v1.0.2

If you like to play all kinds of media on your Windows Mobile phone or PDA, controlling everything with a touch of your finger, then take a look at Mobile Media Center.

Mobile Media Center turns your Windows Mobile device into a media powerhouse, that can be controlled by finger.

You can use it to:

* listen to music
* watch pictures
* play videos
* and keep up with RSS feeds/podcasts/vodcasts.

Mobile Media Center Screenshots





Mobile Media Center Video Preview

Manual

Installing Mobile Media Center

To install Mobile Media Center on your Windows Mobile 5 or 6 device, please go through the following steps:

• Copy the CAB-file you downloaded from our website to a folder on your device.
• Then, on your device, start the File Explorer and navigate to the folder you picked.
• From that folder, tap the CAB-file and the installation will start.

Mobile Media Center requires that the .Net Compact Framework 2.0 (or newer) is installed on your Windows Mobile device.
If it is not (yet), please download it from the Microsoft website and install it on your device.
  

Starting Mobile Media Center

To start Mobile Media Center, go to the Programs overview and tap the Mobile Media Center icon:

  

Using Mobile Media Center

The start page of Mobile Media Center looks like this:

You can use your finger to control Mobile Media Center, but you can also use the navigation keys of your device.
 

Organizing your media files

When you use Mobile Media Center to browse through your media files, you will find that it follows the folder structure in which you stored those files.
Therefor it's very important that you follow a few guidelines when organizing your media files:

• Create separate folders for music, picture and video files (similar to "My Music", "My Pictures" and "My Videos").
• For music:
  • Store each music album in a separate sub-folder.
  • Make sure each of your music files has a meaningful name (like "01 <title of the first song>" etc.).
  • You can make use of cover art by placing a picture file called "folder.jpg" in the sub-folder of the album.
    Make sure this picture is not too big; that would slow down browsing through your albums.
  • Mobile Media Center can play the same audio formats the Windows Media Player on your device can.
• For pictures:
  • Organize your pictures into folders as well.
  • Create, for example, one sub-folder per event and put all pictures of that event into that sub-folder.
  • Make sure the pictures are not too big; that will slow down the browsing experience.
    (and since your mobile device does not have a very high resolution screen, it's not very useful to put high-res pictures on it anyway)
• For videos:
  • Finally we advize you to organize your videos into folders too.
  • Create, for example, one sub-folder for each movie.
  • You can make use of cover art by placing a picture file called "folder.jpg" in the sub-folder of the movie.
    Make sure this picture is not too big; that would slow down browsing through your videos.
  • Mobile Media Center can play the same video formats the Windows Media Player on your device can.

 

Configuring Mobile Media Center

When you start Mobile Media Center for the first time, please go to the "Settings" page first to configure the application.
This page contains a number of tabs:

	This "Media folders" tab can be used to specify where on your device your media files are stored. You can specify: the folder that contains your music files the folder that contains your pictures the folder that contains your video files By using the "..." button you can select each folder by browsing.
	This "Appearance" tab can be used to specify the look and feel of Mobile Media Center. You can choose between a Vista or an XP look. You can also specify if Mobile Media Center should always be started in landscape mode. (normally it follows the current Windows mode)
	This "Skipping" tab can be used to specify how many seconds the skip buttons should skip forward or backward when playing a music or video file.
	This "Slideshow" tab can be used to specify the interval at which Mobile Media Center should move to the next picture when it plays a picture slideshow.
	This "RSS" tab can be used to specify which RSS feeds you want to keep up with. You can add a feed manually or you can import feeds from an OPML file. When your RSS feed contains podcasts or vodcasts, you can download the attached audio or video files to a folder, that can be specified on this tab as well.
	This "AVRCP" tab can be used to specify how Mobile Media Center should respond when your Windows Mobile device is paired with an audio device and you use the audio device to control the player (to skip backward or forward or to move to the next or previous track) via so called AVRCP commands.

 

Listen to music

When you want to listen to music, just tap the "Music" button on the Start page.
That will take you to a page that shows an overview of the contents of your music folder:

You can scroll through the albums by moving the list up and down with your finger.

Tap an album and you will see the tracks it contains:

You can play a song by tapping it.
If you want to play all tracks on the album, tap the button "Play all".

Doing so will take you to the "now playing" page:

On this page you can see which track is being played and you can control the playback.
The buttons on this page have the following functions:

	Switch off the display (to save battery when listening to music).
	Decrease the volume level.
	Increase the volume level.
	Start playback.
	Pause playback.
	Stop playback.
	Skip backward within the track that is being played. (the number of seconds can be changed in the settings)
	Skip forward within the track that is being played. (the number of seconds can be changed in the settings)
	Move to the previous track.
	Move to the next track.

When you tap the "Queue" button, you can see the playlist:

 

Watching pictures

To watch your pictures, just tap the "Pictures" button on the Start page.
That will take you to a page that shows an overview of the contents of your pictures folder:

By tapping a sub-folder, you can see the pictures it contains:

You can scroll through the pictures by moving the list up and down with your finger.

Tap a picture and it will be displayed full-screen:

Tap the picture and you will return to the picture overview.
 

Watching videos

When you want to watch a video, just tap the "Videos" button on the Start page.
That will take you to a page that shows an overview of the contents of your video folder:

Tap on the sub-folder that contains the video you want to watch, and you will see the video files it contains:

Tap the video file and it will start playing:

For most videos, playback will look better when Mobile Media Center operates in landscape mode.

The buttons are similar to the ones used when playing music, but there's one new button:

	Switch to full-screen playback of the video.

 

Read RSS feeds, listen to podcasts, watch vodcasts

When you want to read an RSS feed, listen to a podcast or watch a vodcasts, just tap the "Online" button on the Start page.
That will take you to a page that shows an overview of the RSS feeds you defined when you configured Mobile Media Center:

The contents of the feeds have to be downloaded from the internet.
When your device is connected to the internet, you can press the "Refresh" button to do so.

Once the contents are downloaded, you can view them by tapping an RSS feed:

The items that are unread are represented by a yellow colored icon.
All items in a feed can be marked as "read" by tapping the "Read all" button.

To view an item, just tap it:

If the item has a podcast or vodcast attached to it, you can download that by tapping the "Download" button.
Downloading such attachments will take a while. But the good news is that you can do other things in the meantime.
Once downloading has completed, the "Download" button is renamed to "Play". You can tap that "Play" button to play the downloaded podcast or vodcast.