Kinoma Notes

The first post-launch Kinoma Play update is now available!

You’ll be notified automatically. Alternatively, go the opening menu, show the menu pod and select Player > Check for Updates to update on-demand.

• More “finger-friendly” for phones with hi-resolution (VGA+) screens, including the HTC Touch Diamond
• On touch phones, the menu pod supports left and right swipes to move between menus
• Norwegian language support
• Improved support for phones with both slide-out QUERTY keyboards and phone keypads
• Improved support for resuming video and audio streamed with Orb (requires Orb v2.01.0017 or newer)
• Improved compatibility with podcast feeds hosted by FeedBurner
• Improved Google Video compatibility
• Correct presentation of multi-part Audible audiobooks

Kinoma Play is designed to work on all Windows Mobile phones, but this update has been specifically tested and tuned with these additional phones:

Samsung

• Samsung SGH-i600 series
• Samsung SGH-i607 — Samsung BlackJack
• Samsung SGH-i616 — Samsung Jack
• Samsung SGH-i617 — Samsung BlackJack II
• Samsung SGH-i610 series
• Samsung SGH-i780 series
• Samsung SCH-i730 series
• Samsung SCH-i760 series

HP

• HP iPAQ 210 series
• HP iPAQ 510 series
• HP iPAQ hw690 series

HTC

• HTC Artemis — HTC P3300, O2 Xda Orbit, T-Mobile MDA Compact III
• HTC Athena — Dopod U1000, HTC Advantage X7500, HTC Advantage X7501, HTC Advantage X7510, T-Mobile Ameo
• HTC Excalibur — BT ToGo, Dopod C720W, HTC S620, HTC S621, O2 Xda Cosmo, T-Mobile Dash
• HTC Herald — HTC Atlas, HTC P4350, HTC P4351, T-Mobile Wing, XDA Terra
• HTC Hermes — AT&T/Cingular 8525, Dopod 838Pro, Dopod CHT 9000, HTC P4500, HTC TyTN, HTC TyTN P4500, i-mate JASJAM, NTT DoCoMo hTc Z, O2 XDA Trion, Orange SPV M3100, Qtek 9600, SoftBank X01HT, Swisscom XPA v1605, T-Mobile MDA Vario II, Vodafone v1605, Vodafone VPA Compact III
• HTC Kaiser — AT&T 8900/8900a, AT&T 8925/8925a, AT&T Tilt, Emobile Emonster S11HT, HTC TyTN II, HTC P4550, O2 XDA Stellar, SFR v1615, Swisscom Mobile Assistant XPA v1615, T-Mobile MDA Vario III, Vodafone v1615, Vodafone VPA Compact V
• HTC Titan — Alltel HTC PPC6800, Bell HTC 6800, Qwest Mogul, Sprint Mogul, Telus HTC P4000, US Cellular HTC PPC6800, Verizon Wireless XV6800
• HTC Trinity — HTC P3600
• HTC Wizard — AT&T/Cingular 8100, AT&T/Cingular 8125, Dopod 838, HTC Prodigy, HTC P4300, HTC P4300, i-mate K-Jam, O2 Xda Mini Pro, O2 Xda Mini S, Orange SPV M3000, Qtek A9100, Qtek 9100, T-Mobile MDA, T-Mobile MDA Vario, Vodafone VPA Compact II
• HTC Touch — HTC Elf, HTC Elfin, HTC P3050, HTC P3450, HTC P3452, HTC Vogue, O2 XDA Nova, Okta Touch, T-Mobile MDA Touch, Verizon XV6900, Vodafone VPA Touch
• HTC Touch Cruise — HTC P3650, HTC Polaris 100
• HTC Touch Dual — HTC NEON300, O2 XDA Star, T-Mobile MDA Touch Plus
• HTC Touch Pro — AT&T Fuze, HTC Raphael, O2 XDA Diamond Pro, Sprint Herman C, T-Mobile MDA Vario IV
• HTC Touch Diamond — HTC P3700, O2 XDA Diamond, O2 XDA Ignito, T-Mobile MDA Compact IV
• HTC Universal — i-mate JASJAR

Other

• ASUS P525
• Dell Axim X51

Remember, you can always find the full list of phones known to be compatible with Kinoma Play at http://kinoma.com/support/devices/play/.

Less than 200 hours after its introduction, Kinoma Play won its first award.

It’s a great one, too — WMExperts did a roundup of the best Windows Mobile media players, and they crowned Kinoma Play “Best Windows Mobile Media Player”.

WMExperts also declared a best “classic” media player, but they didn’t have a chance to put it up against our other Windows Mobile product, the free Kinoma FreePlay.

Kinoma FreePlay includes not only a full-featured music player, but also support for tens of thousands of streaming internet radio stations, podcast and audiobook streaming, the world’s best YouTube and Flickr support, the ability to stream all of your music from home via Orb (also free), and more.

• Media Player Roundup: The Winner(s) Declared [WMExperts]

The first African-American candidate for President. The first woman candidate for Vice-President. Whatever the outcome, this is surely to be one of the most historic and exciting elections in U.S. history.

As our little part of the democratic process, Kinoma Play and Kinoma Player 4 EX can help you stay on top of the 2008 U.S. Election.

We’ve just refreshed Kinoma Guide’s Election ‘08 category with categories for DNC and RNC speeches, added the official YouTube channels for Barack Obama and John McCain, and created an Analysis & Commentary category for additional coverage from the news media.

Look for Election ‘08 in News & Politics.

(Do you have suggestions for this or any other Kinoma Guide category? Let us know by emailing content@ our domain.)

If you picked up The Wall Street Journal today, you saw that we had the great pleasure of being reviewed by Katherine Boehret for The Mossberg Solution.

After almost a week with this application, I changed the way I thought about on-the-go Web browsing for media. I forgot about typical browser functions like typing a Web site’s name into a URL bar and instead did plenty of things online with my portable device without deliberately thinking about being online.

Kinoma Play is so well-designed that I wish it could entirely replace the dated Windows Mobile user interface…

Wow….what a great compliment. Her wrap-up is very kind as well:

These days in the tech world, much attention is being paid to applications sold on Apple’s App Store for use with the iPhone or iPod Touch. But Kinoma Play is one application that is desperately needed by Windows Mobile users, and it just might remind them that they can better navigate media-related Web services — without having to buy a new mobile device.

The whole review is excellent. Be sure to check it out to read more what she loved, and where she thought we could do even better.

• Better Navigation for Your Mobile [The Wall Street Journal]

The reaction to Kinoma Play has been amazing.

We’d really like to thank everyone who’s talking about Kinoma Play on blogs and in forums. Tomorrow, I’ll be posting some of the best articles and quotes so far.

Today, I’d like to share a list of 101 cool and interesting things about Kinoma Play. I promise that everyone will find some gems in here…

1. When Kinoma Play first starts, it scans My Documents and your storage card to find your media, and remembers information each media file in a database for super-fast browsing and searching. After the initial scan, Kinoma Play does quick incremental scans to find files that were added or removed.
2. Kinoma Play supports FLAC files, the leading format for lossless audio compression. FLAC audio sounds amazing — true CD quality sound, without any artifacts. And the algorithm is remarkably efficient, using less CPU and battery power to decode than MP3 or AAC.
3. To scroll through lists and grids at hyper-speed on a touch screen phone, flick the list once and — while the list is still scrolling — flick it again in the same direction.
4. Take a 360° look at beautiful panoramas in the Pictures and Photocasts category of Kinoma Guide. Explore the cockpit of historic planes and spacecraft at the Smithsonian Museum in Kinoma Guide’s Pictures & Panoramas category. You can also make your own QuickTime VR cubic panoramas for Kinoma Play.
5. Upload video from your phone to YouTube with Kinoma Play’s Send feature. Just log into your YouTube account first from Services.
6. Upload audio, video and picture files from your phone back to your computer by using Send in the Orb menu.
7. Kinoma Play is the first media player anywhere — on a phone or computer! — that can stream Audible audiobooks. Any book you’ve purchased from Audible can be immediately streamed. Of course, you can also download the audiobook files too.
8. Press the menu key (right soft key) on any screen to show Kinoma Play’s innovative new animated menu pod. Use the left and right arrow keys to quickly browse the different menus in the menu pod to see all the options available.
9. From the main screen of Kinoma Play, use Open URL in the menu pod to open any media URL. You can even add it to your Favorites as you open it.
10. To remove an item from your Favorites, select the item to remove, show the menu pod, and select Remove.
11. Kinoma Play occasionally measures your network bandwidth, and uses the result to optimize your streaming experience with streaming services like Orb, YouTube and Reuters.
12. If Kinoma Play believes you don’t have enough network bandwidth to play a stream, it displays a small exclamation point. You can still try to play the stream, but it may frequently pause to re-buffer.
13. You can download many of the audio, video, picture and panoramas that you find in Kinoma Guide. Show the menu pod and select Download from the Media menu.
14. When downloading a file, select Yield to download the file in the background. The download will proceed whenever you are not playing audio or video.
15. For a beautiful collection of low bit-rate streaming radio, check out Kinoma Guide > Radio > Tuner2. Most of these stations use that latest aacPlus compression for the great sound quality, even at slow network speeds.
16. Kinoma Play is a “best quality possible” media player. That means Kinoma Play will do its best to play media files and streams that may require more processing power than your phone has. If Kinoma Play detects that the video is too demanding for your phone, it’ll play the video at a reduced frame rate to try to maintain continuous audio.
17. Kinoma Play maintains a History of the 100 most recent items you have viewed — mixing together both local files and internet media. History items from the network display with a network icon next to their title.
18. To clear your History, show the menu pod, go to Settings > Privacy and select the Clear button next to History.
19. While watching audio or video, select Back to continue using Kinoma Play to find other media while the audio continues to play. On the Kinoma Play main screen, above the left soft key you will see a small “picture-in-picture” view of the current video or song artwork. Press the left side-button to return to the playing video.
20. Playlists in Kinoma Play aren’t just for songs. You can put anything in a Kinoma Play playlist. Use them to organize your favorite photos, or to build a list of your favorite albums or artist. Playlists in Kinoma Play can even mix together local files and network streams.
21. Kinoma Play is always keeping an eye out for new media files. If you take a picture with your phone’s camera, it will automatically appear at the top of the Photo view in My Media Files. If you copy files to your phone with ActiveSync, they appear in Kinoma Play as they’re being copied over.
22. Kinoma Play is the world’s second streaming podcast player (we made the first one, too). That means you don’t have to subscribe to a podcast, download podcast episodes, or synchronize in order to listen to a podcast. Just open the podcast in Kinoma Guide, select your episode and begin listening. You always have access to every episode in the podcast, not just 5 or 10. And you always have the most recent episodes.
23. Install the free Orb software on your PC so you can play the audio, video and pictures on your computer from your phone — no matter where you are. Kinoma Play and Orb work together to optimize the pictures, audio, and video for your phone’s screen size and current network connection.
24. Kinoma Play includes the latest high-quality, low-bandwidth audio codec from the MPEG standard — aacPlus version 2. Our implementation is by Dolby, so you know the sound quality will be perfect.
25. Don’t have time to listen to podcasts or audio books in a single sitting? No problem — Kinoma Play remembers where you stopped listening, and automatically resumes from there the next time you start playing. (There are a few network servers that don’t support this feature).
26. Kinoma Play contains the world’s first mobile streaming download manager. You can Yield a download to continue downloading in the background. If you want to listen to a partially downloaded file, just go to Downloads in My Media Files and open the file. Kinoma Play will resume downloading the file, and let you play the portion of the file that has been downloaded.
27. Kinoma Play supports AVC (a.k.a. H.264) the latest high quality, low-bandwidth video codec in the MPEG standard. Kinoma Play supports both baseline profile and, more unusual for a mobile phone, main profile. AVC video tends to be higher quality, though it also requires more processing power to display.
28. Rotate your pictures, instantly. When viewing a picture, press the Center button to switch to rotate and zoom mode, then press left or right to take your picture for a spin. On a touch phone, you can just draw a quarter (or half) circle on the picture to rotate it whenever you are zoomed all the way out.
29. To see details about any media item, select Get Info from the Media menu in the menu pod. The information shown depends on the information available, such as the image dimensions, content bit-rate, codecs in use, detailed description, artist, album, and genre.
30. To watch a slide show of your pictures, open a picture and then select Slideshow from the menu pod. There are of options for customizing your slideshow — a dozen different transitions, camera motion, shuffle, and speed.
31. To play music while watching a slideshow, first start the music playing - both files and network streams - and then start the slideshow.
32. On touch screen phones, Kinoma Play offers a unique “Finger friendly” mode that combines a modern touch user interface with full 5-way support. You can move between using the 5-way control and touch screen, depending on your preference at the moment. If you prefer to control your touch screen phone primarily with the 5-way control, you can disable “Finger friendly” mode by selecting View from the Settings menu in the menu pod.
33. In many views, Kinoma Play lets you filter the items shown just by typing a few characters on your phone’s keyboard. To show only songs with the word “love” in the title, just type “love” when looking at a song list. Press the backspace key to clear the filter.
34. To make a new playlist, open Playlists inside My Media Files and select Add from the Playlist menu. The checkmark next to the new playlist indicates that it is the target playlist for adding new items. To change the target playlist, select the playlist you want to make the target and choose Select from the Playlist menu.
35. Kinoma Play lets you build playlists incredibly quickly, because the menu pod always remembers the last menu item you selected. After adding one item to a playlist, select the next item to add and press the menu key — you’ll see that Add to Playlist is already selected, so just press the Center button on the 5 way control, and move on. It is fast and easy.
36. When you search, Kinoma Play usually displays the first 20 items found. If more items are available, a More item appears at the end of the list. Select More to extend the search results with another 20 items.
37. When you search Kinoma Guide, the results are a mix of individual media items, guide categories, and podcasts. If you want to know the path to any items in search results, select Get Context from the Search menu.
38. Photos in My Media Files are displayed in a grid view sorted by date taken, with the most recently taken photos shown first. You can use the Sort menu to change the sort order, and the View item in the Settings menu to switch between list and grid views.
39. Use Kinoma Play to connect to your Flickr account where you can view your photos, upload photos from your phone, tag your photos, view your friend’s photos, comment on photos, browse your Flickr groups, and even download photos from Flickr to your phone.
40. Use Kinoma Play to connect to your Live365 account, to listen to 10,000 custom programmed radio stations. Kinoma Play users get a 5-day free VIP pass to try out Live365 – just go to Services and select Live365 to get started. There’s no credit card required.
41. Sign up for a new Audible account in Kinoma Play and get a free audiobook — the bestselling “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. No credit card is required. It is a great way to experience Kinoma Play’s ground breaking streaming Audible audiobook support. Just go to Services and select Audible to get started.
42. Listen to a full length CD. The built-in Kinoma Guide includes access to 1,000 full length audio CDs from Magnatunes — including a great selection of classical music performances.
43. Rediscover a classic book with Librivox, the internet’s leading provider of free audiobooks. Kinoma Play includes 1000 complete streaming Librivox audiobooks from Charles Dickens, Karl Marx , the Founding Fathers and L. Frank Baum.
44. All those MP3 files you bought from eMusic and Amazon work great in Kinoma Play. And Kinoma Play handles AAC and Windows Media Audio files too, so just about anything you’ve ripped with iTunes or Windows Media Player plays too. And unprotected songs from iTunes Plus work great too.
45. Kinoma Play supports lots of different playlist formats, both from files and the internet. The alphabet soup of supported playlist formats includes : asx, m3u, pls, opml, rss, wpl, and xspf.
46. To adjust the speed of a slideshow while it is playing, press up and down on the 5-way control.
47. Use Google Image search or Yahoo! Image search to find pictures of your friends, open the picture to pan and zoom to their face, and then use Set Contact in the Picture menu to attach it to your friend’s entry in your address book.
48. Listen to extended audio previews of bestselling books from the New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Publisher’s Weekly best sellers list using Audible. It’s a great way to discover new books, no matter where you are.
49. Share your favorite media with your friends — Kinoma Play can send an SMS or email with a link to internet photos, podcasts and videos. Just select Send from the Media menu to see the sharing options for the currently selected media item.
50. You can add anything to Favorites — podcasts, your favorite artists in Music, radio stations, folders on a storage card, and services like Audible and Live365. You can even add playlists to favorites, to create multi-level favorites.
51. Use Kinoma Play to directly browse the contents of My Documents and your storage card, if you prefer to use folders to organize your content. Kinoma Play instantly shows you the thumbnails of the media in your folders.
52. On a touch phone you can nudge the volume up or down by swiping up or down. An on-screen volume control will appear to confirm the change. You can tap on the volume control directly or continue to swipe up and down to further adjust the volume level.
53. You can adjust the Bass, Treble, Balance, and Volume in the Audio Settings Dialog. Select Audio from the Settings menu. To reset any value to its default, press the center Select key on your 5-way control.
54. While navigating using the 5-way control, you can tap to move one item at a time, or press and hold to accelerate through a list or grid. Sliders can be adjusted in a similar fashion.
55. On a touch phone you can zoom into a particular place in an image by tapping what you want to zoom into. To precisely control the zoom level press and hold. You can also pan and then zoom further. Kinoma Play returns to the previous pan and zoom settings when you tap to zoom back out.
56. If you have a touch screen, tap at the bottom of a picture or panorama to show the control bar. Tap an empty area of the control bar to hide it.
57. On a touch phone press and hold an item in a list or grid to select it. When you release your finger, the menu pod will automatically appear showing the available operations.
58. On a touch phone you can flick lists and grids gently to scroll only a few items, and more quickly to scroll faster and further. You can always stop the scrolling by tapping and holding.
59. The Search item on the Kinoma Play main screen lets you quickly find all kinds of media quickly, including YouTube Videos, Flickr Photos, podcasts, and US radio stations.
60. Feel like trying out a different color scheme? From the Kinoma Play main screen, select Skins from the Player menu.
61. When you make or receive a phone call, Kinoma Play automatically pauses your playing audio or video item, and resumes it when the call completes, slowly fading up the volume.
62. Many newer digital cameras store the camera orientation in the JPEG files they create. Kinoma Play uses this information to automatically rotate the image to the correct orientation for you.
63. Log into Flickr to comment on your friend’s photos and edit the tags on your own Flickr photos.
64. The entire SHOUTcast radio directory is built into Kinoma Play. Browse by genres or search for stations.
65. You can adjust the contrast and brightness of videos while they play, just like on your television. While playing video, show the menu pod and select Video from the Media menu.
66. Kinoma Play will occasionally notify you that an update to Kinoma Play is available. To manually check for the latest version of Kinoma Play, go to the main screen, bring up the menu pod, and select Check for Updates from the Player menu.
67. Get your fill of politics with podcasts spanning the spectrum from left to right, all in the News & Politics category of Kinoma Guide.
68. Grandma couldn’t make it to the wedding across country? You can use Kinoma Play to upload your photos to Flickr as you take them.
69. Explore music worldwide with radio stations from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
70. Learn how to fix something by searching YouTube’s DIY section. Now that you’re mobile, bring the instructional video along with you while you perform the task.
71. Your favorite music videos are never more than a search away.
72. Take your podcasts with you when it’s time to leave your desk. No downloads or syncing required.
73. Use Kinoma Play as an instant mobile child pacifier. Search YouTube for their favorite Sesame Street, Dr. Seuss, or even videos of trains to dazzle your kids.
74. How different are radio stations in Birmingham, Alabama and Birmingham, England? Find out with TUNED.mobi, a directory of radio stations from the United States, Canada, the UK, Ireland and Australia.
75. Many views in Kinoma Play can be customized. Select View from the Settings menu, to choose between list and grid view, and small or large size items.
76. Select Privacy in the Settings menu to clear your browsing history, clear Kinoma Play’s browser cache, close open sessions with network services and have Kinoma Play forget your passwords.
77. You can use Kinoma Play to delete media if you need to make room for something newer. Select Delete from the Media menu.
78. On Windows Mobile Smartphone/Standard edition phones, you can set any picture as a background image — including pictures from Flickr, Google Image search, and Yahoo! Image search. When viewing the photo, select Set Background from the Picture menu.
79. Broaden your horizons with news from around the world, including live feeds from CNN IBN in India and France 24.
80. Mix-up your music with random Shuffle.
81. Hear your favorite song over and over and over again by selecting Repeat One from the menu pod when listening to any song (or video). Or listen to your favorite album over and over by selecting Repeat All.
82. Move pictures between Flickr and your PC. Log into Flickr and Orb, open a picture in Flickr and choose Send from the Media menu to upload it to your PC using Orb. Or open a picture on your computer using Orb and send it to Flickr.
83. Kinoma Play keeps your music, internet radio, audiobooks and even video playing in the background while you do other things, like check your email or browse the web.
84. Audiobooks from Audible generally have multiple chapters. Use the left and right arrow keys to quickly move between the chapters, both for Audible files you’ve downloaded and Audible streams.
85. Use ActiveSync to copy media files to your phone by connecting your phone to your PC with a USB cable. Kinoma Play automatically finds media files copied to My Documents and your storage card.
86. You don’t need a PC to rate and comment on YouTube videos. Just sign into your YouTube account, then go to YouTube > Rate or YouTube > Comment in the menu pod whenever you see a video that needs your feedback.
87. To quickly copy media files to a memory card, connect a memory card reader to your computer. Copying files to an SD card with a card reader is usually much faster than using ActiveSync, which is great when you’re loading up an 8 GB microSD card with your music.
88. Install Orb on your PC, and you’ll never have to worry about forgetting a picture, song or video at home. Using Orb you can connect back to your home media library to play and even download whatever you forgot.
89. Use your Mac or PC to upload media files to your MobileMe iDisk. Then use the iDisk service in Kinoma Play to log into your iDisk to stream or download any media in your iDisk account.
90. Upload your media files to your personal web server and use Open URL to open them in Kinoma Play. You can even open playlist files from your web server using Kinoma Play.
91. Kinoma Guide’s Providers category is a great way to jump to great content from content brands ranging from ABC to YouTube.
92. Bring your own personal YouTube with you wherever you are. When you sign into your YouTube account at Services > YouTube, you get fast access to your Videos, Favorites, Subscriptions, Playlists, and Contacts.
93. Kinoma Play puts tens of thousands of great internet radio stations at your fingertips. But did you know it puts thousands of terrestrial radio stations in your hands as well? You can search and browse over 500 Clear Channel radio stations across the United States by Format and State.
94. Kinoma Play — like all Kinoma products — comes with great customer support. We treat you like a person, and we’ll almost always get back to you in less than 24 hours.
95. Want to see your own favorite media in Kinoma Guide? Let us know by contacting support or emailing us at content@ kinoma.com.
96. If you’re using French as your phone’s language, Kinoma Play’s UI will automatically appear in French. Other languages are on the way.
97. If you’re looking for a specific podcast and can’t find it in Kinoma Guide, try Search > Digital Podcast.
98. To re-measure your bandwidth at any time, select Network from the Settings menu and then select Measure.
99. Sometimes it’s important to preserve History. Remember, you can select any item from History and add it to your Favorites or any of your playlists.
100. Lists of YouTube videos include thumbnails, making it easier to find what you want to play.
101. Orb is wonderful, but its mobile web interface can be difficult to use. Kinoma Play lets you use Orb via Kinoma Play’s wonderful user interface, making remote media play just as easy and fun as local media playback.

Do you have other favorite features and tips? We’d love to hear from you.