In the beginning, there was an awesome media player for Windows Mobile called ‘BetaPlayer‘. It could handle all kinds of audio and video codecs that the mobile version of Windows Media Player couldn’t. Eventually BetaPlayer turned into TCPMP (The Core Pocket Media Player), a freeware media app. And it was truly awesome. Then, all of a sudden, TCPMP dropped support for files downloaded from iTunes for legal reasons, and TCPMP became a little less useful. From this, the commercial CorePlayer was born. CorePlayer allows developers to collect some revenue and pay licensing fees for proprietary codec support.

I’ve been using CorePlayer for quite some time now and I love it. It does everything I want it to do: movies, video clips, audio files, YouTube, podcasts, JPGs, FLV files… and tonnes more.

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QUICKLIST:

System/OS/Device Requirements: Pocket PC 2000, Pocket PC 2002, Pocket PC 2003, Pocket PC 2003 SE, WM5, WM6, WM6.1
Price: $29.95 ( 20% off for the month of November with coupon code “WMCoolOpen”!) Free trial also available.
Company: CoreCodec, Inc.
Download: Available at our store for only $29.95!

KEY FEATURES:

• YouTube support, with built-in browse and search
• BlueTooth Stereo (A2DP) and Remote Control (AVRCP) support
• Programmable Hotkeys
• Supports over 15 Languages
• Media library (Manage your RSS Feeds, playlists, podcasts, bookmarks)
• Podcast Support (Standard and Enhanced)
• Streaming support (HTTP, UDP, RTP, RTSP, RTCP, SDP, Unicast, Multicast)
• IPTV/DVB-H/DVB-SH Ready
• Audio: MP3, WMA, AAC, MKA, WAV, OGG, Speex, WAVPACK, FLAC, MPC, AMR, GSM, ADPCM, ALaw, MuLaw, MIDI
• Video: WMV, CoreAVC� (H.264), AVCHD, MKV, MPEG-1, MPEG-4 part 2 (ASP), DivX, XviD, MJPEG, MSVIDEO1
• Images: JPG (420, 422, 440), BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF
• Containers: FLV, Matroska�, ASX, ASF, TS, PS, M2TS, 3GPP, MOV, AVI, MPEG-4, NSV
• GPU support: Intel 2700g, ATI Imageon, Qualcomm QTv
• CoreUI / Universal Skins (Custom interface)

VERDICT:

There are a number of ways to watch YouTube videos on your mobile phone, but CorePlayer is the coolest and easiest way I’ve found, hands down. It uses minimal memory, runs very smoothly, the mp3 player shows album art, allows both mp3 and aac equalizer usage, and it can play back 700×600 DivX avi files without dropping any frams which is very cool.

The only problem I actually encountered with it was that the download did not include a help file, which would have been very useful. But there are plenty of resources online that provide help and CoreCodec themselves offer an email helpline to those in need. So it’s not all bad news on the help front.

RATING: (out of 5)

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