WMP on Windows CE - odd User-Agent and Shoutcast

[tony]

We are trying to use the Windows Media Player on Windows CE R3 to play an MP3
stream from a Shoutcast server. WMA streams work fine, as do some types of
MP3 streams. But the player uses the User-Agent "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;
MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)". Given this User-Agent string, Shoutcast servers
reply with an HTML page, not an audio stream.

Normally I'd expect the player to have a User-Agent string like
"Windows-Media-Player/12.0.7600.16415" or "NSPlayer/8.91 WMPCE/8.91.01.7741".

The CE build does not include OCX 7 controls, but it does include OCX 6.4.
I don't control the build, so I don't have much freedom for experimentation.
Does this make sense to anybody? Any ideas how to get the player to use an
actual WMP User-Agent? Or knowledge that convinces us this is not possible?

[Todd Allcock]

AFAIK, WinCE devices use one global UA for the entire device, rather than
separate UAs for the browser, media player, etc. You can edit the device's
UA string with a registry editor to report what you want it to. We did this
a lot in the old days to "trick" websites into deliving desktop versions
instead of mobile version of their sites. (Modern Windows Mobile devices
don't let you change the UA via registry any longer.) The string is
typically stored at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet
Settings\User Agent

Weird things might happen if you browse the web after changing it, I
suppose! If so, perhaps you could cook up some kind of batch file that
changes the string to and fro as needed (though I believe the reg key is
only read at startup, so a reboot would be required after each change.)

Another option might be to try the various versions of TCPMP (The Core
Project Media Player) available at http://picard.exceed.hu/tcpmp/test/ to
see if any are compatible with your device. TCPMP handles a lot of streams
WMP doesn't. Perhaps one of the Handheld PC/Palm-sized PC versions will
work on a CE device. (Open the zip file labelled
"tcpmp.other.cabs.0.72RC1.zip" for the non-Windows Mobile versions for older
CE devices.) I've had TCPMP running on some pretty old WinCE devices, like
an NEC HPC2000 and an old Cassiopeia PSPC.

Good luck!

"tony" <to...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
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