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Windows Media Player 10 Beta Released
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft today officially announced the public availability of Windows Media Player 10 Technical Beta. These screenshots reveal how Microsoft is integrating music service subscriptions such as Napster and video service subscription from CinemaNow. Is Microsoft trying to start competing with iTunes with this new music service integration?"
But really, are there any significant innovations possible in media players except for infinitesimal interface polishing? (DRM doesn't count as a feature ;)
I get a feeling they're almost there.
Taking a look at those screenshots and hearing the new features, I really don't think I'm going to be installing that s--t on my computer.
:-(
Is there a plain-jane alternative? Something like foobar, but which can play video? I use foobar because of its standard looking interface.
Sigh. I don't want storefronts in my software
...is how I described the performance of Media Player 8 on my PII-400MHz, when it first came out. But Media Player 9 also runs sluggishly on my P4-3GHz. I hope that the Microsoft coders have actually followed the 80/20 rule and made some efficiency improvements in this release, because having to wait 2-3 seconds after double clicking a media file is not good enough. I guess that is why Winamp 2 is so popular - launch the media file and it instantly starts playing.
Please don't send a Word document when a text file will do the job.
And WHO needs MS mediaplayers anyhow...
Actually, with WM9, video quality seems to be consistently better than MPEG or DivX files of the same size. So, yeah, it's very reasonable for someone to use WM.
You know, you are absolutely right. When the next chimaera from Redmond is released with the WMP10 music store, it is going to get some serious use out of the average PC user. These technophobes are going to use the obviously inferior MS service just because it is already there and they are afraid of being sued by using anything else (even if they pay for it!).
A testament to that is looking at your less savvy friends'/family members'/co-workers' computers and staring at IE. Even if you tell them of alternatives, they are terrified to install it. One even asked me if Firefox was legal to use, because it wasn't Microsoft!
You have a long way to go folks.
Click here for a free picture of an iPod!
But that's kinda worthless. Microsoft has massive bandwidth themselves, and most of their downloads are hosted by Akamai who has even more bandwidth, not to mention cache engines at many ISPs. Torrents are cool if it is some small site that can't handle Slashdot, but for big sites like MS, Apple, etc it's pretty worthless. They can, and regularly do, deal with worse. A bunch of geeks, many of them running Linux and thus not intrested, are nothing compared to the millions of copies of Windows grabbing stuff on patch day.
Ahh... but you see, all new Windows PC's will come with this software installed, just like they came with MSIE. So at first it didn't seem like anything really because there were so many PC's around without MSIE on it. And nobody would go out of their way to upgrade or download MSIE, you're right about that.
To paraphrase a little if I may... "and after that, many people will still use Netscape, Mosaic..."
Kazaa and Gnutella will never come integrated into Windows. Although it would be, potentially, one of the most comical and entertaining battles of our lifetimes to see MS head to head with the RIAA, the world doesn't work that way.
Winamp can integrate Napster, iTunes, everything in the world if it wants to, but that will never change the very same fact that destroyed Netscape.
Winamp is not bundled with Windows.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Anybody else still use that program?
What about Media Player Classic?
No offense to the beta junkies, but the bloat starting in mplayer7 really turned me away from the new versions. I'm sure there are some neat features tucked away, but 10 beta just looks like more of the same. I'll just quitely wait for the codec release & then be on my way.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Also, the obsession with hierarchical tree lists? Is it really necessary to know that my music resides under the "All Music" node? This creates so much dead (not negative, that would mean it's useful) space and nasty horizontal scrollbars. Interface wise the Windows and Office teams at Microsoft have come leaps and bounds with XP and Office 2003, respectively. But the Windows Media Div. seems to be really hung up on the technical bits and providing a shitty user experience. I hope they redesign for the final release. I was really hoping that they'd shape up WMP interface wise with this version. It's the place the player is lacking most. WMP continues to be all geewhiz skinning with absolutely no design discipline. Save that crap for the hobbyists at Deviant Art.
_nfotxn
>And WHO needs MS mediaplayers anyhow...
Have any pointers to alternatives ?
Plenty of alternatives exist, it depends on what you want to do. I think the idea that anyone would use one "media player" for everything is just stupid - at least when it's a company out for its own interest releasing the player (as opposed to, say, an open-source free software project designed to collate as many formats as possible into one application).
I would never use an MS media player to rip anything. I use EAC/LAME for that.
I would never use an MS media player to play back mp3's. I use iTunes for that, and it works great - so well, in fact, that apart from needed performance tweaks I doubt Apple or anyone else will ever be able to release a better player for this purpose.
I would never use an MS media player to play back QuickTime files - in fact you can't use it for this, as far as I know of. I use QuickTime to play its native format.
I would never use an MS media player to play DVD's. I use WinDVD for that, and it has a lot more DVD playback options than WMP - it's not even close. There is absolutely nothing WMP offers over any of the standalone DVD player apps out there.
In fact, really the *only* thing I would use WMP for is to play back Windows Media files. And I do use Windows Media whenever I do video capture, partly because the Windows Media 9 codec is a nice codec that supports ultra-high resolution as well as 5.1 surround sound, and also because MS gives away a very nice little free video capture and encoder utility called Windows Media Encoder. This is an example where MS is actually providing me something of value, and so I use it.
So I'm not seeing WMP is useless, just that it can never be a jack-of-all-trades, especially with this "DRM 10" built into it (DRM 10? There have been 9 other versions of this?). There is no such thing as a "media player" as far as I'm concerned (I never got mplayer to play all the formats I wanted in Linux either!); there are only mp3 players, DVD players, "windows media" players, Real players, QuickTime players, etc. Each player with its own native format; it's own specialization that it does best, and that gives you the most freedom to use your media as you see fit. All of these companies want to monopolize your media, and you'd be stupid to give up that control to them.
Oh, I also just find it really silly that everyone is now building "media players" to act as web browsers - but only to their online music store addresses! This isn't "integration", this is just a stupid web page rendered in the player window! I can navigate with my own damn browser, thank you - this is another function that media players just should not have.
(yes, I've disabled the music store in iTunes - no way I'd pay 99 cents for a DRM-encrusted song anyway.)
From the perspective of the commercial software developer (at least for those that develop for the desktop environment), everything in software in now about garnish (= the way the software looks) and locking users into regular payment schemes, be that through DRM or software rental licensing.
It used to be that a major release upgrade meant a core functionality change in software - nowadays, it's just about a prettier look. For example, take a look at Powerquest's PartitionMagic software - from v7.0 to v8.0, I see no core functionality changes, just a slightly different look and feel. The same is true going from Windows 2000 to Windows XP - it's all just about a GUI change.
Unfortunately, version numbers are now just marketing tools to attract "fashion-conscious" users to using your software while, at the same time, introducing yet more bloat so that they also stay in the hardware upgrade cycle.
The whole Windows applications / PC thing is a global conspiracy to keep you spending money on hardware and software, nothing more.
One of the major advantages of the OSS movement is that every user has the opportunity to customise their computer environment and to trade off bloat against speed - provided that those same users start thinking for themselves a little and not just blindly consume every piece of hardware and software marketing hype that gets thrown at them.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Anyone notice that WMP10 follows it's close predecessors in giving you the ability to not turn off the automatic checking for new updates? Instead you get "once a day," "once a week," and "once a month." (see flexbeta screenshots in parent article.)
I wonder if XP SP2's on-by-default firewall will automatically not block this update checking traffic? (sarcasm)
This post is not meant to Troll, but can't Microsoft release a post-WMP6.4-era media player that's not constantly calling home?
I mean, at least iTunes lets you turn off update checking and iTunes Internet usage in general...
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
You're not stuck with anything.
Unfortunately, you've fallen into the same trap that the vast majority of computer users have done when it comes to the world of Windows.
Firstly, Microsoft does nothing for free. It's a business, it's sole purpose is to make money. So when it offers you a "free" WMP update, it may take no money from you but it will take away something else instead - information about where you surf or what you play, your ability to use anything else in the future when you become dependant upon proprietary formats, etc.
Secondly, change your attitude. You cannot simply expect any software company to develop your killer media player application while you just sit back and wait.
Unfortunately, in the commercial sector, the whole issue is much bigger than just a piece of software that plays music and movies - it's about having the rights to the formats that music and video will be distributed in the future (in their eyes, anyway) so any software they "give" you, be it Real, Microsoft, etc. is going to try and force you to adopt their way of doing things so that their proprietary formats become the "defacto standard".
Rather than giving an "arm and a leg", you need to take an active role in the Open Source movement. OSS does not mean giving up Windows, it does mean maintaining your right to choice - there is a wealth of OSS software on Windows, like Media Player Classic.
If there's a piece of software that you need to perform a certain task, then the best thing you can do is try out some Open Source packages and let the developers of those packages know what you feel is wrong with them - that way, Open Source gets better and you, hopefully, get the functionality you want.
Just please do not just sit back and expect your killer app to be handed to you - commercial vendors only care about you and your desires if there's a way of crowbarring a heap of money from you also.
Windows users need to start looking beyond the "Open Source is just Linux" idea and understand that it's all about making good software and keeping data formats open so you can exchange whatever you like whenever you like with whomever you like.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.