigned media library (shown in the above screen shot) is among the best I have ever used.  The graphical interface allows you to easily and quickly select the media type you want to play.  You can sort music by album, artist, album artist, genre, or just pick all music.  You can also sort your videos, podcasts, web radio stations (webguide), and playlists.  This media library truly allows Pocket Player to serve as a dedicated digital media player, which should be the primary goal of all media players.

Although the library is designed to work with large, multi-gigabyte memory cards.  I did not find that it worked well initially with my 4 gb Compact Flash card.  It would frequently take up to several minutes for the library to update; and it would update every time the player was started.  Conduits, however, recognized this problem and quickly resolved it by releasing version 3.01.  This update, among other improvements, significantly increased the functionality of the library.  Although there is still considerable room for improvement, it now updates the media library much faster and is ready to play in a shorter period of time. 

Today Screen Plugin:  Today screen plugins are, perhaps, the most overused feature in Pocket PC programs.  Frequently, they simply occupy valuable screen space, without providing necessary or useful information.  Too many programs offer unnecessary or poorly designed today screen plugins.  It is rare to find one that is designed well and provides useful and necessary information.  The today screen plugin offered by Pocket Player meets both of these standards in a simply designed, but extremely functional today screen plugin.  When Pocket Player is not running, the plugin will collapse to a single line, freeing up valuable screen resources.  When Pocket Player is running, the plugin displays the song information (title and artist), as well as playback controls which allow you to operate Pocket Player without opening it; thus freeing up valuable resources on your device.  The today screen plugin is also fully skinnable, which means that you can modify it to fit into any desktop theme on your device.  This is an excellent today screen plugin, which has become a necessary addition to my device. 

Menus: If there is a disappointment to be found in Pocket Player, it is the menu structure.  Too many of the important and necessary features that set Pocket Player 3 apart from other media players are buried too deeply in the menu structure.  This significantly hampers the usefulness of features such as skins, visualizations, button mapping, and plug-ins.  In fact, most of the advanced features are simply too hard to find.  The menus need to be reworked in order to make these advanced features easier to locate and use.

Visualizations: Visualizations significantly enhance Pocket Player experience.  By using visualizations, you can accompany your music with several different "light shows".  Additionally, Pocket Player offers an album art visualization which displays the album art associated with each song.  In addition to displaying known album art, however, Pocket Player also allows you to search the Internet and download any missing album art.  Visualizations are a rare feature of portable media players.  Too often, developers fear the extra resources used by visualizations, and avoid them like root canal surgery.  By embracing this little used feature, however, Pocket Player is able to offer a significantly enhanced listening experience.  Furthermore, I tried using visualizations on battery power and, found only a minimal increase in the system resources utilized by Pocket Player. 

Plug-ins: Pocket Player is designed on a plug-in architecture.  This means many features and resources can easily be added, and the player itself can be customized and modified to meet your specific needs.  There is a growing library of plugins available on the Pocket Player plugin web site.  Available plugins include: Codec Decoders, General Features, Visualizations, and DSP enhancements.  Additionally, Conduits offers a software development kit (SDK), which allows you to develop and submit your own plugins and skins for Pocket Player. 

Conclusion: With version 3.0, Conduits has shown a remarkable penchant for staying in tune with the needs and demands of the market.  This is far more than the audio player which Conduits had offered with previous versions.  It is truly a full fledged dedicated digital media player.  With this latest version — which offers a myriad of state-of-the-art features and upgrades —  Conduits has raised the bar considerably…and cleared it with ease. 

Pocket Player is available from Conduits.  The full version costs $19.95.  As a final note, in the midst of writing this review, Conduits upgraded Pocket Player to version 3.01.  Both versions 3.0 and 3.01 were used for this review. 

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