From: Chris Robinson 


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WMP9 is brilliant - I've been using it a while now (in beta, obviously). 
It does have some bad points like how it tries to "protect" your
media - I checked the properties for some of my MP3's and the protected
field said "yes" - not sure if this means anything or not?

There are many good points, below are a few (or more) that I've come to really like:

- You can minimise WMP9 to your taskbar where it lays (if you want it
to) as a mini-player embedded in the taskbar.  It's far more useful than
cut-down Winamp (i.e. when you kinda half-minimise Winamp into a smaller
player and can still access some controlls).

- ID tag updateing in simple - you can right-click an MP3 and select
"find details" and it'll go off and look for information based on
(i assume) the file name - you then select the correct result (usually
pretty sucessful) and it'll update all the ID tag info - nice!.  Also (as
with WMP8) you can still manually edit the ID tag info of any MP3
on-the-fly.

- Folder monitoring is also good.  When you first set up WMP9 you can
set a drive/ folder etc for it to scan for media - you can then set it to
monitor this location(s) and automatically add any media it finds to your
library.

- Auto playlists are pretty cool too.  WMP9 allows you to specify (as
well as including built in ones)
auto playlists.  These are playlists created automatically based on a set
of criteria about your media.  For example, a couple of the included
playlists are "fresh tracks I haven't listened to yet" and
"my favorite tracks" - it does the favorite tracks by applying a
rating to each track (defaults to 3 out of 5 stars i think).  If you like a
track you can bump up the star rating and then it'll automatically be added
to your favorites.

- And finally album art and web integration.  WMP9 fetches album art and
(if you want it to) album info for the track currently palying (like, track
list, arist info, web links etc).  I like the album art automatically
fetching (in WMP8 you had to include the JPEG's in the same folder as the
MP3's for WMP to display the album art) as seeing the cd sleeve design etc
is one of the things I liek about playing CD's as oppsed to MP3's (maybe
I'm just odd?)

Oh yeh, and it's pretty quick too! (I run it no probs on a PII 350).

Hope this helps,
Chris.

Dave Ings wrote:

> Is there a short list of reasons somewhere why I might be
> interested? I continue to use Winamp Classic and/or RealOne V2 and/or
> MusicMatch V7.x, depending on the task, and past releases of WMP were
> quite simply not remotely competitive with these products,
> function-wise. (I.e. I gave up caring a long time ago.) Also, without
> MP3 support, I don't care from the get-go. Does WMP V9 finally provide
> MP3 support?--
> Regards,
> Dave Ings,
> Toronto, Canada
>
>      "Rich"  wrote in message news:3e1ba765$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>      For those that care, the final WMP9 can be downloaded from
>      http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/player.aspx.
>      The final Encoder, SDKs, et al are also available.  The
>      player supports Windows 98 SE, Windows Me, Windows 2000, and
>      Windows XP. Rich
>

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WMP9 is brilliant - I've been using it a while now (in beta,
obviously).  It does have some bad points like how it tries to
"protect" your media
- I checked the properties for some of my MP3's and the protected field
said "yes" - not sure if this means anything or not?
There are many good points, below are a few (or more) that I've come
to really like:
- You can minimise WMP9 to your taskbar where it lays (if you want it
to) as a mini-player embedded in the taskbar.  It's far more
useful than cut-down Winamp (i.e. when you kinda half-minimise Winamp into
a smaller player and can still access some controlls).
- ID tag updateing in simple - you can right-click an MP3 and select
"find details" and it'll go off and look for information based on
(i assume) the file name - you then select the correct result (usually
pretty sucessful) and it'll update all the ID tag info - nice!. 
Also (as with WMP8) you can still manually edit the ID tag info of any MP3
on-the-fly.
- Folder monitoring is also good.  When you first set up WMP9 you
can set a drive/ folder etc for it to scan for media - you can then set it
to monitor this location(s) and automatically add any media it finds to
your library.
- Auto playlists are pretty cool too.  WMP9 allows you to specify
(as well as including built in ones)
auto playlists.  These are playlists created automatically based
on a set of criteria about your media.  For example, a couple of
the included playlists are "fresh tracks I haven't listened to
yet" and "my favorite tracks" - it does the favorite tracks
by applying a rating to each track (defaults to 3 out of 5 stars i
think).  If you like a track you can bump up the star rating and
then it'll automatically be added to your favorites.
- And finally album art and web integration.  WMP9 fetches album
art and (if you want it to) album info for the track currently palying
(like, track list, arist info, web links etc).  I like the album
art automatically fetching (in WMP8 you had to include the JPEG's in the
same folder as the MP3's for WMP to display the album art) as seeing the cd
sleeve design etc is one of the things I liek about playing CD's as oppsed
to MP3's (maybe I'm just odd?)
Oh yeh, and it's pretty quick too! (I run it no probs on a PII 350).
Hope this helps,
Chris.
Dave Ings wrote:

Is there a short list
of reasons somewhere why I might be
interested? I continue to use
Winamp Classic and/or RealOne V2 and/or MusicMatch V7.x, depending on the
task, and past releases of WMP were quite simply not remotely competitive
with these products, function-wise. (I.e. I gave up caring a long time
ago.) Also, without MP3 support,
I don't care from the get-go. Does WMP V9 finally provide MP3
support?--
Regards,
Dave Ings,
Toronto, Canada
"Rich"
<{at}> wrote in message news:3e1ba765$1{at}w3
.nls.net...   For those that care, the final WMP9 can be
downloaded from http:/" target="new">http:/">http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/player.aspx">http:/
/www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/player.aspx. 
The final Encoder, SDKs, et al are also available.  The player
supports Windows 98 SE, Windows Me, Windows 2000, and Windows
XP. Rich





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