[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario Accessories] BennTech:
Parrot MK6000 Review Update (Part 2)

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WIZARD UPGRADES

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Let me start off by correcting a statement in my previous post. You don't have to unlock your phone and upgrade to an unofficial ROM. After much reading (XDA-developers has SO much information it's like finding a needle in a haystack), I found that you can install a tiny little CAB file and get A2DP--just search for "zoA2DP" or "Tornado_A2DP". Of course, by this time, I had already unlocked and flashed my phone to WM6 (X-Plore 1.1) and I was able to stream to the MK6000. However, with WM6, I was loosing at least 90% of my calls and encountered WiFi issues (both documented Wizard/WM6 problems with various solutions), so I downgraded back to Cingular's latest and installed zoA2DP. Also able to stream. Ultimately, I settled on Faria's WM5 AKU3.3v2. It has great features and seems the most stable of the three I tested.

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A2DP/AVRCP MEDIA PLAYERS

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To my knowledge, there are only five Pocket PC media players that support AVRCP: (1) Windows Media Player, (2) Conduits Pocket Player, (3) PocketMind PocketMusic, (4) MortPlayer, and (5) iPlay. I also read that TCPMP "partially" supports AVRCP, but I never got it to work.

Windows Media Player: It's free and already installed. Supports plugins. Unfortunately, it skips like crazy over A2DP. Plus there's no bookmarking, which I need for audiobooks.

Conduits Pocket Player 3.2: This is the one I'm currently using. Under WM6, AVRCP wouldn't work and DSP slowed it to a crawl. Worked with my standard Cingular ROM, but skipped regularly over A2DP. However, works great with Faria's ROM. Huge plugin library. Bookmarks. Crossfade/gapless. Extensive key mapping (including press for prev/next, hold for rewind/FF mapping--don't understand why all players don't do this). However, you can't map the slider if you have Smartskey running. The menus are difficult to navigate because everything is buried several levels deep. The screen buttons are small, and some are so tiny (like random and repeat) that they're hard to press even with a stylus. Also, by default, Pocket Player reads all the music on your device and starts building its own internal database in its install directory, which rapidly gobbles your device's memory (my DB grows to 28M in a matter of seconds). You can move it or disable auto scanning, but the very first time you launch Pocket Player it's a race to open the options, go to the last tab, scroll down a lengthy list of advanced settings, double-click the database location setting, and move it to your storage card before all your RAM is used up and your phone screeches to a halt. Pocket Player is also the only one I found that doesn't need to have the A2DP connection established before starting the player and can reconnect to A2DP after a lost connection. You can even specify A2DP as the output source (Options... > Advanced tab > Output Wave Device) and Pocket Player will automatically make the A2DP connection. However, if the MK6000 is off, this feature will lockup your phone and you have to soft-reset.

PocketMind PocketMusic 4.3.4: I bought PocketMusic years ago and was surprised to find it currently supports AVRCP since this isn't documented anywhere. No skipping. Good car screen. Bookmarks. Crossfade/gapless. Nice menu structure. Unfortunately, development seems nonexistent. Other than AVRCP support, I don't know of any new features in several years. No plugin support. Key-mapping allows you to specify exactly which buttons can be locked and/or used in the background, which no one else does. However, this doesn't work like its supposed to--some buttons' default actions don't work even if you don't have the button mapped; some work in the background, others don't. Also, if you map the DPad, you can't use the DPad anywhere else in the application (e.g., to navigate menus). I contacted PocketMind about the DPad problem years ago and they said they couldn't do anything about it. As a programmer myself, I know it's possible...they're just lazy.

MortPlayer 3.31RC7: This is my favorite. Plethora of options--I particularly like its ability to set the system volume when it starts/closes. Its interface is by far the easiest to use one-handed or while driving. Best of all, it's free (donations). However, MortPlayer gets confused when I receive a call while playing music. After the call ends, it loses the Bluetooth stream and plays through the phone speakers. One of my favorite MP3s won't play in it (but plays in all the other players). Worst of all, it starts successfully about 1 out 3 times for me; the other times I get the opening screen, but it's frozen. This is a release candidate, so maybe these issues will get resolved by the final release.

iPlay: This reportedly has the lowest CPU usage of ALL players--A2DP/AVRCP or not. However, numerous people report being blocked from the author's site, and if you can get to it, there's no mention a price, a way to buy it, or even a screenshot. Not worth his time to promote on his own site, not worth my time to test. (I have since learned that it costs $30, most people who have tried it love it, and almost everyone dislikes the author.)