On-Line Help
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Keyboard and menu commands
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BlackBerry keyboard and menu commands
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Supported protocols and formats
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Settings screen
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BlackBerry settings screens
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Radio List screen
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Web Player screen
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Creating and loading user's radio list
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Problems with socket connections
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Debug mode to solve issues
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Support for 3G phones
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 Keyboard and menu commands
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The following joystick and keyboard commands are used to control the application:
Up - move cursor up
Down - move cursor down
Right - open popup menu
Left - close popup menu
OK - open choosen screen or execute selected menu command
All popup menu commands are duplicated via assigned number keys.
In mWebPlayer BB version use "alt + * " keys to open/close
the popup menu.
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BlackBerry keyboard and menu commands
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The following joystick and keyboard commands are used to control the application:
alt * - open/close popup menu
Up - move cursor up
Down - move cursor down
OK - open choosen screen or execute selected menu command
Player Screen:
Up - play previous radio
Down - play next radio
Right - volume up
Left - volume down
All popup menu commands are duplicated via assigned number keys.
In mWebPlayer BB version use "alt + * " keys to open/close
the popup menu.
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Supported protocols and formats
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The following transport protocols are used to manage the high-level exchange of data when streaming audio-based content:
HTTP
Socket
RTSP (only for 3G phones)
mWebPlayer can play the following available on-line stream audio file types (formats):
MP3, AMR
AAC, AAC+, 3GP, 3GGP, etc (only for 3G phones, via RTSP protocol)
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Settings screen
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mWebPlayer has several system options that
will influence the application behavior.
Player Mode has two possible selections - one player and two players.
When you switch the mode in two-players state the application creates
the second system player which works simultaneously with the first one. In this mode,
while the first player is playing some part of available media, the second players loads the next
part of stream data in background and starts playing it at once after finishing the first play.
As result it makes the application play stream more smoothly.
Unfortunately not all mobile devices allow to work two players at the same time. There is only one way
to check this - testing.
Run the application, switch it in one player mode, select some radio from the playlist
and play it. Then stop playing, switch the setting to two players mode and start the player again.
Define in which mode the player will play more smoothly.
If the application plays 3G link its player mode is not used.
Buffer Size is the most important setting for mWebPlayer.
It defines the size of play buffer where stream media data are kept after receiving from a radio server.
This size has direct influence on smoothly playing and depends on available memory in your mobile
and internet connection speed. The more size the more media data will be saved
and played for one time without re-loading.
The application has very smart dynamic algorithm to optimize using available media data. When you run playing
some radio you can notice that at first mWebPlayer will play only short portion
of stream media. But the longer it plays this radio the more data will be received and saved in the play buffer
and the more smoothly playing will be.
If your mobile has less then 1 MB of memory heap I would recommend you to set the buffer size to "20".
For good internet connection speed it will be more than enough to keep and play about 150-170 KB of media data
for one loading (that is about 35-40 sec of "pure" playing).
Setting the buffer size to bigger size will take effect only for mobile device with big memory heap
(at least 2 MB) and very good internet connection speed. Try to test different settings to define the best option for your mobile. If you get "out of memory" error message
you should switch the buffer size to less value.
If the application plays 3G link its buffer size is not used.
Safe Memory Mode protects the application against crashing because of memory lack
in your mobile device. It is strictly recommended to keep this setting in "on" state
if your mobile has less then 1 MB of memory heap.
Switching the mode to "on" causes the player takes a little bit more time
to load next part of media data from the application's play buffer.
In ver. 2.00 the application defines available memory size and turns on/off safe memory mode automatically.
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BlackBerry settings screens
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mWebPlayer BB has several system options that
will impact the version behavior.
Player Settings Screen:
Buffer size defines number of bytes that will be read from stream source in advance before
playing. Recommended value is 100K or 200K
Keep in mind that playing smoothness depends on available network connection speed, selected radio bitrate, and phone's CPU power.
Network Settings Screen:
Direct TCP if it is "on" the application will use direct TCP connection to work with network.
BlackBerry in this case the application will use default BalckBerry network connection.
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Radio List screen
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Click on the Radio List item in main menu to open a screen with a list of available radio sources.
Using menu commands you can play the selected source, add a new web
station to the list, edit information about the selected
radio or delete it. All your changes will be kept in mobile device's storage
(not available in demo version).
When adding a new entry to the radio list the application can accept following URLs as source:
- Direct link to a music stream, i.e.
http://205.188.234.4:8004/
- Direct link to a stream playlist (pls/m3u format), i.e.
http://www.somafm.com/beatblender.pls
- Link-to-link to a music stream or a stream playlist, i.e.
http://radio.ext.ru/playlist/radio.m3u?
station=europaplus&stream=128
N.B.: Demo version does not save user changes in radio list after exiting.
You can find more radio links based on your interest using our advanced
Shoutcast Directory Search Engine
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Web Player screen
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Web Player screen allows you to play the selected web radio. And of course you can stop the player at any moment.
The dialog displays the current state of the player, the selected internet radio item, media codec; channel bit rate and title of the current song
(this data available only for ShoutCast media servers after connection to stream source).
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Creating and loading user's radio list
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Loading user's playlists from our web site is available.
Just register yourself in our User Area!
As a registered user you can easy create as many of your own radio playlists
as you want and save them in our database. Each saved playlist has unique id number.
Using the Load command in the Radio List screen you can download the list
from the database entering its id number in according text field.
You can share your playlists with your friends. Just give them the id number of the list to download it.
N.B.: Demo version does not support this feature.
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Problems with socket connections
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To broadcast stream mp3 media over the web world non-3G on-line radio stations use ShoutCAST servers.
If any streaming software wants to get this media it has to establish connection
with a server directly through a socket port.
Some mobile providers, especially in the USA, has some security restriction in using socket connections in mobile devices.
It does not allow any application to set up a direct socket contact to any port.
So if some radio from your list demands to get connection to a server through such port
you can get error message about that.
For 3G media links that use RTSP protocol there are no known restrictions so far.
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Debug mode to solve issues
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To help the author to define possible problems with running mWebPlayer
on user's mobile there is a special debug mode which creates detailed log file.
How it works?
- Go to Settings screen and select Debug Settings item.
- Switch "Debug Mode" in On state.
- Press OK button to save settings.
- Go to Radio List screen, select any radio and start playing.
- When you get error message go to Settings again and select Email Log item.
- Enter your real (user@server.com) email address in From Email field and enter
your notes in Message field.
- Press Ok button to send email to me.
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Support for 3G phones
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Beginning from version 2.0 mWebPlayer fully supports possibility for 3G phones
to use RTSP protocol to connect to stream servers and receive real-time streaming media data. In this case
it is responsibility of built-in mobile J2ME-player to organize internal buffering for media stream and non-pause playing.
That is available now only in 3G network and for the latest 3G phone models. You can check if your phone works
in 3G network in Mime Type screen. Look at the phone's supported protocols to define if RTSP is
included in the list.
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