Jun 12, 2003 12:10 AM
9275 Views
(Updated Jun 12, 2003 12:12 AM)
Me Second! Firstly I would suggest you read ''Me First'' from TIC. Well guys n gals, it's about a claim ''WMP9 is the best Media Player ever unleashed''.
And I am here to support that claim and add my MS points to that pledge by TIC.
Here's some more description of WMP9 from - ME!
«« INSTALLATION »»
They they have two download files. One for all the die hard Bill boy's fan who love to contribute to his net worth by buying all the latest OS he releases (WinXP - home or enterprise) and other for lesser mortals like me (Win 98/98se/ME/2000). The XP edition promises to be the best with loads of extra features over the non-XP variant and yet is only 9.7 MB as against the 13 MB file downloaded by me.
While both these installations are easy and breezy, please pay attention to the screen where there are options like - ''Enable copyright protection'', which is fair enough. [Needless to mention that a corrupt me had it unchecked]. It just implies that you can copy music from CD in a secure format that works fine for your PC alone.
What is more essential are the options that allows you to
a) Send your player ID (and wonder what else?) to content providers
b) Send your player usage information to Microsoft.
If you check these, I will only pray for you - ''May God Bless You''
No don't worry! These can be unchecked later (see ''Privacy'' tab in Tools --> Options)
«« FIRST IMPRESSIONS »»
''Hmmm...Wow''. Yes it does make you feel nice. The new Steel - Aluminium looks are much better than WMP7. The best part is that loads very fast, provided you uncheck the option ''Start Player in Media Guide'' cause then it has to check for your connection details as well.
The screen has taskbar on left, player buttons on the bottom side and a combo box listing your music at the top. The rest of the screen is entirely customizable. You can see/hide playlist, visualization window, equaliser settings......ok yes you can also unhide the task bar.
The 3D buttons for play, stop etc look a lot better. What I liked was the ''Equaliser Settings''. Unlike WMP7 you can adjust these to move together in loose or tight group - a feature I remember seeing only in Sonique before. Well it also comes with presets like ''Dance'', ''Rock'', ''Speech'' etc.
«« BEAUTY IS SKIN DEEP »»
Yeah! It supports all the old skins you have already loaded for previous versions. XP users who dontlike cluttered screen, have an advantage here with the mini toolbar that places the player controls in windows taskbar. (damn neat feature!). But non-XP users, don't loose heart. Try the ''mini player'' skin. Also, Winamp lovers will be more comfortable with ''Revert'' skin that comes with WMP9.
«« ''9 SERIES - NAVRATNA'' »»
This ain't about looks alone. The developers have really slogged for it with enhancements in audio and video department. It will take good ear but the difference is easily noticeable.
Music sounds too good in this one. Hear the bass, the treble, the vocals. I can ask for a confirmation from Maddy and Farid on MS. Try moving those equalizers and notice the change yourself. IT IS AMAZING!
Add to that the ''True Bass'' and WOW effects to get the dome or hall kind of effects. If that ain't enough get the DSP plugins from the Net (often at a price, though!)
For XP users with 5 speaker surround system support (sound cards), the XPrience is ''Out of The World'' as WMP9 has special multichannel (5.1 audio support).
WMP9 also offers cross-fading i.e. smooth transition between two songs where the first one fades slowly and the second one starts playing. Alas XP users only. Damn Me! Curse my neighbour (he has XP)
This is again a thorn in my feet, but WMP9 offers volume leveling that works OK. Usually songs recorded from different CDs have different volume settings and you have to rush to control the volume. WMP associates a volume figure for songs added to its playlist and then adjusts volume accordingly when it is played so that all songs in the playlist has same volume. Neat huh!
The video support is enhanced too. The video plays reasonable smoothly (w/o jerks) and I have now uninstalled Xing Player now. While you can play the avseq*.dat in mpegav folder of your VCDs, automatic VCD support and DVD playback is but for the XP users (with DVD relate hardware of course)
The FastStreaming is the most obvious enhancement that made me really happy. It adjusts playback and optimizes buffering depending on your connection speed so that you can watch streaming videos continuously without any break (unless you are still on 33 kBps).
I get to listen to Internet Radio from a huge list of radio stations - Pop, Hip-hop, Rock...u name it, it plays. (Just be careful though as for most it opens that particular website in a new window and you have all sorts of pop-ups. A virus may also creep in and make you dance to its music).
The Media guide keeps me update with music world and I can play some video in my lunch time. Just search for one and play. It's that easy. The search is several times better. I searched for ''Hi Sexy Lady'' and yes the first page of search results was all about ''Hi sexy lady'' by Shaggy and Brian. Imagine watching that in office hours!
«« MEDIA LIBRARY »»
This is one major improvement (as compared to WMP7) and better than that offered by ''Real Jukebox''. You can have your own playlist besides its own custom playlists that goes by titles as friendly as ''Music tracks I dislike'' (hee hee), ''favorites - listen to at night'', ''favorites - listen on weekends''. Of course the earlier classification based on album/artist/genre still exists but somehow seems more easier to work with.
Another interesting thing is the Tag Editor (with XP...sorry!). It also allows to rate a song (1 star to 5 star). It goes further than this. If you are hooked to Net, it scouts information about the song and fills up the details for you. Don't expect that for Hindi songs...dear!
«« COPY CDs »»
You can burn your own Audio CDs using the (*.wma or *.wav or *.mp3) files on your hard disk. It uses a Roxio CD burning software (win 98/Me/2000), which comes free but can write only at 4x speeds. Any higher and it says ''Upgrade Now'' (at a price of course). XP users again have more options at creating Audio and Data CDs and the WMA files only HighMat CDs.
«« HEY! BUT THEN... »»
While WMP9 creates audio CDs from MP3s, it does not rip Audio CDs to MP3s but favors its compact wma format only. The plug-ins come at $10. Its funny, everyone knows that there are free CD to Wave or MP3 rippers available on net by dozens!
Music making fraternity could swear by WMP9 with its digital rights management and license management policies that prevents you from listening ''protected'' music. It but allows you to download license from the Net with facilities to backup these licenses. This may or may not be free.
Premium Services: This allows songs/video downloads and lots of stuff but then you know what ''premium'' means, right? Oh! But there is a free trial period.
And yes, Tic is right - There is no UNINSTALL - no uninstall.exe and no its not listed in ''Add/Remove Programs'' list. There's only one way out - upgrade to WMP10.
Therez so much for XP users. Comeon Bill that'll not make me buy XP.
«« OVERALL »»
Yes, XP users - Go Get It!
Non-XP users - Go Get It!
