Windows Media Player 9 RC1 Released

Microsoft has released Windows Media Player 9 RC1 for 98SE/Me/2000 and for Windows XP as seperate packages, the changes in the first release candidate are as follows:

Media Link Use Media Link to email shortcuts to highlights from streamed news, presentations, home movies and more
HighMAT CD Burning A new option for CD burning, HighMAT makes it easy to save personal digital music and video created on your PC to recordable discs that work seamlessly with next-generation consumer electronics devices
Synchronized Lyrics support View or add your own synchronized lyrics to music files. Displayed as captions, synchronized lyrics are displayed in Now Playing and Full Screen modes
Auto Playlist Enhancements Expanded support for more types of criteria when creating or editing Auto Playlists
Performance improvements Continued optimizations improve startup time and media library performance dramatically over previous versions
Usability Improvements Based on real feedback in newsgroups, many improvements have been made to areas including Mini-Player mode, Info Center View, Album Lookup, Queue-it-Up, and more

Note: This is a release candidate of a Windows feature and is unsupported. In order to restore the original feature after updating Windows XP or Windows Me, you must use System Restore. Please check to ensure System Restore is turned on.

View: Release Notes (known issues, installation info)