• quick and easy selection of movies and music for playlists
• streamlined loading of music and movie files onto media players
• support for multimedia and MP3 players, USB sticks (for use in digital picture frames) and mobile phones
• consistent and well structured organization of files on the media player, for easy navigation
• includes detailed technical information about media files loaded onto the media player
• media space limits can be specified, setting aside room for storage of other files
• automatic detection of media players when they are connected to the computer
• support for multiple media players connected to the same computer
• support for multiple storage cards on a single media player
• support for multiple users of a single media player
• works on Windows and Macintosh computers

Detailed media information stored on the media player
In addition to the media files themselves, playlist information and detailed technical information about each media file is loaded onto the media player by Kenbushi. This information is stored in the form of an XML file called 'MediaPlaylists.xml', located in the 'MediaPrefs' folder (example). This XML file has a very simple structure, allowing it to be easily interpreted by media player firmware: it contains a list of playlists, each playlist containing a list of media.

Currently, media player manufacturers generally extract artist, album and genre information from ID3 tags embedded in MP3 music files. However, the quality of this data is always questionable and often of poor quality. This poor quality is, unfortunately, reflected in the user's subsequent poor experience with the media player when trying to select media by artist, album and genre. However, the 'MediaPlaylists.xml' file created and stored on the media player by Kenbushi provides media player manufacturers with a rich collection of information to allow them to build simpler and more powerful user interfaces for the end-user.

Of course, music files are not always in MP3 format, and in most alternate formats, no ID3-type metadata is available at all. This deficiency applies even more with movie files, especially when movies need to be of a particular resolution or be encoded with a particular movie codec to play properly on the media player. Most media players normally report a file playback error when the user tries to play incompatible media, diminishing the quality of the user's experience with the media player. Knowing the resolutions and codecs of a movie before even displaying it in a playable list eliminates this type of problem. The detailed media information provided by Kenbushi eliminates these problems.

Information about music files (XML tags are shown in bold in brackets) includes:

• song name (song)
  
• artist (artist)
  
• album (album)
• genre (genre)
• duration (duration, in seconds)
• size (size, in bytes)
• playlist index (index)
• audio codec (acodec)
• audio sampling rate (asamprate)
• media MD5 (mediamd5, an MD5 signature derived from the media file contents)
• media ID (mediaid, the ID code of the media in the Kenbushi media library from which it was sourced)
  
• location (location, the file path on the media player)

Information about movie files (XML tags are shown in bold in brackets) includes:

• movie title (title)
  
• genre (genre)
• duration (duration, in seconds)
• size (size, in bytes)
• playlist index (index)
• audio codec (acodec)
• audio sampling rate (asamprate)
• video codec (vcodec)
• resolution (W x H) (resolution)
• media MD5 (mediamd5, an MD5 signature derived from the media file contents)
• media ID (mediaid, the ID code of the media in the Kenbushi media library from which it was sourced)
  
• location (location, the file path on the media player)

Information about playlist lists (XML tags are shown in bold in brackets) include:

• Media manager used (mediamanager)
• Creation date (creationdate, the date on which the playlist list was created)
• Computer ID (computerid, to uniquely identify which computer loaded the playlist onto the media player)
  

Information about playlists (XML tags are shown in bold in brackets) includes:

• Playlist name (name)
• Shuffle (shuffle)
• Loop (loop)

In addition to XML information about media files, we suggest an XML format for storing the play position of the currently playing media in a playlist (example1, example2). This allows a user to stop playback at any time, and to later return to the playlist and resume from where they left off. This is important when the user is watching movies and TV shows, but particularly when the user is listening to an audio book. It is very important that they can return to the last play position easily. If the user changes the shuffle or loop mode of a playlist when away from the computer, this new status can also be stored in the 'shuffle' and 'loop' parameters of the XML file.

• Playlist name (playlistname)
• Last play index (lastplayindex, the index of the last media item played from the playlist)
• Last play position (lastplayposition, the position in the media file at which the user stopped play, in seconds)
• Shuffle (shuffle, whether the user set the playlist to 'shuffle' mode on the media player)
  
• Loop (loop, whether the user set the playlist to 'loop' mode on the media player)

A suggested media player button interface
To minimize manufacturing costs and simplify control, a suggested 5-button interface is described below. It consists of an arrow key arrangement (left, right, up and down keys) with a central selector button. An optional power button is the only additional control required for the interface.

For example, a very simple top level menu on the media player may contain the following menu items: playlists, music, movies, pictures and settings. See Figure 1 below. This display could be set out to look similar to how Kenbushi looks in full-screen media control mode (KenbushiTV mode) when running on a computer.

Figure 1. Example top level menu

Figure 2. Example 'Music' menu