Windows Media Player 9 driver - beta testers wanted

[avid]

I have developed a NetRemote driver, with matching server application, to drive WMP9, in a similar manner to Ben's JRMC driver, although (deliberately) quite a bit simpler. It will play albums and tracks from the WMP9 media library and the CD drive.

I will release it properly when NR is "released". But meanwhile, I am looking for volunteers to test it with NR 0.994. Note that this particular version will stop working when Ben releases his forthcoming version (0.995? 1.0???) of NR. I will need then to re-build the driver in order to interface to his changed driver API.

It is intended to be simpler than the J River Media Center driver. As such, it does not currently support:
• Album cover display
• Automatic playlists
• Random play
• Position and volume sliders
I personally would not use those features, and so have not bothered to implement them.

However, it does support:
• Selecting albums and tracks to play by album title and/or artist
• Creation, deletion and playing of named playlists
• Re-ordering the "Now Playing" list by drag and drop
• Basic player controls
• Track information and position feedback to NetRemote variables.

You can see the way it can look on a Pocket PC at http://briancollins.dns2go.com/avid/ScreenShots/Jukebox_NowPlaying.htm [Hint - click the colored buttons]. The wider context of the software is described in http://briancollins.dns2go.com/avid/Avid.htm

Anyone interested please PM me or e-mail to brian.avid@btinternet.com and I will e-mail you the software, documentation and sample CCF.

Thanks

Brian

[Ben S]

Has anyone bit on this? I think the work Avid is doing is great. This could end up being very useful for anyone using Windows XP Media Center.

[Promixis]

Me :)

[Dave T]

Awesome job, Brian!!

Ben - it looks like there's some code in there that does stuff that the JRMC control doesn't. Such as modifying Playing Now, and "Creation, deletion and playing of named playlists". It would be great to get that code into the JRMC control. Could Brian's UI code be moved into a shared class that both the JRMC and the WMP control use, and the driver-specific stuff be defined by a INRJukeboxDriver interface?

- Dave

[avid]

Ben,

You're more than welcome to the code whenever you want (tho it's still 0.994 API). I haven't sent it to you yet as I did not want to distract you with *anything* new until we have your new NR release!

Brian

[Ben S]

Regarding merging things - I'm not sure how it would be to merge them, I'm sure they are very different under the hood.

It would be neat, however, to use the same variable names (MP.Track for track) etc. It was always my intention to share variable names for this purpose, such that a user could pull JRMC out and put WMP in and it could work virtually plug and play. That would be tops. If they had the same driver ID (-10) and worked similarly enough, you really could pick which you wanted to control and run with it.

In other news - Avid, I will be sending you a new build in a bit so that you can make the changes required for the new API.

[Dave T]

Ben - yes, they'd be different under the hood, but there must be significant amount of UI code in there that could be shared, no? All somebody (you) would have to do would be to implement the back-end interface to wrap the playlist manipulation code that's already in MC. Easy for me to say, since you'd be doing the work!