XPlayer Beta for your Blackberry UPDATE

Recently my friend with an iPhone showed me the Pandora app which streams internet radio via the iPhone. I was very impressed as I am an Internet Radio fan. BTW-Pandora can be found at Pandora.com. I will dig into Pandora some other time as it is well worth the effort.

I found a post on the crackberry.com forums that mentioned xplayer as a free internet radio, audio, and video player. I downloaded the beta at wap.shapeservices.com on my blackberry 8310 Curve.

The website specifically states "active users will be rewarded". Not sure what that will lead to but I am willing to give quality feedback if the product improves.

Info from the website:

Main Features

• All audio and video formats supported: mp3, m4a, avi, mp4, 3gp, wma, amr, mid, wav.
• Video full screen playback. Watch full screen video your BlackBerry screen.
• Playlist management: Create, Edit and Save your own playlists. Add a single file or a whole folder to a playlist.
• Advanced playlist sorting options: by title, by author or by path.
• Playlist Shuffle. xPlayer can play your songs in random order if you do not want to know what file is coming next.
• Use different themes to change the look of xPlayer.
• Background mode.
• Long battery life.

Compatible devices: Pearl 8100/8110/8120, Curve 8300/8310/8320/8330, 8800/8820/8830 (all 4.2 OS devices)

pics care of shapeservices.com

I look forward to the playlist mode if it truly can create and manage playlists. My BB Curve media player does not use playlists, which can be a bit annoying.

So far I have only played with the Internet Radio option. I listened to a few preloaded sites and they sound very nice on the BB. One note that I read on the crackberry forums that I needed to do myself. If you get choppy or delayed play back within a song, go to Settings, Radio, and set Data Connection Type from Use BIS Transport to Direct TCP. Seems to correct any choppyness (sp?). You can even check the box to use WiFi if you have a WiFi compatible BB. Very cool.

I first tried to create a radio station with my favorite site...Lucky 777. No luck. I think since Lucky 777 only uses the WMP codec, it would not load. It acted like xplayer wanted to play it, but hung. I then did some googling, crackberry forum searching, and found what I think is what xplayer needs to get a station to play. You need sites that stream mp3's. An example is SomaFM. I went to their site, found one of their mp3 feeds, and downloaded their .pls file. I opened the .pls file in Notepad.exe and swiped the webpage address and port, ie: http://steady.somafm.com:800X. When you type this in as your address for the station, click save, and then click on the new station, it plays like a champ.

I used 4 of their more softer stations to lull me through my quiet times. I have to be careful because this could chew up a lot of data, and I am not 100% sure I have unlimited data. I think I only have 5 gigs through AT&T. Must remember to use this only when I don't have my laptop up and running.

I need to do some more testing and research to get this address thing down. I am curious to see what filetypes this truly supports for internet radio streaming.

UPDATE: I loaded XPlayer this morning and looks like the Beta period is over. The app is now listed for $19.95. The site shows a new screenshot which looks very cool. I admit I was not terribly active as a Beta user and should have given them more helpful feedback. Oh well.