I've looked around and could not find any application for the Pearl that's capable of streaming aacPlus, which seems surprising since the phone itself is capable of decoding MP3, and a 24Kbit aacPlus stream shouldn't be a problem.

Is anyone out there aware of a media player that can decode aacPlus streams?

the pearl isnt capable of streaming media at the moment

I don't see how it isn't. It's capable of both TCP/IP and decoding .aac files. Doing the two simultaneously doesn't seem like that big of a deal. I guess there's just no software for this yet.

it can only play files that are "physically" accessible, as in located on the phone or SD card. maybe someday someone will develop a program that allows streaming to work.

Eh... the Pearl can and does stream media, it's just a bit awkward at it. There's a few programs that do this, the most recent being Dollar5's new mediaPlayer which can stream shoutcast streams. I don't know if it works with AAC, but I was able to stream 128k MP3 streams 'OK.' And by OK, I mean that it works, it just cuts out too often to be worth it. Even lower quality streams tend to cut out.

- J

I can understand why it cuts out - a 128Kbit MP3 stream takes up 16 kilobytes per second, while the Pearl can do about 10, and that's with near-perfect reception. When you add packet loss and other factors to the equation, it's pretty obvious that once your buffer runs out, you'll get choppy audio, if anything at all.

A 24Kbit AACplus stream only needs 3KB/sec. That would be perfect because the Pearl should be able to decode and be able to keep its buffer full. I tested this theory by tethering a PDA via bluetooth and listening to 32Kbit AAC streams (quality equivalent to 128Kbit MP3). It worked perfectly. All we need now is some software that can do this on the Pearl.

Dollars 5 mediaPlayer does support AAC streaming, we are also working on to support stations that offer .pls (private beta is available for testing, it is not released as we have some issues with BES/MDS)

To get more details please visit the related thread at New Improved mediaPlayer v1.5: with Internet Radio and tons of enhancements

Awesomeness! I just wish EDGE wasn't so damn slow, but that's like wishing for T-Mobile not to suck.