Update: Pocket Player 2.72 has been released, with all bug reports in 2.7 fixed, including some critical lock-up reports. Further improvements to visualization speed, album artwork, and tag browsing has been implemented. A new Play/Pause/Hold button has been added. Version 2.72 also fixes time-out problems on Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone.

Conduits Technologies, Inc. Announces Pocket Player 2.7 for Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone and Pocket PC

Award-winning music program marks Smartphone release

Pictured: Pocket Player 2.7 screenshots, left to right: Album art and tag view on WM5 Smartphone; Default skin interface and equalizer panel; Expanded visualization area on Pocket PC; Default interface and Browsing interface on Smartphone 2003. More screenshots, including square and landscape orientation display, are available in the Pocket Player website.

NEW YORK, New York - February 21, 2006 - Conduits Technologies, Inc., announced today the release of Pocket Player 2.7, an alternative music player for Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC and Smartphone, supporting the latest media player standards and formats. Pocket Player aims to satisfy consumers who demand more from a media player on a mobile device. The new version introduces new platform compatibility, track metadata (tags) support, Podcasts, new audio format support and additional plugins.

PLATFORM COMPATIBILITY

Pocket Player is now fully supported on all Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone devices, as well as Smartphone 2002, 2003 and 2003SE. All Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC devices are also supported, including the Treo 700w. A new interface ("skin") for Pocket Player is now available in nine variations for all platform screen sizes, including landscape, square and high-resolution displays.

NEW INTERFACE

Pocket Player's interface has been redesigned owing to user feedback. In the middle of the screen, a larger playlist and visualization area is now shown. At the bottom of the interface, the common playback controls are featured, as well as the equalizer display. By popular request, the equalizer area has been reduced, and tapping on the equalizer will pop-up a new equalizer panel, to adjust the equalizer, or pick a new preset.

At the top of the screen, the current song Title is displayed along with the Artist, Album and Genre. When streaming radio, the current Title is displayed alongside of the current Radio Station. This information comes from the new metadata engine built into Pocket Player 2.7.

TRACK METADATA

Pocket Player now reads all metadata ("tags") in various tracks. For any tracks loaded into it, Pocket Player will read any ID3v1, ID3v2, WMA or Vorbis Comments information embedded in the track. Pocket Player's auto-scanning "Local Content" functionality (which finds all media on your device) works with this database to keep an always up-to-date roster of all files and metadata. Unlike Windows Media Player, there is no need to manually update your track library.

All types of tag information are found, including textual information such as Artist, Composer and Song Title, numerical information such as Track Number and Bitrate, and binary information such as embedded album Artwork. The tags are kept in a database available to plugins for developers to take advantage of via queries.

AUDIO FORMATS

Pocket Player also sports new playback features for WMA and WAV files. Purchased WMA tracks are now natively handled by Pocket Player, instead of relying on device-dependent components. Tracks that have been purchased through a number of music services such as Napster or Wal-Mart can be played back within Pocket Player. For rental tracks, Pocket Player also supports playback on Windows Mobile 5 devices and those with Windows Media Player 10 available. WAV playback support has been improved, and Pocket Player can now play PCM, GSM, G.711 (u-Law and A-Law), IMA-ADPCM, and MS-ADPCM files. These new compression types are common in many email-based voicemail systems.

Special handling for Podcasts is also included in Pocket Player 2.7. Pocket Player now automatically detects Podcasts, a web-delivered feed of audio files, and the "Auto-resume" functionality is enabled for these files. In this manner, you can keep Auto-resume disabled for your normal music tracks (where Auto-resume is usually not desired), but always pick up where you left off with your Podcast listening. Podcasts are also available as a separate item in the Browser plugin, explained below.

PLUGIN EXTENSIONS

Pocket Player now features several new bundled plugins. The "Browser" plugin offers a menu-driven navigation interface (common to many dedicated music players) to browse all the content on your device. This plugin leverages the new metadata database, to allow you to open or enqueue tracks by Artist, Album or Genre. The list of current playlists on the device is also available, as is a list of Podcast files, grouped by their publisher.

Other plugins that use track metadata are included. The "Media Properties" plugin produces a list of tags for a given file. The "Search Content" plugin lets you find a specific set of tracks that match search criteria. Finally, the "Filter Content" plugin lets you use the Local Content playlist, and it will skip over tracks that don't meet your criteria.

The DSP plugins have also been expanded. In addition to the Bass Boost and Variable Filters plugins, a new Chorus plugin is included. All DSP plugins alter any audio that is independent of the equalizer and other settings. A redesigned Album Art visualization plugin works in tandem with the metadata scanner, and can find both embedded artwork and external artwork references. Source code and a new Pocket Player Software Development Kit (SDK) for many of the plugins are available from the Conduits website.

AVAILABILITY

Pocket Player 2.7 for Windows Mobile Pocket PC and Smartphone is available as a free trial from http://www.conduits.com/products/player/ where the user can download and evaluate both products unabridged for 30 days.

For current registered users of Pocket Player 2.X for Windows Mobile Pocket PC, the upgrade is seamless! Simply install the new version of Pocket Player for Windows Mobile Pocket PC on top of your current 2.X version, and the product will automatically upgrade. For new customers, Pocket Player for Windows Mobile Pocket PC and Smartphone are both available for $19.95, from http://store.conduits.com/.

More information, including a complete list of skins and features, can be found at the Conduits website at http://www.conduits.com/products/player/.

Conduits develops commercial applications for Pocket PC, including Pocket Slides (a fully-featured presentation solution for Pocket PC) and Peacemaker (for infrared data transfer to other mobile device platforms).

# # # # # # # # #

Pocket Player is a trademark of Conduits Technologies, Inc.. Microsoft®, Windows® and/or Windows® Media® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Other product or service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

For further information, press only:
Carrie Hall
Conduits Technologies, Inc.
Telephone: (212) 248-5730
Fax: (212) 248-5794
E-mail: carrie@conduits.com