Kinoma Play Review

Newly Released Kinoma Play Mobile Media Browser Sets New Standard For On-Board & Streaming Video, Audio and Pictures on Your Windows Mobile Treo Pro & 800w Smartphone

As I mentioned yesterday, Palm’s new Treo Pro has been rocking my world for the last few days and although I’ve been putting it through its paces I’ve probably explored lesss than 50% of its capabilities – every time I think that I’ve covered it all something new pops up.

One of the these new things was the rather timely release yesterday of the spectacular Kinoma Play – an application that the company calls the “World’s First Mobile Media Browser” and which I naturally promptly installed.

At its most basic Kinoma Play is a Windows Mobile software that allows you to view, play, stream, download, email, share and post all sorts of video, audio (MP3’s, audiobooks, podcasts, radio +more) and pictures via your Windows Mobile Treo smartphone from thousands of sources including Audible, YouTube, Live365, SHOUTcast, ABC, CNN and Flickr – all of these sources are conveniently included and accessed from the Kinoma Guide.

From the main Kinoma Play screen (image above left) you gain access to:

My Media Files
Whether your personal media files are saved on the smartphone or on your memory card Kinoma Play indexes everything and neatly files it here.  You can quickly Search for any media files no matter if you have 10 or 10,000 of them on your device or go directly to one of the media categories created by Kinoma Play (Movies, Music, Pictures, Audiobooks, Playlists, Downloads, My Documents or Storage Card).

What you’ll immediately notice with Kinoma Play is not only how fast the application runs but also how smooth all the animations are.  In the video above I have tried to give you a quick perspective of this by: 1) performing a search (Stacey), navigating to the main folder containing all of the albums for this artist and playing them; 2) I further get some file info and adjust the audio settings then prepare to send this audio file via email straight frm within Kinoma Play; 3) I play a video file in my Movies that I had previously downloaded and adjust the volume which shows discreetly on screen; 4) I select Music and search the artists listing (typing brings up all matches); 5) I open my Pictures and select to play a slideshow with random transitions as well as stopping one image and zooming + panning into it (you can actually swipe your finger across the screen to move forth and back just as you would on the iPhone); 6) I navigate to my Classical Music folder on my Storage Card and finally 7) return to the Now Playing screen.

Kinoma Guide
This section is where Kinoma Play gives you access to the “outside world” – streaming media and pictures of all sorts found online and neatly categorized for easy searching and playback.

In the video above you’ll see how I can: 1) quickly search all third-party providers for “podcast” for example and open the stream or download to my smartphone; 2) browse the huge list of Providers (from ABC, Amazon and Audible to Wall Street Journal and YouTube) where I open the BBC folder and London stations list to listen to a podcast; 3) I search Flickr for a “rose” image that I want to download to my device; 4) I open Live365 (which offers 5 days free trial); 5) continue to watch a National Geographic video which I want to send via SMS; 6) listen to the live NPR radio stream; 7) select a SHOUTcast classical opera station; 8) search for an Olympics video at YouTube as well as one of its Featured video which I go on to send via email; and 9) finally I open the Business category to stream a Harvard Business Review interview.

Search
This section offers specific searches such as images (via Flickr, Google Images or Yahoo Images) or video (via YouTube) as well as radio stations (via SHOUTcast and TUNED.mobi) plus access to the Digital Podcast service and full Kinoma Guide search.

In the example above, I’ve used the Treonauts keyword to find related images which appear almost instantaneously 20 items at a time (above right).

Services
Kinoma Play has taken great effort to seamlessly integrate with a number of well known web services such as Audible, Flickr, iDisk, Live365, Orb, SHOUTcast and YouTube to provide an absolutely terriffic media experience.

The beauty is that you can now login directly from within Kinoma Play to access any of the media that you have store with any of the above services.  This will for example save you the considerable hassle of having to install and manage the Audible installer.  I really hope that Kinoma will be adding more services such as Rhapsody and Yahoo! Music Jukebox in the future.

History & Favorites
The small History section stores the latest 100 media files that you have viewed and Favorites keeps any media that you’ve selected for easy and quick repeated playback.  It’s a shame that you can’t create individual folders here though to for example save favorites in Radio, Podcasts, etc.

Overall, Kinoma Play is a terrific (albeit not quite yet perfect) application and there’s no doubt that it sets a new standard for streaming and on-board media files.  The program is ultra-fast and smooth, offers one of the richest and vastest set of online media sources to choose from as well as delivering a truly complete set of functionalities. 

Finally, I believe that Kinoma Play offers a perfect demonstration of the significant improvements that an increasing number of Windows Mobile developers have made in the consumer space – easily matching those found on the iPhone for example – and it may be one of the best examples of things to come.

Separately, for Windows Mobile three other excellent entertainment software titles include CorePlayer Mobile, Pocket Tunes Deluxe as well as the excellent Resco Pocket Radio.

For Centro and Treo smartphones running Palm OS my favourite entertainment software includes Pocket Tunes Deluxe (a must) and CorePlayer as well as the bestselling Softick Audio Gateway which adds A2DP capabilities to listen to your music using a Bluetooth Stereo Headset.

Treonauts always know how to entertain…