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the .plan of justin frankel reveals that some boys at nullsoft seem to port winamp to xbox or write an all new player for it.

the .plan of justin frankel reveals that some boys at nullsoft seem to port winamp to xbox or write an all new player for it.

FYI, this was just something I've found now to prove the point. However, I have heard similar "enhancers" before so know what to expect.

Going back to your statement, if you gave people that setup for their own home, and it had a bass boost button, I reckon that there's a pretty good chance that after a week it'd be permanently on. This excludes people who listen only to jazz, classical, choral music etc of course, where the bass isn't such a major feature.

3b. Sue people who create software that lets you convert RealMedia files to standard formats like mp3

Well, if I'm using my "Gameloader98-GUI from Redmond" this way it works for me with Realaudio and Winamp(2.8):
1. Use the Tara Audio/Video Plugin to play the Real stream.
2. Write it to disk using your favorite output plugin.
I can also recommend Dietmar's Output stacker to use several output plugins at the same time, i.e. to listen to the stream and write it to HD.

Works pretty well for audio, but I have never tested whether playing videos works also, because I only use this setup to save some streamed audio to disc.

3b. Sue people who create software that lets you convert RealMedia files to standard formats like mp3

Well, if I'm using my "Gameloader98-GUI from Redmond" this way it works for me with Realaudio and Winamp(2.8):
1. Use the Tara Audio/Video Plugin to play the Real stream.
2. Write it to disk using your favorite output plugin.
I can also recommend Dietmar's Output stacker to use several output plugins at the same time, i.e. to listen to the stream and write it to HD.

Works pretty well for audio, but I have never tested whether playing videos works also, because I only use this setup to save some streamed audio to disc.

So you don't think a PC can handle MP3 files? Ever hear of Winamp (just to name one of dozens of MP3 players available for PCs.). As for HD, yes a PC can handle HD. Maybe not the Win XP MCE, but how about this? (I don't know if PVR capabilities for HD are ready yet with that product, but PVR capabilities are available with this one.

never mind that Winamp3 [winamp.com] supports .ogg flawlessly

That's right, because as we all know, not only do most Linux users freely fork over 100+ dollars for a commercial OS they can easily pirate, but the support of a file format in one application is clearly what the entire OS and platform decision hinges on, never mind that Winamp3 supports .ogg flawlessly.

Winamp 2.09 ... "Preliminary ID3v2 support (tag is skipped reliably)"

Winamp 2.24 ... "Better support for invalid ID3v2 tags (for people putting invalid tags on)"

Winamp 2.666 (ha, ha) ... "ID3v2 support"

Winamp 2.71 ... (in_mp3 decoder) ... "Fixed id3v2 rare writing bug"

This one reminds me that one of the annoying (albeit sometimes necessary for legal and/or technical reasons) things that they did was switch decoders in various versions. My guess is that it is the actually decoder dll that has the vulnerability, and you can sometimes swap those between versions, but using the 2.81 version may lose some 'features' that certain powers found distressing :-(

Winamp 2.79 ... "Fix to id3v2+unicode support"

So, I'm not sure what to make of where the vulnerability really enters, although it may be in any version after (ironically) 2.666. Are there any folks from Llamaland around here to comment?

Nullsoft has posted fixed version of WinAmp 2.81 and 3.0 on their web site."

Is there a reason they haven't released a new version with the bugfix instead of just uploading a new copy with the _same release number and date_? Both versions are listed as released in early or middle August, and there's no bugfixes listed anywhere on the site in regards to this. Site. Are they trying to hide that it's been fixed, or just don't want anyone to figure it out?

Yea! Now all those starving companies can have their domain names... just think of all the businesses that need clubjenna.com... yea... for all those kids named Jenna! That's it. I'm sure some business will find potwhores.com usefull. sex.com could be used for that little note taking program that Justin Frankel made.

On a related note: I once created a WAP interface to Winamp (http://classic.winamp.com/plugins/detail.jhtml?co mponentId=94546). I would never ever want to try and use it for a remote while trying to drive a car, but it works well otherwise.

I'm not sure if the Mac version of WinAmp plays WMA files, but the windows version does, so it's worth a shot. Get it here.

Nullsoft did something like that a few years ago -- Winamp used to be shareware. Then, at version 2.50, Nullsoft thanked all those who purchased it, and turned Winamp into freeware.

Beos has fewer applications, sure, but it also has a consistent interface...

Those two things are related. As soon as you get a real rush of programmers and popularity, you can kiss your consitency goodbye. You're always at the mercy of some idiot who thinks that his "revolutionary new idea" (bitmapped buttons / custom window frame / dark grey on black text) is worth throwing own consitency and ease of use. You just can't win, they outnumber you. Enjoy it while you can.

As far as I can tell, this code doesn't deal well with protected WMA content. Attempts to convert some of the 30-day-licensed WMA files available to download from winamp.com proved fruitless.

I do not claim, however, to know what the hell I'm doing. This was just my first attempt.

Anyone know any differently?

rOD.

Nullsoft maker of the popular Winamp software is also maker of the Shoutcast streaming media server. It works with all copies of Winamp, iTunes, and a handfull of other players. It is efficient, configurable, and availible for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Linux, and Solaris. Besides that, you reach that huge market share which refuses to use the bloatware that is RealPlayer. It works by running on a machine connected to the internet, and then you can connect to it with the ShoutCast Source plugin availible for Winamp availible here. You can do this eather from a dedicated computer, or the same one running the server. You choose wether you want to stream whatever Winamp is playing, or if you have another input you can choose to use the soundcard. How I am streaming MY online station is a program called QuicPix made by the same people who do the wonderful iMediaTouch automation system going out the soundcard, into a mixer with a CD player and microphone, and then going back into the same computer where winamp sends it to Shoutcast ALSO running on the same computer.

why bother witha 8mb video card, the resolution of a in-car monitor is at best awful, never mind trying to read 9px fonts

Windows and a 8mb card is a good choice because think of all the yummy plugins for Winamp that can be used !, i can have a great looking stereo and visual extravaganzer with all the visulisation plugins and dsp extras, be silly to choose anything else with winamps kind of support/community

I'm talking to you CmdrTaco!!

"I dont like time warner, but they give us Netscape / Mozilla, Winamp and ICQ for free. "

You do realize you can get these four programs without relying on Time Warner at all?

How are you set up that you would have to pay for them in the first place? They're all free for anyone to have, and have been for months/years.

Heh, that's what I was thinking. Too bad they couldn't throw some of us a bone and at least just give us a crap NSIS install. Course many open source projects tend to be exactly the same way, so I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising.

An interesting way to promote yourself online, which I recently witnessed at this url is make your own slick Winamp 3 skin and include one of your tracks and a link to your website if you click on one of the buttons. I am not sure what results it would deliver but it is certainly one of the more interesting ways of promoting a band.

This story has obviously been overhyped, as it will not mean the end to free (as in free beer) mp3 players (and some encoders, most likely). It will, though, mean the end to mp3 encoders/decoders in GPL'd software, in other words the vast majority of open source software. It will also mean no default mp3 support in your favorite GNU/Linux distro, most likely.

This is unfortunate for the open source community, but it will help to promote newer open standards with no patent or licensing problems to worry about. It will most likely not affect the general public, who will still be able to download winamp for free.

It suprises me that nobody in the open source community noticed this discrepancy before, as it has been listed on the licensing page for quite some time. As the Thomson lawyer said, it has been incompatible with the GPL for some time now. I suppose from now on people will be more careful before building patented proprietary technology into open source software, despite the fact that this type of patent makes no sense and hurts innovation by creating a closed standard.

What are you talking about?

windows media player 7 (or 8 or whatever version is installed with xp) only uses 10MB. winamp3 also has issues with loading playlists of mp3s on windows shares. it spent 5 minutes trying to load my playlist and then generated a program error. winamp3 sucks (resource usage-wise), you will be better off sticking to winamp 2.x and using a video input plugin

Use Winamp 3 It now has full video support, isn't too much of a resource hog, and, if you like skins, has full support for them too.

As a beta tester and someone who has done work for Nullsoft in the past [...] Besides, there isn't going to be any new versions of Winamp 2. Winamp 3 is released and development is being focused on that.

Wrong. Winamp 2 is still being developed as seen by the recent 2.81 release. This forum post also says that it isn't dead just yet.

Browsing around the licensing website for a bit it appears as though a number of companies (Nullsoft -- makers of winamp) are already licensed, although it makes no mention of whether or not they will retain their license under the new scheme. Although Thomson does not sell the mp3 libraries for non windows/mac operating systems they do offer their SDK for linux and other operating systems (for a price). It is also interesting that winamp has plans to come out with a version for linux soon. Although many windows mp3 players are licensed, I would guess that no open source players/encoders are. Therefore those who will get shafted will be linux users who rely upon these. I sincerely doubt win users will have any obstacles.

Well, I guess NullSoft has decieded to pay the bill themselves. Because Winamp 3.0 is still available as of now for free download.

Well, I guess NullSoft has decieded to pay the bill themselves. Because Winamp 3.0 is still available as of now for free download.

Or perhaps something open and free, such as CDex for all your ripping pleasures.

I know, it doesn't include a player, but Winamp3 has just been released, which is still free, and you can delete the wonderful AOL shortcuts it now creates.

his recovery disks are nothing more than hard drive images. He can reinstall Windows and MSOffice in ten minutes.

And how long does it take to install the rest of the applications (virus checker, firewall, compiler, decent RGB image editor, non-bloated media player, etc) that are either obviated in the UNIX architecture or installed with Mandrake?

And how long does it take to backup the user's data and restore it after re-installation? Most of the computers that come with Ghost restore disks do not use a separate partition for My Documents; they just wipe out all the user's precious data on re-install.

Has slashdot even reported on the recent web casting fee's the copyright office and CARP (Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel) is setting up?

From the article.

The official fee's come in at a rate of .07 cents per song which is streamed live online and a lower rate of .02 cents per stream for simulcasted and / or archived broadcasts. There is also an additional fee to keep copies
of the music on the web server of 8.8 percent of the entire royalty fee, which is tacked on top of the total cost of the royalty rates.

Now some of you are wondering, why does this matter? Well for one thing one of my favorite webcasting stations is gone now. Soma
FM had to close shop because of this.

I think this story is much better than internal conflicts at some huge corporation, don't you? Talk about greed, CARP wants 15,000@ month out of somafm. Total BS

--toq

Has slashdot even reported on the recent web casting fee's the copyright office and CARP (Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel) is setting up?

From the article.

The official fee's come in at a rate of .07 cents per song which is streamed live online and a lower rate of .02 cents per stream for simulcasted and / or archived broadcasts. There is also an additional fee to keep copies
of the music on the web server of 8.8 percent of the entire royalty fee, which is tacked on top of the total cost of the royalty rates.

Now some of you are wondering, why does this matter? Well for one thing one of my favorite webcasting stations is gone now. Soma
FM had to close shop because of this.

I think this story is much better than internal conflicts at some huge corporation, don't you? Talk about greed, CARP wants 15,000@ month out of somafm. Total BS

--toq

What application does this? [download from Internet to /Documents and Settings/Pinocchio Poppins/Desktop, then double-click package]

To install Nullsoft Winamp, you use the web browser to download winamp280_full.exe (a Windows SuperPIMP installation package). Then you double-click the file, which launches the install wizard.

I finally broke down and built a TV machine last summer.. I mainly used it to play Divx movies--both ones I ripped from my DVDs myself and ones I downloaded from Morpheus.

Remote Control:

1. I bought an IRman and got it working with Winamp's VidAmp..
2. At first, I kept no mouse or keyboard on the box. I opted instead to use the remote,
   TweakUI-configured auto-login, and VNC (from my laptop already wired-up in the living room.

1. I tore down a mid-tower case and buffered all of the metal joints with duct tape as I built it back up.
   This eliminated any inherent case rattle.
2. I layed the side and reconfigured my entertainment center's shelves to accommodate it.
3. The case had a interesting configuration of fans (combinations of Thermaltake "smart" fans and things)
   to try to keep the AthlonXP 1700+ and three Maxtor drives (one 30GB and two 80GB) cool.

What have I learned?

1. I *have* to have TiVo functionality and soon.
2. Morpheus/Kazaa and other online sources of movies are dying.
3. Drives fail quickly if not properly cooled.
4. Drives tend to fail anyway or have the remote possibility of very quickly losing 100 of your
   hard-earned movies in the event of failure.
5. Almost no matter what, a TV PC is going to be too loud to enjoy having in the living room.

What will I do differently next time?

1. I will build two different boxes--one bare and quiet set-top box or something in the living room and the other a
   nasty, tricked-out, noisy system to handle all of the grunt-work in another room.
2. IDE RAID. 'nuff said.
3. Linux--as much as possible. I will actually make the full effort to get away from Windows and build
   On-Screen Display menus and things.. One of the bottom lines of my experience is that Windows/FAT32
   *kills* drives.
4. I *have* to have TiVo/PVR/DVB/DVR/VDR functionality.. I could theoretically
   have one DVB card in the
   STB to add pause-live-TV functionality. For the setup and recording of other scheduled TV programs and movies, the "big box" in the other room that will have somewhere in the
   neighborhood of 4 or 5 DVB cards. This is fine for Digital Cable.. If I had a dish, it would
   likely be very different.
5. Rip, rip, rip. Get those DVDs archived onto file and quit letting other peoples' copies be sufficient.
   I really didn't do all *that* bad.. I had ripped somewhere around 60 of the DVDs myself.
   I've really got to say this--AVI-archived DVDs beats the friggin bug juice out of any multi-DVD player.

Here are some more related links..
LinuxDVB
VDR

As for me, is there any program to load a list of music videos? I use media player b/c I can make a playlist of my 600+ music video collection. Its a nice way to create my own MTV2 channel but I never saw an option for quicktime or other media players.

Good thing that Winamp3 is coming out, and it has video support. Not as good as WMP yet, but at least it's Winamp! They've also got support for something called Nullsoft Streaming Video... possibly a bid to enter the Real/WMP/Quicktime battle (if you can even call it that)? Maybe it has something to do with AOL's new toy.

AOL already has the broadcasting infrastructure and the reciever infrastructure. Shoutcast uses streaming mp3s which do stream very well considering its not the best compression out there anymore. Winamp is probably still one of the best mp3 players out there.

The problem of course, if they want to kill real audio, is that AOL does NOT have the infrastructure to do video. Others might say the problem is that all this is bottled up in the mess which is currently time-warner. The company which bought up all the tools to destroy microsoft then failed to develop them.

But all this is a moot point because a sizable percentage of people haven't used any real audio product or service in ages because microsoft's media player is adaquate, free, and doesn't require installtion (since it's bundled with the os) or navigating past the "pay for something you already have!" screens to get to the "free" player.

Real audio is a dying format. All AOL has to do is either buy the company (doubtful given the current economic climate at time warner) or simply throw their support to quicktime or windows media. Eventually real audio will go the way of so many other dot.coms that tried to play in microsoft's sandbox.

As referenced by the previous post, but not linked:
Winamp3 Beta
Winamp3 Linux Alpha

The alpha release of Winamp for Linux is available for download from Nullsoft's site. A fairly lightweight 1.5MB download (XMMS was around 2MB last time I grabbed it). The press release for version 3 has this to say about Linux and us maybe seeing other cross-platform code:

Every component of the Winamp player can be removed or replaced, enabling developers to create exactly what they want and integrate it quickly into Winamp. The "Wasabi" coding platform enables instant cross- platform functionality for supported platforms that will include Windows and Linux at launch. The Winamp player is the first full-featured application for this groundbreaking new coding platform.

I downloaded the alpha. It's a tarball all right, but it's a tourist in the Linux world and definitely not a native speaker. First off, the archive has hardcoded paths starting from /. It expects you (as root, I assume) to extract it from /, and it makes a /usr/local/Winamp directory for its files and then places a shell script in /usr/local/bin which runs /usr/local/Winamp/Winamp.exe (with an input file arg and STDIN/STDERR to /dev/null). This is very weird. I now have a binary file with a .exe extension at $HOME/download/win32/winamp/usr/local/Winamp and a shell script which points elsewhere.

I tried to run it manually, but forgot one other thing about the shell script: it adds /usr/local/Winamp/libs to my LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. I didn't do this, so it wouldn't run. I added it, and Winamp.exe did in fact execute. But it didn't run long.

It looks like this is a debug build, which is unsurprising since it's an alpha. It ran and displayed various profiler messages and such (the app loaded completely in 3422ms, in case you were interested). Most of the output wasn't especially interesting or unusual, although it did have a few of what looked to be function names that simply said "Write me!". I happened to notice that among these unwritten items, both Systray::addIcon and Systray::setTip told me to write them. Again, in case you didn't know it was a work-in-progress, here you go. Except seeing as how I don't have a system tray to which an icon and its associated tooltip might be added, I wonder if this might not be a work based on Win32 version which is in progress...

When the .exe ran it tried to create what looked like 3 new windows. I assume that they were the main window, the EQ and the playlist window. I couldn't say for sure since the allocated screen real estate was simply black. These new windows were up for about 1 second then went away. On the console, I saw this final message before the app died:

X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
Major opcode of failed request: 72 (X_PutImage)
Serial number of failed request: 5012
Current serial number in output stream: 5013

So there it is. I ran it with strace and watched all the "seek into my zipped-up skins files" hoo-ha fly by. I'm tired and it's late and I'm no longer all that curious as to what "Linamp" might be like, so I didn't go through it all of it very much. I did scan through it, though. Toward the end, I saw bunch of open() calls that failed because the files weren't found. I also saw some libpng warnings about incomplete streams. Offhand, I'd say that this alpha build actually does expect to be installed in a certain location. Although I can't imagine hard-coding paths, even in an alpha. More likely, I've got it all wrong and my theories are bunk. I didn't install it where it wanted to be, though. I like a little unsolved mystery sometimes.

Anyway, it'll be nice to have some choice once they get it working. When I switched from Windows to Linux, one of the things I really missed was Winamp's minibrowser. XMMS could use that feature.

-B

Including lyrics would be a GREAT way for the music industry to differentiate their mp3s from the home-ripped ones currently in circulation..

Winamp's take on pens being used for evil.

Now's the chance to add any words of encouragement to the BBC regarding Ogg, especially since, perhaps by oversight, RealOne (formerly RealPlayer) is now only available for Windows 98, 2000, ME, NT and XP.

WinAmp has support for playing Ogg Vorbis files.

Funny someone would name an encoding format after a caveman...

Personally I thought the news that Ogg Vorbis is now shipped with Winamp 2.80 was the news of they day. Any guess as to how many times over this will double the installed base of computers capable of playing Vorbis-files?

"Today, the multimedia program was no longer available from CNET. According to a copy of the download page cached by the Google search engine, over 750,000 copies of RadLight had been downloaded from CNET as of February 2002."

I feel bad for those who downloaded this program. They obviously don't know about WinAMP. Also, why not check the DivX website for players that support DivX and not spyware .

"Radlight software indeed checks for the default Ad-aware installation path, and then removes all files that are not currently in use, upon its first execution."

It seems that it checks only once, so reinstalling Ad-Aware wouldn't be much of a problem. OR you could just install into a different directory than the default.

"Newsbytes has confirmed that installing RadLight version 3.03 deletes Lavasoft's Ad-Aware program, as promised in a warning in the software's 1,100-word license agreement."

Not too many people I know read EULA's unless they are looking for something specific, especially when it's 1100 words.

with the divx plugin it can
WInamp with divx

I have a karaoke story to tell,

There was a spell in my life about 2 years ago where I spent 6 months straight, 7 days a week, 7 martini's a night at what has been named the best karaoke bar in san jose by the san jose metro.

I popularized such forgotten hit's as Yes we have no Banana's by Spike Jones, To dream the impossible dream from
Man of La
Mancha, and brought new flair to Baby Got Back by Sir Mix Alot. In the
beginning I was a scared lone singer up on stage, my voice was terrible and I
was afraid.

I began to conquer my songs, one at a time. I would come in before any of the
other singers and start around 6:00. Each song I conquered represented a fear,
so in essence, I was conquering my fears.

I had a buddy that taught me the ways. Our whole thing was we were
"The Rat Pack" We got other singers into this clique and sort of set
the place on fire not only with our alcohol finely tuned voices, but with our
stage presence and showmanship as well.

The rat pack ended when Frank Sinatra had a kid. I miss those harmonic
days of bliss long since past.

So drawing from what I know makes or breaks a karaoke superstar, and applying
it to this comment, I honestly have to say that I don't think this will totally
help all people. You still have issue's with stage fright, crowd response,
the singers harmonic vocalizations and how well they dance around and put on a
show.

There is also somewhat of a joke in karaoke. Sometimes people TRY
and sing off key or tempo. It's what you do with a song that makes people laugh
or clap. Not just how well you sing.

Quoth:

If such a message came from a company with not a bad reputation (winamp comes to mind), i would install the program

I guess you didn't realize that Winamp is Nullsoft is America Online whom is also the proud owner of Time Warner, among other things.

Is there really a reason to go about trusting, implicitly, this "winamp" organization of which you speak?

"...to produce a stripped down version of Windows that will allow 3rd party vendors to insert components such as browsers, media players, and IM clients."

Hmm... Seems to me that this has already been accomplished. Winamp anybody? How about Mozilla? And for those that want full stripped GUI and everything, just go see our friends over at Litestep.

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