Meridian Player

by Android Tapp May 19, 2009 6:59 AM – 51 Comments

Install

Meridian Player is an advanced multimedia player. Play video and music, with lyric/lyrics search, gesture control and extra information. Edit ID3 tags, ratings and threshold.

Price: Free

AndroidTapp.com Android App Review:

Features:

Meridian Player Android App is one of the best multimedia players for Android yet! Couples music player with video player, something not offered with the vanilla install on the T-Mobile G1 or Android phone. Meridian Player can playback the following formats: MP3, OGG, MP4, and 3GP. Gripe Alert: Android can’t successfully play MPG (MPEG1) files… this is an issue with the operating system… as this was the original universal playable video format before MP4

Meridian Player can save playlists and features all the other perks you would expect from a multimedia player; Shuffle, Repeats, album artwork, etc. You can also play music/video from a folder on your SD Card.

Meridian Player shines in its usability improvements over the the Default Music player for Android created by Google. For example, to Pause/Play… simply tapp the album cover. When watching a video and you need to rewind/fast forward, simply swipe the video left for rewind or swipe right for fast forward.

Features rapid play and gives caution whether Meridian Player can play the video or not. All the videos we’ve tested played just fine (even the cautioned ones).

Moreover, you can edit your own ratings for songs and ID3 information. To do so long-press the song title, tapp “Edit ID3 Tag”

Watch on Mobile

: Meridian Player Pro Widget Player

: Meridian Player Pro Widget

: Meridian Player Pro Toolkit

: Meridian Player Pro Artwork Search

: Meridian Player Start Screen

Usefulness:

In the Android music/video player realm… this app is very useful because you don’t need 2 apps for one function (cough… Music Player & Video Player)

Ease of Use:

Some might argue one of the usability features aforementioned are not intuitive as “Seeking” in video does not have the Seek Bar. Once you figure out how to swipe to seek, you’ll love it! (Or simply tapp “Menu” to get the onscreen Seek bar back)

Frequently Used:

Dependant on how often you listen to music or watch videos on your Android phone.

Interface:

The user interface is simple and intuitive.

AndroidTapp.com Rating

AndroidTapp.com Rating! (4.0 out of 5)

Yes! One of the finer Multimedia Players for Android thus far!

Developer: III - Romulus Urakagi Ts'ai

Tags: Android Apps, Android Music Player, Android video player, Meridian Player, MP3, MP3 Music Player, MP4

Categorised in: Multimedia, Music

51 Comments

By anakin78z on May 19, 2009 at 11:47 am:

I like the gesture controls a lot in Meridian Player. I think the interface could use a bit of a face lift, though it doesn’t matter that much.
One of the issues I run into though is that half way through a movie I’ll get the message: This file can not be played (or something like that). I then have to load the file again, skip ahead to where it stopped and it’ll play just fine from there. Except sometimes the video will stop wile the audio continues. Very annoying. I don’t know if these are issues with Meridian Player or Android.
Also, what’s the reason for the lack of codec support? I’m told it’s an android issue, but what gives? Just annoys me that I can’t play things on my super smart phone which played just fine on my Nokia 2 years ago.

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- By Android Tapp on May 19, 2009 at 12:29 pm:
  
  @anakin78z I totally agree with you on the lack of codec issues on Android… and yes it’s an Android lack. I’ve even heard the frustration of many developers about the poor Sound API, but hopefully that will improve. That’s why we were impressed with how Meridian Player turned out!
  
  Reply
  - By prowse on March 24, 2010 at 9:56 pm:
    
    What is with all these fucking unnecessary cookies!? Anyway, “Rehearsal Recorder/Assistant” by UrbanStew records and plays 16bit, 44.1Khz, Stereo (both channels recorded equally when falling back on using the built in mono mic of any android device). So the argument that sound quality is an issue falls short when comparing to UrbanStew’s dev. (perfect example prog that could use UrbanStew’s magic would be “Voice Recorder” by Momuro Tokashiki – talk about crap sound, why cant he find out how UrbanStew did it, I thought that was what open source was all about!).
    
    Reply
By Dave on June 5, 2009 at 9:45 am:

In a previous version of the player, it used to save a list of recently visited URLs (for rtsp streaming), in this version the list was eliminated and there is no bookmark function for URLs either.

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- By prowse on March 24, 2010 at 9:57 pm:
  
  That elimination is plain stupid. Bring it back please!
  
  Reply
By Adam on June 19, 2009 at 12:22 am:

I can’t get the ID3 editing to work, I have long pressed everywhere that a song title pops up, and the closest I get to anything is being able to search for that song in different places (like Amazon). A little annoying, but otherwise I love Meridian.

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By dragula2000 on July 8, 2009 at 7:56 am:

This is good but I think theres a problem with shuffle on a playlist. It played 4 out of 5 tracks by the same group. It wouldnt be bad but theres over 800 tracks on my phone. I have to keep turning shuffle on and off to get it working again

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- By CLCDAN on January 23, 2010 at 7:12 pm:
  
  One way to get an almost completely random-like shuffle effect is to make a playlist or set to All Songs and play the list alphabetically (by song title). Works pretty dang good. (Just a work-around, I know)
  
  Reply
By Esmond on July 14, 2009 at 8:04 am:

before update very good … later update don’t work ……. force close

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By Esmond on July 14, 2009 at 8:20 am:

after update, i try to play video but it say ‘ sorry! the application meridian (process org.iii.ro.meridian) has stopped unexpectedly, please try again. Force close

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By C. Hansen on August 18, 2009 at 4:02 pm:

no EQ settings. sounds like icepicks, even through headphones.

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By Mike S on October 1, 2009 at 3:21 am:

When’s someone going to come up with a decent no frills Android mp3 player with essential EQ settings? Or is there one out there that I haven’t discovered yet?

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- By wtf on November 20, 2009 at 3:09 am:
  
  RIGHT????? I have been scouring all over for exactly that. ALL I want is an android music player that is exactly like the one built in, except it has an EQ. Is that so hard? Is there something missing in the android API that makes it impossible to do this as yet? Android 2.0 is out. WHERE is an equalizer?
  
  Reply
  - By wtff on July 12, 2010 at 1:07 am:
    
    Now I can say, I am not the only one looking fo equalizer lolz
    
    Reply
    - By chome4 on May 8, 2011 at 6:57 pm:
      
      Me too for EQ!
      
      We have crappy manufactured music to thank for the lack of options like equalizers.
      
      Reply
By Tim Patterson on November 7, 2009 at 10:17 am:

Hello,
I love the player and use it for everything! Is there a possibility in the future for the ability to play .wax files?- like the ones used on classicalarchives.com -Used for streaming audio.
Tim

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- By prowse on March 24, 2010 at 10:02 pm:
  
  Well, as .WAX files are merely redirecting files for .WMA or .WMV playback (no different than a Winamp .PLS file in how it works), that should be VERY easy to implement.
  
  Reply
By mike on November 11, 2009 at 10:18 pm:

great player, like the fact its easy to find all my media files in one place!

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By Rick on November 12, 2009 at 2:23 am:

Only chooses to play a random 50ish track off my playlist, Ive got over 1000 music tracks on my phone, plus it keeps force closing when i try to load the playlist

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- By neerav on September 7, 2010 at 12:22 pm:
  
  Restart your phone. It will update the list.
  
  Reply
By Bill on November 18, 2009 at 1:28 pm:

Super app for my Droid! I love it! Only negative is that there’s no sound when I play my 3g2 video files (everything else plays fine!)

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By Razi on November 19, 2009 at 4:59 pm:

It could use an editor… something to change artist, album and other info.

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- By elpoopoocabra on December 26, 2009 at 12:36 am:
  
  it has one, its the id3 info. go the Browser tab of Meridian, click and hold down the file, click on Edit ID3 tag. Unfortunately for me sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt
  
  Reply
By tim patterson on December 16, 2009 at 1:38 pm:

support for .wax files please! this would be the ultimate app if it had that!
Tim

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By Rick on December 16, 2009 at 11:43 pm:

Started to get disappointed with this, it only plays approx 70 tracks out of over 1000 on a playlist( I work nights, need music) and its normally the same 70ish tracks. Also started to freeze since the last update.
Hope you sort these out soon as Im relegated to default player on HTC Magic

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By elpoopoocabra on December 26, 2009 at 12:33 am:

I love the player, best one on the market ive tried thus far…. although i hate the fact that i had to edit incorrect information like misspelled artist names/titles and especially genre’s from music that i’ve downloaded, and now it will not change or refresh from the player… it still shows the old info! really annoying! if anyone can help, pls email @ elpoopoocabra@gmail.com

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By G Davies on January 1, 2010 at 5:47 am:

Sadly (as with the default app) there’s no support for multiple disc albums, having the first track from each of thirteen discs played before the second track of disc 1 makes it unusable.

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By CLCDAN on January 23, 2010 at 7:26 pm:

And in reviewing, you missed mentioning (even casually) probably the REAL reason that Meridian is better than the Out-of-box Droid Media Player: it has GENRE! Granted, the only reason that genre is missing from the Android OS is merely a faulty line in the code (looking at the code, one can clearly see in the Music App section, the Genre model, with it’s incorrect references to basically non-existent code, where it should be “part of the loop”, but isn’t – fixed in 2.1.1, which of course is the build that will be pushed in less than a week out to Eris, Droid, then finally the Nexus One, and in that specific order, btw)

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By kochen on January 25, 2010 at 4:14 am:

New version collect usage data
NO GO – good bye

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By Americalex on January 26, 2010 at 8:55 am:

Oh man,

THANK YOU JESUS OF NAZARETH. The “play by folder” is such a godsend!

Thank God he sent you to deliver us from the stupidity of the “non play by folder” crowd.

Cheers!

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By artbyj3 on February 17, 2010 at 8:55 pm:

Why is it that…when I download a trailer or short clip that’s .wmv format, it plays for the first second then freezes? Freezes after the first second EVERY EFFING TIME!

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- By Android Tapp on February 17, 2010 at 9:26 pm:
  
  That’s because Android doesn’t support WMV file types, and basically crashes when you try to play the format
  
  Reply
By Bob Sagget on February 18, 2010 at 8:56 pm:

FYI – MPEG1 was never the universal playback format. You mean MPEG2. Most MPG files are MPEG-2 format, not MPEG-1, as you state in your post. All DVDs are MPEG2 format straight from Hollywood, and when you rip them down, you just compress the bitrate used, if going to an MPG file, but it is still an MPEG-2, not MPEG-1, sorry.

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- By freddyzdead on April 5, 2011 at 9:49 pm:
  
  @Bob Sagget
  How old are you? 11? For years the dominant video codec was MPEG1. Remember VCD? Oh, not if you’re only 11. Well, FYI there wasn’t any other codec that could give anything like the same quality in reasonable file size. MPEG2 only came into use when the DVD format came along. Then the Big Content people tried to “own” MPEG2 so nobody else could use it. Ever wonder why Windows came with no MPEG2 decoder?
  
  So, you obviously don’t know your codecs very well if you think that all there is is MPEG2 and only the bitrate changes. If I see a .mpg file, I would assume it is MPEG1 until it proves otherwise.
  
  Reply
By jon on March 8, 2010 at 12:27 pm:

Force close when i try to start application! any ideas to fix it???

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By Alex on March 11, 2010 at 2:27 am:

Looks great when I open music files in my Android phone from SD card. But the scanning of SD card does not work: I indicate where the multimedia files are in the directory selection, and at the very beginning or when I click on “refresh” I get a “can’t access SD card” on the top of the screen and no scanning happens. Pity, because sound seems really great. This has made Meridian unusable for me.

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By John on April 13, 2010 at 6:36 pm:

And it plays FLAC files!!!
If we could now get crossfading between songs it would be great!
(maybe configurable from 3-12 seconds)….
Thanks for this app.

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By urshurak on April 17, 2010 at 11:05 am:

Play by folder doesn’t play the flacfiles though.

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- By Mikulas on May 18, 2010 at 3:51 am:
  
  PLS, We need support for flac ID3tag and flac file in Music tab. Showing AlbumArt.jpg for playing flac file would be fine too.
  
  Reply
By Ryan on July 22, 2010 at 7:41 pm:

audio works fine, video freezes up pretty much right away whenever i try to watch an mp4. should i just convert to 3gp? Anybody have any help?

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By sp00k on August 13, 2010 at 10:02 am:

Meridian(v121) continues to run (on HTC Legend 2.1) after being closed
via running services.

App ran for about 3 minutes after being closed. Am I not closing
properly (as stated in other post, an exit/quit option would be nice),
or is this an issue with the app?

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By Alan on August 24, 2010 at 5:49 pm:

since the updates (both Meridian and Android 2.2) the player is not seeing most of music in the artist browser but it sees the missing songs in the songs browser (with the artist name missing.) When you look at the ID3 tags for these “missing” music files – the artist name is there, the program is not making the connection to read them and put them in the artist browser.

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By m1kael on September 11, 2010 at 3:15 am:

I want a “previous song” button on the 1×4 widget!

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By dgate on September 12, 2010 at 3:56 am:

I need a player that will play mpeg2 files which my video cam generates and stores on a micro SD card. This would allow me to pop the card into my Archos 7 media player to view shots on the bigger screen. Otherwise I need a codec or plugin for the default Android player, any suggestions?

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- By Jason Norment on September 12, 2010 at 8:48 am:
  
  @dgate: My quick search this morning didn’t find a solution. This also might be a good question for n3rdgirl. Have you considered converting the file to a playable format?
  
  Reply
  - By dgate on September 12, 2010 at 11:56 am:
    
    Thanks for the reply but converting is not an option since I want portability and versatility. If I have to pack around a netbook in order to convert I might as well keep my net book and sell the Archos. I can purchase a plug-in from Archos but for some reason I can’t get their site to recognise my device numbers because I have a second device registered there! Their web site is not smart… Plus I have yet to receive an answer, poor service!!
    Since the OS is Android I thought somebody must have created a codec for Mpeg 2 by now or at least a player App. Guess not.
    
    Reply
    - By Jason Norment on September 12, 2010 at 2:03 pm:
      
      @Dgate: I know the delimma but I haven’t found anything so far. Where do you natively receive video in the MPEG2 format?
      
      Reply
      - By dgate on September 13, 2010 at 3:53 am:
        
        From my Panasonic SV-AV100 video camera which records Mpeg4 or Mpeg2 onto an SD card. I prefer opting for Mpeg2 for the higher quality and larger display.
        Have just received info from Archos the cinema Mpeg2 plug-in is not avaailable for the Archos 7 Home Tablet. I guess this is because its running Android 1.0.15. The plug-in is available for the Archos 5 internet tablet I guess because its Android 1.6.
        why they don’t just print this out in the specs is beyond comprehension.
By Erastes on November 24, 2010 at 4:52 pm:

Stupid Newbie question – it will play the files on my SD card – but how to transfer those files onto my tablet?

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By Leroy on December 17, 2010 at 11:08 pm:

Love the headset control (stock media player default priority overide) and double click to skip – nice work!-)

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