Sunday, October 15, 2006

Media Streamer Audio Playback with Album Art

Media Streamer V1.1-2 provides Album Art in it's interface whilst playing tracks directly on the Nokia 770 or whilst controlling playback on a UPnP Player that allows for UPnP remote control such as the Philips SL300i.

I have been able to view Album Art on Media Streamer when using PMM and/or Twonky on .mp3 and .wma tracks where my initial testing seem to indicate :-
  • PMM (& I imagine Simple Center) work when the Album Art is in the same folder as the tracks and named as (folder.jpg)
  • Twonky works when the Album Art is tagged within the Audio file.
I have also tried adding Album Art to .wav using AudioShell 1.3 Beta 2, but this is not being correctly read by PMM and/or Twonky and passed to Media streamer. (If this is how it's done?)

TVersity V0.9.8.2 does not yet support album art but hopefully won't be long in coming now that id3V2 is supported ;-)

Media Streamer apparently also works with unprotected .acc files I imagine the Album Art will work in the same way as for .wma and .mp3 audio.
Here are some examples screen captures...

1) Crowded House, Weather With You in .wma format, with playback on Nokia 770.


2) Madonna, Papa don't Preach in .mp3 format, playback on Philips SL300i


3) Peter Gabriel, Downside-Up in .mp3 format, playback on Philips SL300i


4) Crowded House, Weather With You in .wma format, with playback on Philips SL300i



Issue Notes: (Probably interesting to the Media Streamer development team)

I did notice some niggles switching between the audio formats when using Media Streamer as either a controller or a player, I was using Twonky during my tests. (The playback time status gets corrupted and sometimes Media Streamer would state a playback error on completion of buffering or similar but would play the track?)

I also noticed that Media Streamer works best and most consistently when there is ONLY one Media Server on the Network. (Think something becomes confused and Media Streamer perhaps ends up communicating with more than one UPnP Server, in error)

You will note that the Album Art has a small magnifying glass indicating you can view images at full scale on the Nokia 770, this however does not work for Album Art.

Comments are always welcome...

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Streaming Images to Nokia 770 via TVersity & Media Streamer

I have been playing around with Media Streamer for a while and am able to stream all my photos from my XP PC, to my Nokia 770 wirelessly; using TVersity Media Server on my XP PC & Media Streamer on my Nokia 770.

(I am using TVersity V0.9.8.1 with Media Streamer V1.1-2 Apologies for the quality of TVersity Logo, it's all I have)

I do not need to worry about rescaling and pre-downloading my images to the Nokia 770 because TVersity and Media Streamer work together so seamlessly.

All the images below are screen grabs from the Nokia 770, illustrating how Media streamer can be used to view images.

1) Tversity_logo (Image) has been selected from My Pictures
and added to the Media Streamer Play list

2) Tversity_logo (Image) has been loaded as
a thumbnail in Media Streamer Player

3) Tversity_logo (Image) is being loaded
(full view) in Media Streamer Player.

4) Tversity_logo is in full view in Media Streamer Player
(Arrows to go Fwd/Back, useful with a playlist of images)

5) Tversity_logo in full view in Media Streamer Player.
(When we view an image, info & arrows are discarded)

6) Play list of images from a trip to Moscow in 2006
One image selected and displayed as a thumbnail.

7) Same Moscow image being fully displayed.