[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Anyone having read my tutorial “A brand new way to play YouTube clips on your Windows Mobile device!” knows, up to now, downloading and watching “real” (not the mobile version, which is a completely different and, playback-wise, fully unrelated animal – see the Mobile YouTube tutorial HERE) YouTube videos on a Pocket PC was a two-step process, involving a step of actively downloading the clip to the local file system with a separate and non-MS Smartphone-compliant tool, YouTubeDownload.exe, and only after this playing it back.

The latest, 0.4.2 version of TCPMP Plugin for Flash Video on PPC, fortunately, doesn’t any more involve this extra step. This not only makes it easier to watch “real” (non-mobilized) YouTube videos, but also means the entire process is already MS Smartphone (Windows Mobile Standard) compliant, unlike the previous, YouTubeDownload.exe-based download.

In a nutshell, after installing, you just look up the “v” parameter in the URL of the video (as was the case with the earlier version and as is explained in the previous tutorial) OR just make sure you just search for the title / author / genre, fire up http://www.mobytube.net/, search for this info and click the link of the result(s). The playback will immediately start in TCPMP.

Installing

As with the previous version, download the latest build (currently, 0.4.2) HERE. Make sure you download the CAB file (now, it’s named TCPMPflvplugin-v0.4.2.CAB) and just execute it on the PDA. It’ll automatically install itself to the home directory of TCPMP – unlike with previous versions, no manual file copying is needed.

Using

Now, in your Web browser, go to http://www.mobytube.net/. In the upper textfield, enter the v parameter as explained in the article (AGAIN AND AGAIN, you can also just enter the title, author etc. here too). Also, make sure “youtube” is selected in the second drop-down list (but you can also find videos in other video repositories - if you leave the drop-down list untouched, it'll search in all of them):

(the same on a low-res Smartphone (SP for short), in Opera Mobile)

Now, just tap the Search button: It’ll find the given video as can be seen in HERE (SP screenshot). Now, just press the link under the image; if you use IEM (PIE in pre-WM5 parlance) TCPMP will be fired up at once and, after you explicitly start the video, it’ll play (SP screenshot).

Note that if you use Opera Mobile, you’ll need to select “Open” instead of “Save” in the download screen that comes up then.

I’ll explain how NetFront must be configured in the next section.

Another example screenshot with searching for “music” on YouTube (as opposed to searching for the “v” parameter):

(same screenshot under NetFront 3.4)

Configuring NetFront

If you use NetFront as your browser, you must explicitly configure the browser to invoke the external TCPMP application after downloading the M3U file (otherwise, it’ll just download the file to the local file system and doesn’t do anything else). To do this, go to Menu / Tools / Browser settings and, in Menu, select External Tools. There, press the Add button in the “External Application” group. On the next dialog, select ‘.m3u’ in the “Extension” drop-down list and press OK. If everything is OK, you’ll see this:

showing it’s indeed player.exe (TCPMP’s main executable file) that will be invoked upon having downloaded M3U files. After these, clicking MobyTube links will result in (after a download – you can download the files anywhere as can be seen for example in HERE – and an application start request dialog, where all you need to do is tapping OK, TCPMP will be invoked. A quick note: if, in the latter dialog, you check in “Do not show this dialog” any time (as can be seen in here), you won’t be presented the dialog any more. Doing this is, therefore, highly recommended.

Summary

It’s THIS easy! Needless to say, the TCPMP-based playback is WAAAAAAAAAY faster than doing the same with the standard Flash plug-in under either IEM or Opera Mobile, let alone the current, already (super-slow) Flash-enabled TP versions of NetFront 3.4. Playback is just great even on my very slow TI OMAP-based MS Smartphones and Pocket PC’s – without any kind of overclocking! Also, the networking problems adversely affecting Mobile YouTube playback (see the Mobile YouTube tutorial for more info on this) are non-existing.

All in all, keeping this in mind is a MUST for all Pocket PC and Smartphone users wanting to watch YouTube videos on their handhelds whenever they would like to!