Media Player only ROM???

[s.t.s]

Hi all, long time lurker here ... so thanks for all of your hard work, has always made my HTC devices far more useful :)

I would really love to turn my diamond into a media player only as I use a Touch Pro as my main phone now. I know this is perhaps a little counter-intuitive to many of you ... but I was wondering if there would be an easy way to create a ROM that was just a mediaplayer and bluetooth. Disable all gsm/umts hardware to save battery life and perhaps leave wifi and a browser app. I would also love to see the "touch scroll" feature for navigating lists and what not, but before I get too excited with my idea I will let you all sanity check me.

TIA

Sam

[liamhere]

Hi all, long time lurker here ... so thanks for all of your hard work, has always made my HTC devices far more useful :)

I would really love to turn my diamond into a media player only as I use a Touch Pro as my main phone now. I know this is perhaps a little counter-intuitive to many of you ... but I was wondering if there would be an easy way to create a ROM that was just a mediaplayer and bluetooth. Disable all gsm/umts hardware to save battery life and perhaps leave wifi and a browser app. I would also love to see the "touch scroll" feature for navigating lists and what not, but before I get too excited with my idea I will let you all sanity check me.

TIA

Sam


would it not be cheaper ....to buy a thing called a ipod?

i here thay can do what you want :rolleyes:

4gb on a diamond won't go far :(

[s.t.s]

true ... but an ipod I don't already have and I do have a diamond :p

Also ... I am really not a fan of being forced to use iTunes with an iPod and the other media players are not as shiny as my Diamond :)

I do understand there may not be a great demmand for this, but if it was easy then I would be a very happy dude.

[adwinp]

true ... but an ipod I don't already have and I do have a diamond :p

Also ... I am really not a fan of being forced to use iTunes with an iPod and the other media players are not as shiny as my Diamond :)

I do understand there may not be a great demmand for this, but if it was easy then I would be a very happy dude.



You can always cook a version with nearly no OEM apps except your media player. As for your phone/gsm/etc support, why cripple the phone? Just turn airplane mode on in your comm manager.

[s.t.s]

I would still like bluetooth ... and I would love a super light rom that booted nigh on instantly ... I am guessing from the responses so far though that this may not work out as an idea though :(

[l3v5y]

I would still like bluetooth ... and I would love a super light rom that booted nigh on instantly ... I am guessing from the responses so far though that this may not work out as an idea though :(
Instant booting is not something WM does well...

I guess it might be possible to strip down the SYS as well as the OEM, and leave you with Phone, media player(s) and comm manager, without email/messaging, office, games, terminal services etc...

I have a Diamond arriving on (hopefully) Wednesday, when I get it, I'll try and cook a really light ROM for you!

Just so I know, what media player would you prefer?

[s.t.s]

thanks l3v5y ... that would be awesome ... I have only every really used the built in mediaplayer. whatever the best/simplest mediaplayer there is that has a decent interface ... just doing a bit of searching now to see what kind of media players are available.
How quick do you reckon you might be able to get the boot time to?
Also if you could leave Opera/allow install of opera that would/could be useful.

A quick browse suggests S2p could be a good choice :) I am gonna give it a quick try now?

[l3v5y]

thanks l3v5y ... that would be awesome ... I have only every really used the built in mediaplayer. whatever the best/simplest mediaplayer there is that has a decent interface ... just doing a bit of searching now to see what kind of media players are available.
How quick do you reckon you might be able to get the boot time to?
Also if you could leave Opera/allow install of opera that would/could be useful.

A quick browse suggests S2p could be a good choice :) I am gonna give it a quick try now?

I haven't tried to see how fast I can get boot times on a Diamond. When I get mine I can see.

If you get a list of all the software you want/need, I can try and remove all the rest.

[s.t.s]

Thats great ... thanks

I would like all of the S2 apps :) and the bluetooth stack so that I can use A2DP

Thats it really ... all I want is great battery life and fast performance.
No need of touchflo3d or any other shinyness from HTC at all.
Happy to have wifi and phone removed to help battery life. If they can't be removed or if the two benefits I would like to see won't happen by removing them then please add in Opera.

If it is possible to get S2P and S2U to autostart then that would be doubly cool.

Cheers
Sam

[chribruu]

To the OP: Pocket Player is a great mediaplayer. At least for music, as I haven't tried it with video.

[adwinp]

Thats great ... thanks

I would like all of the S2 apps :) and the bluetooth stack so that I can use A2DP

Thats it really ... all I want is great battery life and fast performance.
No need of touchflo3d or any other shinyness from HTC at all.
Happy to have wifi and phone removed to help battery life. If they can't be removed or if the two benefits I would like to see won't happen by removing them then please add in Opera.

If it is possible to get S2P and S2U to autostart then that would be doubly cool.

Cheers
Sam


Use CorePlayer for video. x264 decoding...
Like I already mentioned, WIFI and Phone can be turned off via comm manager, so you don't lose any battery anyways...
As for autostart: you can always add a link to \windows\startup\ and your app will autostart, or you can play around with hklm\init, though that would be pointless.

[WMguy]

If you get a list of all the software you want/need, I can try and remove all the rest.

Wow, that has been a phone dream of mine for years. What a good guy!:)

[s.t.s]

While comm manager is fine ... I barely made 4 hours of playback on my diamond today (an hour and a bit of A2DP action so not that bad) but I am hopeful that if more is stripped from the ROM then I may get a bit more life out of it.

@WMGuy ... I know ... would be cool

@L3v5y ... I guess a regedit app would be useful for tweaking settings etc.

[l3v5y]

Wow, that has been a phone dream of mine for years. What a good guy!:)
Once I've played around with my Diamond a bit more I may start a "Custom ROM" service.

[l3v5y]

While comm manager is fine ... I barely made 4 hours of playback on my diamond today (an hour and a bit of A2DP action so not that bad) but I am hopeful that if more is stripped from the ROM then I may get a bit more life out of it.

@WMGuy ... I know ... would be cool

@L3v5y ... I guess a regedit app would be useful for tweaking settings etc.

I've got the 2.03 ROM now, and I can strip out a lot. I think removing the phone itself probably won't increase batter life much, and removing wifi may make things unstable, but removing the phone skin probably will decrease memory usage and processor load.

S2U2 auto starts anyway, and a short cut to S2P can be made relatively easily so that it autostarts.

What I've currently got on my list of "to keep" (as much of the rest as I can remove will go) is:

S2P
S2U2
S2V
Phone
WiFi
Opera
System files
Bluetooth (A2DP)
Comm manager

[s.t.s]

cheers l3v5y ... that looks like all I would ever want out of it ... I guess if it is more of an "entertainment" device ROM then sticking Teeter in would be cool too.

Thanks for your efforts and let me know if/when you have anything that you would like testing :)

[mjaxa]

While comm manager is fine ... I barely made 4 hours of playback on my diamond today (an hour and a bit of A2DP action so not that bad) but I am hopeful that if more is stripped from the ROM then I may get a bit more life out of it.

Ahem, if you sit down and think about it objectively, you will get maybe 4,5h of listening time. Face the facts - to run a WM6 device you need minimum of 150-180 mAH, now translate it to the capacity of the battery (900 mAh) and in IDEAL condition you will get... exactly this, which is 4 hours give or take.

So, if you are looking for a media player, you should now think about additional cost of extra battery... So, why not do as everybody else, i.e, for nails you use hammer, for wood you use axe, and Diamond is a PDA phone, not a multimedia player (although it can be used occasionally in this mode).

Of course, it's interesting exercise (media only ROM) but that's it. Exercise. You won't get a real player out of it. Sorry. technical limitations of the Diamond design.

Unless you buy extra battery of course... and then Diamond is not so sexy anymore.... :confused:

[s.t.s]

all true and fair points ... but I can personally see a benefit ... even if the battery life can't be improved upon, most of my time is at a desk where it can be charging or in the car where it can be charging. I guess I will go the way of a dedicated media player ... but I am one for always seeing the "next big thing" on the horizon and holding out for that, by which time I am hanging on for that, I am also loathe to shell out for one until my entire (90GB) music library can be held on it, happy to "shuffle" to my diamond but if I am gonna have a media player I would like it to hold all my music (and not be an iPod Classic) (akward I know ... but hey)

Cheers
Sam

[mjaxa]

Just remember that this race never can be won. That is, once a device with 90GB that you like comes out, your library will become 109BG, and what then? It's like with the PC's, phones, etc. There's always something special being prepared which is soooo much better than present designs...

Still, Diamond was not even designed as multimedia player.... hence the battery and capacity limitations (BIGGEST!! fault - lack of memory card slot).

Still - all the best! :)

[ksekhar]

Just remember that this race never can be won. That is, once a device with 90GB that you like comes out, your library will become 109BG, and what then? It's like with the PC's, phones, etc. There's always something special being prepared which is soooo much better than present designs...

Still, Diamond was not even designed as multimedia player.... hence the battery and capacity limitations (BIGGEST!! fault - lack of memory card slot).

Still - all the best! :)

to add to that...listening to music in diamond sucks esp. with the head set that comes with phone by default...
you may like to use it once in a while but cannot be used as ipod/mp3 player replacement :)

[s.t.s]

All valid points again ... I actually think for music we are not far from storage capacities catching my library size and surpassing it, video and especially HD video we are miles from though :p

I use an A2DP headset with some nice sony ear buds ... the supplied headset is horrid!!