Bluetooth AVRCP 1.3 songtitles

[duinsel]

Does anyone have good results with getting songtitles on a bluetooth stereo headset?
I believe that AVRCP 1.3, the bluetooth system that is required for songtitles, is supported by Windows8. On my bluetooth headset (Sony MW600) systems that do not support it, like my old iPhone 3G, just show nothing. Systems that do support it, like my iPad and my old Win7 install with Widcomm bluetooth stack, nicely show song titles on playing.
Windows 8 however shows only the text "Windows Sound" on my headset. This indicates it knows how to send information to the headset (hence AVRCP 1.3 seems to work), but somehow the actual songtitles don't quite make it that far. I tried the Metro music app, and the on the desktop Spotify. The latter supported song titles on Win7.

Does anyone have insights or experiences to share?

Martijn

 

[TedFay]

Sorry to say, but I have tried nearly every combination of the following Bluetooth adapters and Bluetooth stacks without satisfactory results:
1.) Kensingtion 4.0 USB dongle (CSR)
2.) Asus 4.0 USB dongle (Broadcom)
3.) Cirago USB A10 (CSR)
4.) UltechSmart (Broadcom)
5.) Toshiba USB Nano (CSR)
6.) Sabrent USB dongle
7.) Marvel AVASTAR
8.) Some other branded CSR

Stacks:
1.) MS Windows 8 stack
2.) Toshiba Bluetooth Stack for Windows (several versions, including 9.10.15)
3.) CSR Harmony 2.1.63.0 and a number of previous versions
4.) BlueSoleil 10.0.470.0
5.) Broadcom/Widdcom stack (multiple versions)
6.) Asus Bluetooth software (Broadcom I believe)

Not one of these stacks will give you song titles from the Windows 8 Music app, or from other Modern apps. CSR 2.1.63.0 can provide song titles from Windows Media Player, but overall the stack is flakey with song titles. If you don't use a Bluetooth stereo that handles song titles, it is more reliable, and works with Modern Apps. But with song titles it ONLY works with Windows Media Player, and won't play audio from ANYTHING else. CSR will only play from Windows Media Center if Windows Media Player is also running, and even then WMC is basically acting as a remote for WMP.

BlueSoleil is slightly better, in that it will also play audio from Windows Media Center as well as Media Player. It's support for BLE devices is literally the LEAST they could do. You have to delete and re-pair every single time you use your BLE mouse, for example.
BlueSoleil will play audio from Modern apps like Music, but it will not display the song titles from anything other than WMP and WMC. No song titles from the Music app.

Overall, I'm back to the Microsoft stack, because it is the most solid and reliable. It is a shame that it doesn't support song titles like an iPhone or iPad does, but apparently they've fixed that in Windows Phone 8, so hopefully they will fix that in the Windows Bluetooth stack as well.

-ted