Watching movies with subtitles on Windows Mobile

Although there are many media players for Windows Mobile, both free and paid, very few of them support subtitles, mainly because rendering subtitles in real-time requires much processing power, which is limited on mobile devices.

The only player so far that has built-in subtitle support is Core Player; however, it is not free and only supports the not-so-common .SMI subtitle format. Most downloadable subtitles are in the format of either .SRT, .SUB or .IDX, which are not supported by Core Player.

While you can use a tool such as Subtitle Workshop to convert from .SRT to .SMI and use with Core Player, an easier way is to use TCPMP, a free player. Download it here and the subtitle plug-in TCPMP SUBS here. Copy all the files from the SUBS package to the TCPMP folder, overwriting any existing files, and re-start TCPMP. TCPMP will auto-detect and render any supported subtitles (.SRT, .SUB) that have the same name as the movie file. If it does not, select Option>Subtitle>Open to load the correct subtitle file.

For best results, it is recommended that GDI is used for video rendering. You can change this from Options>Video.

Note

1. The original built of TCPMP may crash upon startup on new devices. If the version downloaded from the website does not work, try this. The subtitle plug-in can work with TCPMP 0.72RC1 onwards

2. TCPMP SUBS will work fine with all .SRT subtitles. However, not all .SUB subtitles will work. It only supports .SUB files in MicroDVD format. Your .SUB file will be supported if it is of small size (e.g. < 100 KB) and contains readable text. If your .SUB file is big (e.g. a few MB) and comes with a .IDX file, it is probably not supported.

You can convert .IDX/.SUB subtitles to .SRT easily by using SubResync available in the VobSub package.

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Free Internet TV software

If you want to watch live TV for free on your computer or your phone, I'd recommend the following freewares:

1. TVUPlayer. This software runs on both Windows and Mac. A lot of channels in a wide variety of languages and topics are available.



2. theChanner. This software runs on Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC or higher and has similiar functionality as TVUPlayer. It can support both Wifi and 3G connections. Viceo quality is quite smooth on my old Dopod 838 Pro with a 400MHz processor.



This does not work well with a VGA (or higher resolution) device, since there is no way to resize the video to fit the screen.

3. WebTV 3.71



This works resonably well on my 480x800 device. To modify the list of players, edit the settings file in the application directory.

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Remove expired fax license warning in Kapanga softphone

As mentioned in my previous post, you can use Kapanga softphone free edition to send faxes via SIP protocol. However, the free edition will eventually expire and display the following message preventing you from sending fax:

"Your current license prevents you from sending/receiving faxes. Please upgrade"

A basic re-installation of the softphone does not help as the uninstaller does not remove all traces of the program. To remove the above warning and re-enable fax capabilities, following the following steps:

1. Quit the softphone and perform a basic uninstallation of the program in Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel
   
2. Remove the following file "Documents and Settings\[username].lic" where [username] is your Windows logon username
3. Remove the folder "\Program Files\Kapanga Softphone" and all its contents
   
4. Remove the folder "Application Data\Kapanga Softphone" and all its contents
5. Re-install the softphone.
   

The prompt should disappear and you will be able to send fax again.

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Sending fax using SIP

If you have a subscription with a SIP provider that supports T38, you can use Kapanga softphone to send fax from your computer without a fax machine. For testing purpose, I would suggest flowroute which gives US$0.25 trial credits upon free signup.

To send a test fax, download and install Kapanga softphone. It is assumed that flowroute is used as the SIP provider

1. Right click on the softphone UI, choose Call Control Settings

2. Open SIP paramaters tab and input your account username. You can put anything for the display name.

3. Open Proxy Configuration tab and configure as follows:

Domain/Realm: sip.flowroute.com
SIP proxy: sip.flowroute.com:5060
Authorization User: enter your flowroute username (e.g. 5xxxxxxx) and password
Tick the following checkboxes: Register, Register Automatically, Proxy Keep Alive

4. Right click on the softphone UI, choose Fax Control Settings. This step is important; the default Fax settings may not work with flowroute.

In General Settings, tick the following checkboxes: Re-send last packet, Error Correction Mode, Re-use RTP port, Send CSI/TSI.
Set Preferred Resolution to MR and check Negotiate Resolution
Set Preferred Data Rate to 9600bps, either V.29 or V.17
In Send/Receiving Faxes>Outgoing Faxes settings, tick the following checkboxes: Prompt to send faxes, Prompt before call

5. You are now ready to send your first fax. Enter the number to fax to. You will be prompted to select a PDF file to fax to. Upon connected, press the Fax button to start fax transmission. If everything goes fine, you should see the softphone transmitting the fax as in the following screenshot:



A 1-page fax will take around 3 minutes to complete at 9600 bps. After you have sent your first fax successfully, you may want to tweak the settings for higher fax resolution and transmission speed.

Kapanga softphone supports incoming fax as well. To try out, register 2 flowroute account and sign on to both accounts from different kapanga clients. Then, from one client send a test fax to the other client's flowroute account number. To receive incoming PSTN fax, you need to have a DID number that forwards all incoming call to your Kapanga softphone, refer to this post for more information.

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