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Windows Media Player 12's surprising new features

arstechnica.com — Though many previously bundled applets are now will ship separately to Windows 7, Windows Media Player remains part of the core OS. Windows 7 will ship with Windows Media Player 12, which includes some surprising new features.

Who dugg this? Made popular Oct 30, 2008

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  • InJectaH, on 10/30/2008, -26/+99I'm sticking with VLC Media Player.
  • wally40, on 10/30/2008, -2/+60What visualizer doesn't suck?
  • cyrusuncc, on 10/30/2008, -3/+57Surprising Feature: supports all video formats out of the box?
  • nonymous666, on 10/30/2008, -5/+54Visualizers are so 1998.
  • Hollow5, on 10/30/2008, -14/+59then surprise me by trying to top media player classic V.6
  • Dalhectar, on 10/30/2008, -5/+47Why does the visualizer still suck?
  • AndrewMoyer, on 10/30/2008, -2/+44iTunes --at least for PC-- is wretched. Talk about clumsy bloatware. And the interface... they could have at least tried to make it conform to its host OS.

    WMP is no better, though... WinAmp FTW.

    I hate iTunes, and wouldn't use it if it wasn't for my iPhone, unless I was on OS X.
  • stefilini, on 10/30/2008, -1/+35Thank god it's supporting more codecs.
  • KrazyKoala, on 10/30/2008, -1/+31Just give me Zune support.
  • Stiffler, on 10/30/2008, -3/+29You haven't even used WMP12 yet. Why not hold off judgment?
  • Pr0v0st, on 10/30/2008, -0/+24That would be surprising.
  • Acglaphotis, on 10/30/2008, -1/+25Because it sucks. Why don't you try typing your papers in Wordpad instead of downloading 'extra' stuff like Office?
  • YourScarGrandpa, on 10/30/2008, -1/+23Drag the folder into the playlist area in wmp11.
  • inactive, on 10/30/2008, -13/+32Windows media player has encountered an error.
  • BaoUnit, on 10/30/2008, -0/+16XBMP has a pretty good visualizer
  • cyrusuncc, on 10/30/2008, -3/+19go back to the other Internet. The bad one.
  • freehunter, on 10/30/2008, -6/+22Libraries, smart playlists, better interface, syncing with USB devices and Windows Mobile/Media devices. As far as I am aware, WMPC does not do any of these (though I could be wrong).
  • inactive, on 10/30/2008, -4/+20i love to see the new features :)
  • fuzzlepop, on 10/30/2008, -2/+18forget the fancy addons all i want is somthing that plays videos and music. play/stop/skip is all i need!
  • timusca, on 10/30/2008, -0/+15Buried for the spam at the end of your post.
  • MasterQ, on 10/30/2008, -1/+16@lucasb: iTunes only syncs with iPods. WMP syncs with windows mobile devices as well as other 3rd party ones. also, microsoft is trying to trim the fat off the slow as hell WMP, something that apple should focus on with iTunes as well. Whether u want to admit it or not iTunes has gotten very heavy, slow, and un-apple-like lately and there are a ton of things that need fixing on it
  • alibanana, on 10/30/2008, -1/+15Actually it does support many more codecs out of the box
  • RealmDown, on 10/30/2008, -0/+14usenet ?
  • damienhunter, on 10/30/2008, -3/+16Windows Media Player once killed my father and raped my mother.
  • HigherLogic, on 10/30/2008, -2/+14VLC is fine for "quick" playing, but when you have over 100 movies and 40+ GB of music, you need something a bit more robust to manage all of that.
  • InJectaH, on 10/30/2008, -1/+12You've actually launched windows media player? How did it feel?
  • ryansmith18, on 10/30/2008, -0/+11This is no place to promote your crap-ass blog. Get the hell off Digg.
  • fasda, on 10/30/2008, -3/+13How do you manage the library then?
  • mcflynnthm, on 10/30/2008, -0/+10Like the goddamned Now Playing list.
  • doctechnical, on 10/30/2008, -6/+16If you go to a restaurant eleven times, and all eleven meals are crap, are still going to hold off judgment about the 12th?
  • miralize, on 10/30/2008, -1/+10Its still in early stages. Give Microsoft time.
  • bjornski, on 10/30/2008, -12/+21Milkdrop.

    The only one worth even loading.

    @Sunscreen

    The RIAAstation 3?
  • briLo, on 10/30/2008, -1/+10Talk about bloated & intrusive apps.......quicktime fits the bill!
  • Sunscreen, on 10/30/2008, -10/+19The PS3 has a great visualizer :)
  • inactive, on 10/30/2008, -8/+17Folders and filenames, *****.
  • miralize, on 10/30/2008, -1/+9Cant wait for the new features. Microsoft are keen to step in the right direction
  • inactive, on 02/25/2009, -4/+12@sunscreen but your ps3 can't run crysis, can it?
  • doctechnical, on 10/30/2008, -1/+9Stop downloading DRM'ed *****.
  • freehunter, on 10/30/2008, -3/+11Folders and Filenames is a horrible way to manage a library, IMO. I hate having to go out of the program to play another file, and it introduces another step (or several) to making a playlist. Might be good for someone who hardly ever listens to music, but it doesn't work for me.
  • Hollow5, on 10/30/2008, -2/+10MPC mother f*ckers!
  • JasonCox, on 10/30/2008, -4/+12Apple, for the love of god, please feel free to copy some of the features out of WMP. Please.
  • str3ama, on 10/30/2008, -2/+9The one problem I had with WMP 11 was that it was really bloated, i prefered the classic mplayer which from vista and odler versions was always still available (start>run>mplayer2), it cuts out a lot of the fat like the cd recording/ripping, album covers, visualizations, etc. What you get is a streamlined player that's really light weight.
  • gaqua, on 10/30/2008, -4/+11Mysteriously half of them will just have audio and no video, another half will not play regardless of being in the correct format, and out of those two halves, a good percentage will inexplicably not allow skipping forward and backward, or will lock the video and continue the audio when trying to skip.

    Not to mention the fact that the player will likely be horribly bloated and take 250MB of RAM to launch when it's not playing anything, surround the video with tons of useless "bling" GUI nastiness, and the skins available will look like they were designed by a company that spends its spare time designing posters for raves or energy drink logos.

    But I'm sure it's awesome anyway.
  • BeatPunchbeef, on 10/30/2008, -5/+12VLC my friend.
  • HigherLogic, on 10/30/2008, -0/+6You don't, and that's the problem with VLC et al. You can't update album info, attach album art, manage all your movies, etc. There's no history of recently added items, most played, or a rating system.
  • brianez21, on 10/30/2008, -1/+7Milkdrop for Winamp -- enough said.
  • freehunter, on 10/30/2008, -1/+7I have never had an issue getting WMP11 to pop right up, and I have fairly modest specs on some of my computers. I think 11 is a lot lighter than 10.
  • cyrusuncc, on 10/30/2008, -0/+6"More Mileage, More Savings, More Vroom!"
  • pintomp3, on 10/30/2008, -2/+8is it just me or is seeking in the new vlc really blocky and choppy?
  • staticneuron, on 10/30/2008, -3/+9 Wow. Alot of PS3 hate. Idiotic comparison to the RIAA. This is digg!


    I must admit though that globe visualization is the hottest Vis in my opinion but it would be nice if the PS3 had more.
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