Antropia doesn’t offer a crazy multitude of extra functions. That being said, if the functions it does provide perform well it should be more than sufficient: Antropia Media Player plays music and video files, it streams radio stations (and makes it possible to record from the radio!), and it allows you to compose playlists. My interested was especially peaked by the possibility of recording radio programs, and I’ll elaborate on that in a little while.
After having installed the app and selected a language (English or German), your phone’s SD card is scanned for media files. This didn’t take very long on my device—15 seconds for 3 GB. You are then presented with the main menu, and let me start off by saying that this app isn’t exactly a looker. Yikes, “stark” is probably an understatement! But luckily that doesn’t limit the app’s functionality. Here are the options to be found under the main menu:
• Local: local media files (audio, video, and podcasts on your SD card).
• Playlist: most recent, quicklist, etc.
• Radio: Antropia FM, last playback
• Antropia Server: enables streaming from your computer to your phone via Antropia Server. The server’s still under construction, however!
Antropia displays ever SD card file that’s eligible for playback. Unfortunately, this means that absolutely every folder is shown, without regrouping music files (for example) into one category. This means that you have to manually select music or video files from each folder, which gets very tiring (and a little confusing) very quickly. There’s definitely room for improvement!
Playback works like a charm, though I couldn’t figure out which formats are supported; AVI and MPEG aren’t supported according to the FAQs, but AAC, M4A, and MP3 all work. According to the FAQ Antropia is based on the Standard Media Player and should be able to work with the same formats… the users disagree with this, however, and claim that this isn’t always the case.
For video playback there are a time bar, back/forwards buttons, and play/pause buttons; for music playback there are additional buttons for quicklist, playback list and sleep timer. The Sleep timer is convenient as it interrupt playback after 15-90 minutes. I make use of this option when I want to listen to a bit of music before I go to sleep.
You can change the names of files, delete files from you SD card, or add several files to a playlist. You can also search for folders or files, and seeing as things can get quite messy with this app this is a rather useful function indeed. Unfortunately, album covers and information related to files aren’t displayed—you’ll have to make do with the file’s title. A real drawback, if you ask me!
And what about the radio, you ask? Boasting approximately 2600 stations, Antropia does offer a big variety. However, messiness and lacking user comfort rear their ugly heads once more: it isn’t possible to sort or search for radio stations according to a region. What you have to do instead is search for the station you’re looking for. Results are updated regularly and every station you listen to is saved, which is a good thing—but there should be more options for searching for and through stations. Streaming works really well and the quality is impressive. It’s also possible to save radio programs you’ve already listened to as MP3s—pretty sweet!
I don’t prefer Antropia to the Standard Player when it comes to video and audio playback, but the radio streaming and Sleep Timer functions manage to save the app from getting a two star rating.
joe
Mar 15, 2011 6:16:55 PM
Extremely slow interface. Most buttons have to think for a couple of seconds before they do anything and searching will say please wait forever.
sid
Mar 4, 2011 4:40:16 PM
Top for radio WNYC
kerry
Feb 27, 2011 8:50:28 PM
Very good app...
anastacio
Feb 27, 2011 7:11:08 PM
Don't like
sokol
Feb 21, 2011 12:16:50 PM
Not good
joey
Feb 19, 2011 4:13:02 PM
Nice player, save the running stream as mp3 is great
Webmaster
Feb 17, 2011 11:33:21 AM
Slow. Didn't work. Too much "please wait"
pete
Feb 16, 2011 9:28:42 PM
Great update, like the new UI
Lance
Nov 28, 2010 9:31:43 PM
Too many stations won't play.Takes too long for stations too buffer and play.
Bruce
Nov 24, 2010 10:04:07 PM
World radio. Fantastic.