News Media Player rejigs content

Once again, Bill's back room boffins play catch up. This from ZDNet:

Microsoft is expected to release the first test version of its new Windows Media Player software on Wednesday, marking a significant upgrade aimed squarely at the burgeoning portable device market.

The revamped Windows Media Player 10, which will be released in final form to the consumer market later this year, contains substantial changes to the way music, videos, and other media can be organised and retrieved. But the biggest changes in the new "technical beta" software will be invisible to most users until new portable music and video players reach store shelves this summer and fall.

"Our real rallying cry here for the player is letting you discover media, play it and take it with you," said Jonathan Usher, director of Microsoft's Windows Media Division.

The software, which incorporates recent advances in Microsoft's digital rights management tools and a new technology allowing computers to communicate with devices such as MP3 players, forms a key component of the company's response to Apple Computer's strong successes with its iPod music player and software.

One of the iPod's key selling points has been its extraordinarily simple ease of use, which lets people load the device with music without having to take anything but the most rudimentary technical steps.

The new Windows Media Player builds on that idea, adding the ability to automatically keep portable devices up to date with changing music and video and photograph collections on a PC.

More here

Hmmm - sounds kinda familiar, eh?

 

Always funny how M$ follows suit from other manufacturers, claims it to be their "innovation", and the mass public praises them for it. Besides, what is so hard about Ctrl+C, browse to device through explorer, Ctrl+V?

 

i really do not see how they could make it any more simple than it already is. I just plug my zen into the firewire port, it shows up in WMP9, I highlight the songs I want copied over and then click copy. And guess what.....It copies them to my zen.
Took me months to work that one out I tell you.
Its exactly the same with playcentre which comes with the zen but this also incorporates a synchronise feature which keeps the player and media library the same.
There must be some real cretins about if they can't figure that out

 

I cant decide which i prefer, 9 or 10. 10 is a lot squarer than 9 but i think its a bit more useable.

 

Whoa...that's amazing, I do the same thing with my MP3 player!

A right couple of Genuises... Bill, Bill, Bill, what are you going to pinch next?

 

can you just select songs you want in explorer and then right click -> send to? And just copy them to the device without all the effort (!) of using another program?

RoB

 

Just for the people who cant be arsed downloading it

 

you can indeed!! Just put a shortcut to wherever you want to put the stuff in the send to folder in your username folder in documents and settings.

c:\docs+settings\"your user name"\send to

if your player shows up as G: then the shortcut should point to G:.

It can be used for any folder or location

 

i thought as much! now all i need is an mp3 player!

RoB

 

BSplayer and Winamp - Kicks the butt off Windows Media Player,

And it doesn't send all your song playlists to microsoft.

 

Doesnt look too different from WMP9... i'll probly get it though..

Glad to see your listening to Soil

 

BSplayer and foobar2000 for me!

 

bs player and wmp 6.1 for me. I still use the classics

 

'tis what I was thinking...
/me wonders what THIS version sends to M$...

 

almost makes me want to update wmp and run a packet sniffer ;-)

 

*huggles his media player 6.4*
sooo glad they kept 6.4 in XP pro. Its all i use for listening to music and most movies