Q: Windows Media Player doesn't seem to play MP3 files.
Microsoft did not include an MP3 player for StrongARM CE presumably because they didn't want to rewrite their player for fixed-point processors. You can download a very good MP3 player for StrongARM CE from www.XAudio.com. XAudio also has SDKs that can be licensed for use in a product.
For further reading about Windows CE audio, please see the CE Audio topic index.
Hi, I am tring to play MP3 files, using Media Player, but I get always the same error message: "cannot open 'xxx.mp3' Please verify that the path and filename are correct and try again (0x80040111). I also tried to build custom OS images with all Multimedia components that are available on "Platform Builder catalog", but it continues to not function with a similar error: "The file format is invalid. (0x8004022f)" I am working with GCP board (32 MB) and WindowsCE.Net.
Marco found that the issue has to do with the codec that generated the MP3 file. CE apparently does not support files created with the open-source LAME MP3 encoder, but CE does work with files created with the Windows MP3 codec.
Alternative CE MP3 Player
On a related note, Marco also found an open source project that works well with CE. Reportedly, the project supports more MP3 file formats than Media Player and is reasonably compact (requires less RAM and flash for storage). The player is written for PocketPC but can be rebuilt for CE .NET 4.2. The code is posted at http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA032810/index.htm