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First off, the program requires you to verify an email address when you first launch the program. It then opens your internet connection and phones home, presumably to tell the server to send a verification link to your email. Once you open the link and verify, you can relaunch the program and it will once again connect to the internet to verify that you have verified... argh....
One of the first things the program will do is indexed all of the media on the phone. It does it pretty quickly and it seemed pretty thorough. Unfortunately, arranging the media by artist/genre didn't help me too much because most of my music is garage band stuff that never seems to be labeled consistently. So for me, the old school 'Winamp' selection process still seems the best.
The Photo viewer was strange. It showed me a bunch of thumbnails of my pictures, but when I clicked on one it would immediately take me to a file explorer where I had to navigate to them manually. To make things weirder, there were 2 of every one of my pictures and offten when I would select one, it would pull up a completely different picture. GIFs also don't play. The only bit of credit I can give this is that the gestures worked pretty well and the pictures loaded fairly fast. The zoom function was nice too.
Video viewing was disappointing. Most of my files would not open, it would simply tell me I had to purchase the module to view this file. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of a 'trial'? So, I loaded up a youtube clip I had. It ran really slow. Probably between 5-10fps. I then loaded TCPMP and ran the same clip. It ran about 4x faster.
Another source of irritation is that there are advertisements on just about every screen. This gave me the impression that the commercial version too would be AOL bloatware.
At this point, I lost interest in exploring the other features of Kinoma Play. Maybe the retail version is a lot better? I don't know. What I do know is that the whole purpose of a trail version is to earn people's business. Well, this trail did the exact opposite for me. Stay away.
I understand how it can be difficult to judge Kinoma Play from
Kinoma Free; but as many Kinoma Play users will tell you, they're
very different. It's very understandable why you felt like you had
such a different experience than the result I put into the review.
I too found myself frustrated with Kinoma Free because of things
like ads and the x button not closing the app. In Kinoma Play you
will not find ads, you can set the x button to close, associate
file types with the app, and you will have access to tons of
features you won't find in Kinoma Free. Think of Kinoma Free as a
newborn infant and Kinoma Play as a wise grandparent.
Here is my experience with Kinoma Play regarding the situations
you encountered or were concerned about....
- YouTube clips play flawlessly. I always test the same clips when
I try out a new YT player and they play as well or better compared
with similar apps that access YouTube.
- All my songs, even my underground music, were categorized in
their proper slots.
- The Photo album is one of my favorite features. When I click on
a pic in the thumbnail album, it opens that pic immediately. No
file explorer you speak of, no double pics, no problems at all. I
don't recall ever having this issue on Kinoma Free either, so I'm
not sure what's going on for you there. I have to note how well
Kinoma Play zooms in and out of pics. The long press to zoom
slowly is excellent too. I think you're right about it not playing
animated gif files, but perhaps Kinoma is working on it. They
constantly come out with updates for Kinoma Play (I don't think
they update Kinoma Free very often) and add many features.
- It's a shame you weren't able to load video on Kinoma Free.
Kinoma Play plays the popular file types like mp4, mov, asf, flv,
wmv, etc
- Again, the commercial version is ad free.
I am curious, did you happen to watch the video of Kinoma Play on
the Toshiba TG01 above? I am assuming you didn't because it would
have addressed your concerns over advertisements and the picture
viewer.
While I respect your opinion, I disagree with your recommendation
to "stay away." Your recommendation is based on the free version
with very limited features. Instead, I would recommend for people
with questions or concerns to ask others who use the full version
regularly, contact Kinoma on Twitter or email Kinoma through their
support page. Even better, as Charles mentioned, Kinoma offers a
full 30 day money back guarantee... so maybe this would work for
you. Also, TrialPa is a good idea.
Kinoma Play is extremely popular for a reason... it's a great app
with more functional features than you would find in any other
app. Because of this, I've been able to replace multiple apps with
kinoma Play. Their customer service is excellent to boot. You
will even find their representatives assisting others in user
forums like PPCgeeks.
Regards,
kinnikun
"Well, after this raving review I thought I'd download the app and give it a try."
You downloaded Kinoma's free Kinoma FreePlay instead, so FWIW none of your critiques apply to Kinoma Play, the app reviewed here.
Kinoma FreePlay isn't trial software, but a completely free (forever!), ad-supported media player. Unfortunately you didn't have time to explore it properly. Not only is it a great YouTube player, but it does music, podcasts, streaming radio, and supports great services including Flickr and SHOUTcast radio. Kinoma Guide alone gives you instant access to terabytes of free content with no monthly subscription fees. If you try to do something that requires technologies available only in Kinoma Play, it (of course) lets you know.
It's not possible to distribute a trial version of Kinoma Play because it includes too many licensed technologies (codecs, etc.). But it's an incredible value -- like getting a new phone for $30 -- and Kinoma puts their money where their mouth is with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
If you're on a tight budget you can also get Kinoma Play for free using the "Checkout with TrialPay" button at http://kinoma.com/play/. They also tweet the occasional coupon at @Kinoma on Twitter.
-- Charles