Pandora on 6.5?

turin39789 · #1 (**permalink**) 03-23-2010, 12:47 PM

I don't suppose 6.5 made this easier for us did it?

#2 (**permalink**) 03-23-2010, 12:49 PM

Not that I noticed. It's a shame really.

dishe · #3 (**permalink**) 03-23-2010, 01:01 PM

Huh?
Pandora works fine. The bitrate is low, but that's how the WM client always streams (lazy developers didn't want to recode to use AAC like the Android, Pre and iPhone versions). Other than the bitrate, cabbed versions to fit WVGA (complete with a fix to prevent the songs from being cut out in the middle) have been floating around the forum for months. The version of WM is irrelevant.

ppcgpirate · #4 (**permalink**) 03-23-2010, 01:25 PM

I just use slacker radio, its not as glitchy as pandora and on the plus side you get to specify what genre of music you want to listen to and stick with it.

**kaos** · #5 (**permalink**) 03-23-2010, 01:35 PM

pandora works fine what the issue? i've been using it since tp2 came out with 6.1 custom 6.5 and now stock 6.5

#6 (**permalink**) 03-23-2010, 01:45 PM

I'm assuming that the op was wondering if the program worked any better or looked any better on 6.5.

turin39789 · #7 (**permalink**) 03-23-2010, 01:51 PM

I'd had trouble getting it to work on 6.1 before, got it going now with the latest instructions.

Still dissapointed in the audio quality and the fit and finish, lag between songs, tiny menus, thumbs up/down cut off at the bottom of the screen

Suppose I was hoping we might someday get an official Pandora client

dishe · #8 (**permalink**) 03-23-2010, 09:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by turin39789

I'd had trouble getting it to work on 6.1 before, got it going now with the latest instructions.

Still dissapointed in the audio quality and the fit and finish, lag between songs, tiny menus, thumbs up/down cut off at the bottom of the screen

Suppose I was hoping we might someday get an official Pandora client

They officially denounced Windows Mobile as a dead platform during an email correspondence with my press contacts. They are gung-ho about Windows Phone 7 (in fact, a Pandora app was shown at the press release), but ended support for the classic WinMo we know (and love) with the vogue version we have now.

Yes, the fonts and menus are tiny, but that is because they were designed for less than 1/4 of the screen resolution we have. Also, the app uses mp3 encoding to stream instead of the far-superior-at-lower-bitrate AAC. That's why the sound is lower fidelity. AAC uses more CPU power and mp3 was easier to develop for at the time. If they were to re-write the app now, it would look/sound better, but this is how it looked/sounded then. And so it shall remain, unless we switch to another OS. Sorry to be the downer.

**p-slim** · #9 (**permalink**) 03-23-2010, 10:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kaos

pandora works fine what the issue? i've been using it since tp2 came out with 6.1 custom 6.5 and now stock 6.5

Pandora doesn't work fine for winmo. the sound quality is horrible compared to any other device plus the buttons aren't made for winmo 6.1 or 6.5. That is why the buttons look like that. all we do on here is work arounds to make the buttons work but nobody has a work around for the horrible sound quality.

dishe · #10 (**permalink**) 03-24-2010, 02:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by p-slim

Pandora doesn't work fine for winmo. the sound quality is horrible compared to any other device plus the buttons aren't made for winmo 6.1 or 6.5. That is why the buttons look like that. all we do on here is work arounds to make the buttons work but nobody has a work around for the horrible sound quality.

Do you remember when Pandora first came out for the Vogue? The sound quality didn't change, however our expectations for streaming audio have. There is nothing "broken" about it, that's just what low-bitrate streaming mp3 sounds like. Find a shoutcast station with the same bitrate and codec, you'll notice the same effect.

Second of all, the buttons are fine in WinMo. The problem however, is that they were designed for QVGA.
I've got a Vogue (QVGA display) around here still, flashed to 6.5. Last I tried Pandora, the buttons looked fine if I recall correctly. And the sound was still the same as its always been.

There is no "workaround" for the sound, since that is how the app was designed to work. Remember, WinMo got it first. At the time, low bandwidth mp3 was acceptable. The other devices sound better because they came out later, and are using the newer and superior AAC codecs instead of mp3. We can scale and resize the graphics to work with our much larger screens (albeit being cut off a little), etc, but the sound delivery system was designed by Pandora to work like this and we don't access to a way to change that.

In a nutshell, its not "broken". I say it works fine because this is, in fact, how it was designed to work.
Yes, it severely needs an update for AAC and higher resolution. But they won't do it. They're busy pushing the WinPhone 7 version, and consider 6.x dead.