We released Windows Media Player 11 which is an uber-cool rev of our multimedia player for Windows.
What makes it cool to me?
- AUTO-CATALOGING FOR UNKNOWN FILES
Windows Media Player 11 can look at an unnamed, undescribed file’s data and identify it by matching it up with criteria through a web service online. So if you’ve got the album name wrong, it’ll tell you and automatically correct it if you wish. So cool. - A NEW, GOOD MUSIC SERVICE
Urge is MTV Network’s music service which is highlighted in WMP11. Normally I wouldn’t care except that music companies for the most part have to play nice with the independent, unaffliated MTV because of their influence with the younger set. This means that it’s already got a really rich, reliable library of music to buy and will continue to be well-plugged into the latest music, unlike some other attempts at creating online music services. - DEVICE SUPPORT
Windows Media Player works with over 200 portable devices & home media appliances like UP&P stereos and such. Meanwhile iTMS supports, like… 5 devices? - AUDIO ACCURACY
Windows Media Player 11 supports ripping into Windows Media Audio Pro & WAV Lossless, which are codecs that provide flawless replications of the audio sources that are being copied. For the archiver, this is the way to get the "absolute best, precision copies" instead of making 192kbps MP3s which are huge yet still inaccurate.
There are a few things you need to know about the player though:
- NO WINDOWS 2000
If you’re lame and you haven’t upgraded from the 7-year-old release of our Windows product, then there’s no soup for you. But you probably already knew that given none of our other free Genuine Windows Applications run on Windows 2000 anyway so if you really are on Win2K, what do you care? - REQUIRES WINDOWS XP SERVICE PACK 2
If you’re lame and you haven’t gotten Service Pack 2 applied, you’re not only asking for trouble, you’re going to rapidly find that nothing we build in the future will support you. Windows XP SP1 went out of support last month on October 10th, 2006 so you’ll get no sympathy if a new virus hits and you don’t have coverage because we’re not building patches that support SP1 or unpatched Windows XP. - DVD PLAYBACK STILL NEEDS MPEG2 CODEC
DVD playback still require that you purchase a license for 3rd party software that plugs into Windows Media Player to provide the MPEG2 codec. MPEG2 is the encoding algorithm used with DVD’s and is licensed from the MPEG organization, a private foundation that created the MPEG2 standard. Because the license for MPEG2 is usually $16 + any costs associated with the middleware software that goes between the codec & it’s intended player, Microsoft chose not to burden all Windows buyers with the additional costs associated with bundling the MPEG2 license into the OS – since not everyone wants to play back DVDs. Instead you have to purchase it separately from any of the following 3rd parties: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=65291
kurtsh
Kurt Shintaku's Blog 