Hands on: Windows Media Player 12's surprising new features

[Ironman273]

Hands on: Windows Media Player 12's surprising new features

By Peter Bright | Published: October 30, 2008 - 07:15AM CT

Though many previously bundled applets 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.

The UI itself is brighter and lighter than WMP11. Some buttons and toolbar items have been moved around, but the experience should be pretty familiar to users of version 11. What does represent a big change is the removal of the Now Playing button, which in WMP11 switches to a view showing the current playlist.

This is because WMP12 completely separates library management from what's currently playing, with two distinct player modes; Now Playing view, and Library view. Library view contains all the library manipulation features that should be familiar from WMP11. Now Playing view contains the current playlist, visualizations, and videos.

Library view

Now Playing view with a video

Video playback controls

Now Playing playlist

Now playing visualizations There's also a new taskbar miniviewer that works with the new Windows 7 taskbar, and WMP12 includes support for Jump Lists.

Taskbar Mini viewer

WMP's Jump List includes WMP-specific actions Aside from the split between Library and Now Playing, the basic operation of WMP12 is the same as in version 11. There are plenty of small refinements, like automatic previewing (hovering on any song plays a 15-second preview of the song), and the Library view now shows all media types in the tree simultaneously (WMP11 can show audio or video or TV or Pictures; now they're all on display).

Audio previews A common annoyance with many media players, WMP included, is not having the right codec. WMP will try to detect which codecs are required and provide a location to download them, but this is hit-and-miss and less than convenient if all you want to do is play a video. In recognition of this, WMP12 includes support for H.264 video, AAC audio, and both Xvid and DivX video, in addition to all the formats supported by WMP11 in Vista (MPEG2, WMV, MP3, etc.). With these new codecs, WMP should support the majority of video found on the Internet out of the box.

The area of WMP12 that has seen the most work is how it works with networked resources. WMP11 has the ability to browse the libraries of other users on the local network, as long as they're using WMP, too. WMP12 extends this to allow browsing not only of WMP libraries, but also of iTunes libraries. With the aforementioned H.264 and AAC support, WMP12 can play most iTunes media. It's only "most" because, of course, Apple won't license its FairPlay DRM to third parties, so WMP is unable to play DRM-protected iTunes Store tracks.

It's not just libraries that are improved. WMP12 makes it easier to play back audio or video on remote devices, a feature dubbed "Play To." WMP12 can stream to other computers in your HomeGroup, so, for example, you can browse your library on your laptop but actually play back on the HTPC connected to your sound system.

Remote streaming set-up As well as streaming to remote PCs, WMP12 also includes support for controlling Digital Living Network Alliance v1.5 devices. These are networked devices with audio and/or video playback capabilities; so, similar to the scenario of streaming to an HTPC, you might be streaming audio to a Sonos box. Each device being Played To has its own playlist and playback settings and is controlled through its own little window.

The Play To controller for a network device

If a device can't handle the format being streamed, WMP12 will detect this automatically and transcode it on-the-fly.

Though WMP12 is very similar to WMP11, it's nonetheless a very compelling advance. Rather than ignoring the success of iTunes and the use of non-Microsoft video formats, Microsoft has acknowledged this reality and decided to make WMP work as well as it can with them. This attitude represents a hugely refreshing change from the software giant's past behavior, and WMP is greatly improved as a result. The situation is similar to that with the Windows Live Essentials, where interoperability is a key long-term objective. This is good for consumers, and it will prove to be good for Microsoft. Long may it continue.

Source: ArsTechnica

[garwin]

wow amazing

[Ci7]

pwned !

me went !

[mad_onion]

ooo divx support. and i love the now playing.

[Commodore Max]

I really like the idea of minimalism of the UI when playing a video.

[MightyJordan]

Very nice! I'm loving the new additions! Hopefully, I won't have to have QuickTime installed any more! :D

[BajiRav]

Hopefully the much touted network play actually works this time. And it can resize album art instead of cropping.

[afusion]

If it has DivX support will this mean MKV will be supported as well?

DivX 7 is reported on supporting MKV natively.

[Quppa]

Why does the 'Now Playing' view have a thicker border than normal applications?

No-one will tell me :(

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Can't wait to try it out, I love WMP11 and these changes look pretty nice :)

[Roger H. Veteran]

i like WM12 also but the now playing for music (in Beta 6801 of Win7) could use some work, it's just this big window with a small icon for the album art. Doesn't show a counter or anything. Kinda wish it did in the empty space...

[afusion]

Good thing is it ain't final and they're probably as much aware of it as you are :)

[BajiRav]

It is probably resizeable?

[digitalsoft]

Looks lovely does that! Shot in the dark but with the newer streaming features does anyone think we'll be able to stream MKV files to the Xbox 360?

[Antaris Veteran]

I think what I like the most is the fact that they are streamlining the whole UI. Compare it to previous incarnations:

It's looking more Media Player Classic everyday :)

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

i like WMP11... WMP12 seems like a decent upgrade, but nothing really that exciting. the native support is nice, but you could also just use VLC

[Roger H. Veteran]

Good thing is it ain't final and they're probably as much aware of it as you are :)

Yeah i know it's beta and all... and the window is resizable which is good. The one above however does show some visualization so maybe they already fixed it in 6693 or something. I'm only running 6801.

Other than that, it's still pretty nice. I was surprised when i saw my DIVX (.avi) files previewed and was playable! It worked great but i noticed some jaggies like bad codec. maybe that's just my settings however. :blush:

[afusion]

i like WMP11... WMP12 seems like a decent upgrade, but nothing really that exciting. the native support is nice, but you could also just use VLC

People want that integration without having to download 3rd party apps.

As a power user I'd demand it as well

@ SHoTTa you know Microsoft should implement a codec system for WMP like foobar has. Wouldn't that be something?

[Calum Veteran]

This is a fantastic update!! I may even end up using Windows Media Player 12 instead of iTunes by the time Windows 7 comes around.

I just hope they have the nice little things that iTunes has, such as some of the tag options (e.g. to change the Start Time and End Time of a song) & a nice visualisation thing such as cover flow or at least large album artwork on the Now Playing window.

[afusion]

One thing I do hope is proper Zune integration (I don't own one yet)

Why must there be two music managers?

[PL_ Veteran]

AAC Support! Fai-nuh-lee! :D

Windows 7 is looking like a brilliant upgrade already :D

[Ambroos]

One thing I do hope is proper Zune integration (I don't own one yet)

Why must there be two music managers?

Zune is all based around the social stuff, with the profiles and everything, marketplace, and so much more. WMP and the Zune software have a different use. WMP also plays everything, as long as the codec is registered on your pc. Zune's file playback capabilities are quite (very) limited, because it's not the main function of the software.

[DaViD_BRaNDoN]

Finally H.264 + AAC + DivX/XviD native support! No more messing with codec packs! :D

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

any reason why these screens are called "wmp-11-xxx" :s maybe a typo on the editors end?

But I hear good things about windows 7 so far. This was one of them :) I loved WMP11 for Vista, and use it daily. These updates look impressive :yes:

[bangbang023 Veteran]

I love the now playing mode design. As it is now, I try to make any video player I use look as minimalistic as possible because I just want to focus on the video and not the UI. This does exactly what I've always wanted. I'm very eager to see what else they can do as far as hardware acceleration of video decoding and such.