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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?"
"Warning!
This is a technical beta release. Before you decide whether to install this software, it is important to understand that the technical beta release does not have the stability of released Microsoft software..."
MS should use that everywhere. And WHO needs MS mediaplayers anyhow...
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
I wish Microsoft was spending a bit more time on toning down the bloat-ware aspect of this piece of software. I've got a nice fast Athlon XP processor and a gig of RAM etc... and WMP still takes 3 or 4 seconds to get going. Not a big deal, I guess, but come on. By 1998 standards I've got a freakin' supercomputer.
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.
I noticed on the same page that I could get WMP 9 for OS X. I would have sworn that was not there before, as I wanted to view the Epson Print Acadamy and it needed WMP9, which I could not find at the time - now the sample video works just fine whereas before I could not get video. Epson had also mentioned to me via support email that Microsoft was going to release WMP9 sometime at the end of March.
The wierd thing about that is that when you download WMP9 for OS X, the installer is dated October 27th, 2003. A suspicious person would speculate that Microsoft wants to make sure the Mac lags a version behind Windows for WMP support, and they would not release the final version of WMP9 for OS X until WMP10 was ready for beta test.
Note that this WMP9 also claims to support the same DRM as Windows WMP9. I have no such protected files to test against so I don't know how well that works.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
torrent link
There are 10 kinds of people in the world; those that understand binary and those that do not.
I wonder if once its fully released if microsoft will say that there is a major flaw in previous version of media players and force people to upgrade to the newer version. With the latest computer viruses people are applying patches without really understanding the impacts of what functionality they introduce like the newer versions of DRM. Maybe this is how microsoft envisage migrating users to DRM.
There's something about seeing a neutered, paid-for-only Napster window inside Windows Media Player that makes me cringe. That it should come to this. I'll be sticking to SoulSeek.
[ UNSIGNED NOT NULL ]
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 it uninstallable? I mean, after seeing the _last_ foray of MS into the Media Player market, it had better be removable.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Microsoft: All your rights are belong to us!
Community: What you say!
Microsoft: You have no chance to survive make your time!
Community: For great justice!
Microsoft: Ha Ha Ha Ha
bash: rtfm: command not found
...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!
From the article:
this technical beta lays the groundwork for the great end-to-end digital media experience coming with the final release for Windows XP
I do believe I will be forced to struggle to contain my excitement...
bash: rtfm: command not found
Has nobody noticed the great implications of this?
Finally MS is leveraging the Windows Media Player monopoly! This fits in nicely with their ongoing world domination plans.
iTunes is getting loads of publicity lately. And iTunes is being used on many Windows PC's! This is not what Bill Gates likes.
But Bill knows that every Windows has his media player on it. Why not make it so that you can buy Bills media files online which will only play with Bills player than will only run on Bills O/S? And let's make it so that when you launch Bills OS it pops up Bills media player that connects instantly to Bills online music download service? Why not have the payments bundled with MSN which is bundled on the OS?
This would be nice for Bill. Especially when he has about 90% of desktops in the wild.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
When will they learn? If people pay for a "service", they expect to own what they pay for. The obvious exceptions might be something like netflix where you have to return the physical media to get new ones... simple, elegant, or Tivo, where you're really paying for enhanced scheduling, and you can own it if you want.
It's pretty clear that M$ is shooting in the dark, hoping to find some hit, while they make bank off their other products. They have time, they can wait pretty much forever.
1) Enter a section of the software market with a new Microsoft product.
2) Include it free with Windows, thereby eliminating the competition's ability to compete because users are too lazy to download competing software.
3) Profit.
4) When the DoJ gets upset, pay them off by offering to donate massive amounts of Microsoft software to schools, thereby leading students to learn Microsoft software rather than competing products.
5) Profit more.
6) Repeat.
- New skin (who cares? I play music and movies on it, not look at decorated borders)
:-P)
- Integrated online stores (I really think these should be on the web instead of in the player... anyway, I won't use them since they probably just offer WMA, being in Microsoft's player)
- Enhanced device support (nice feature, but I don't have a NOMAD or Lyra player so no reason to use this for that either)
- Improved All-in-One Smart Jukebox (not sure how much this would help me since other players already support media libraries... this feature alone would probably not make me switch anyway
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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.
I hate to sound cynical but the Microsoft Multimedia Transport Protocol (MTP) seems to be silently screaming the word "vulnerability." I know it's just to connect devices, but I have a feeling that somehow, some way, it's got some sort of security issues that are going to surface shortly after its released.
The level of integration is getting to ridiculous proportions.
I hated having media files playing in my browser; the interface is terrible, and crippled. I hated opening PDFs in my browser; it's harder to read that way (less screen-space to read in) and they often hide important controls too. I hated Flash in my browser; I can disable GIF animations, but Flash gives me no control at all, plus the security problems, and added annoyance of all ads being massively animated, and having sound...
Now, to add insult to injury, instead of integrating the applications inside the browser, they are putting the browser inside the programs. Good god man! You can't tell me that isn't going to be MASSIVELY annoying and cumbersome.
Screw them all. All applications launched from my browser open in a seperate window of their own, and do whatever I tell them to do. All of my browsing is done outside of my unrelated applications, and that's the way it's going to stay.
Screw you Microsoft guys, I'm going home.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
A lot of people out there want to organise their music better. Why would you have such a bulky looking program as WMP 10, which doesn't organise your music. Sure, iTunes is bulky, but it is truly intuitive. I made the switch from Winamp 3 to iTunes just before I bought my iPod, and havent looked back. WMP 8 has been collecting dust for ages. There needs to be a decent reason to warrant downloading this update, I just see it as a waste of time, not just to clutter your screen with more ads. Sure, Microsoft may be planning on organising data better in Longhorn, but how many years away is that now?
It's good to see that they've moved it back into a more-or-less rectangular window, instead of that horrible amorphous blob from the last 3 versions. On the downside, now they'll probably patent the use of right angles in a user interface.
Lacking Ogg support? You seriously expect them to bundle every 3rd party codec out there?
There is Ogg support, in the form of Tobias's Ogg DirectShow filter. The specs for DirectShow filters are pretty well known. Complaining that MS aren't producing a wrapper for a codec they didn't write is, well, a Real tatic :D
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!
that the technical beta release does not have the stability of released Microsoft software...
Released Microsoft software doesn't have stability either so what is the big deal?
flinging poop since 1969
Bloated? yes. However the interface is better than WMP9. At least they are making an effort.
Flashing stuff? I have no flashing stuff. Where do I get this? What is wrong the the buttons? They are spaced out nicely and have easy to read text.
There are large play, stop, fast forward, rewind, mute, and volume buttons at the bottom left corner, and are blatantly obvious. If you can't find them, OPEN YOUR FUCKING EYES.
Already happening. The EU anti-trust investigation was around media player. However that seems driven mostly by Real's sour grapes ("People don't use real because WMP is on the desktop". No, people don't use real because it's been a bloated heap of spyware driven shit, with an awful set of codecs).
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
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.