Windows Media Player 10 First Impressions
I downloaded Windows Media Player 10 yesterday to try it out. The final release version is now out. I will have to say, I have been a fan of the Windows Media Player for some time now.It's never had spyware like it's piece of crap brother, the Real player. It doesn't nag you to purchase it like the Quicktime player. And it plays a number of formats. When codecs are released, there is usually a version that is compatible with the WMP so we can view formats like Divx and Xvid.
WMP 10 ads a new 'media mall' feature. It's nice that they did this. I heard Microsoft was coming out with there own online music store and assumed that the new media player would be set to purchase from there like iTunes does with Apples music store. Instead, Microsoft is allowing easy access to a number of stores including Napster, Wal-Mart, MusicMatch and a few others. While I don't plan to buy any WMA format music, it's a nice setup they have.
Media support is better though. In WMP 9, DVD and MP3 wasn't supported, you have to purchase the codecs for those. I was happy with PowerDVD and already havea copy of that in addition to WinDVD, so I never used WMP for DVD's. But, I love how WMP rips MP3's, so I did purchase Cyberlink's MP3 encoder. I have since ripped most of my CD's using that. But, now with WMP 10, there is built in support for MP3. Also, DVD's are working nicely now too without purchasing any add-ons.
Other improvements, adjustable seek when using the using the taskbar mini-mode. The mini taskbar player is one feature that makes it easy to watch movies and still not have the movies take up the entire screen.Previously, if you wanted to change place in your movie while using this, you have to open up the full window, then adjust the seek. Now, moving your cursor over the window will display a little seek bar. It's still hard to make small adjustments since the window is pretty small, but it's better than nothing.
There is also a radio feature now. I love listening to Internet radio, used to use Winamp for this purpose, now just iTunes, but maybe I can just use WMP now. I haven't really tried this out too much yet, but it's great they finally added this.