For audio and video buffs, QNX comes with a host of multimedia features. Many of the popular sound chips are supported and the installation had no trouble detecting our Sound Blaster Live! sound card. There’s a Mixer application that can be launched from the right shelf, which allows you to control both playback and recording volumes for all sound devices and components like master, wave, and even PC speaker. Interestingly, the QNX installation also detected our onboard AC97 audio chip and we were even able to use a second microphone from the AC97 input jack.

QNX Media Player handles the playback of WAV and MP3 music files. The latest patch A adds streaming media capabilities to the player. (The patch is a part of the release that is given on our CD.) So you can directly pass HTTP references to the player and listen to thousands of streaming music stations around the world. Apart from music, you can also play back MPEG video with the player. QNX also supports direct overlay for smooth frame rates. Video playback uses Xing MPEG decoder by default. Video CD playback is, however, not currently supported by default.

Streaming media content cannot be complete without discussing Real Player. RealNetworks has the Real Player 7 for the QNX platform too, which we’ve given on the CD. Except for a full screen mode, users will find most of the features of Windows Real Player. It also supports connections through a proxy server.

Multimedia talk is incomplete without MP3. Winamp is the most popular player on Windows, while XMMS is the counter in Linux. XMMS has also been ported to QNX. So you have a Winamp lookalike with similar features on your QNX machine. You can create or modify playlists, use graphic equalizers, plugins, etc, for all your music.

That was just part of the fun we had while working with QNX. To find out more, install it on your machine and explore at the options.

Ashish Sharma