Anyone tried Media Player 9 final yet?

[cnhoff]

Is it worth installing?

 

[Anubis]

i didnt know it was out. but im gonna say NO cause its always sucked. i use winamp for everything. except when im forced to usew REAL or QT

 

[prosaic]

I've been using the release candidates and upgraded to the final release last evening. So far, so good. It loads very rapidly and plays DVDs, VCDs, MPEGs, AVIs flawlessly on my crappy old PIII 500 notebook. It loads instantly on my 2.4GHz P4.

- prosaic

 

[slicksilver]

Works pretty good for me. I'm on a 1400 ghz. AMD gig.

Raj

 

[timswim78]

I am going to wait this one out. I tried the beta and the RC1, and they performed so badly that I reinstalled XP to get rid of each one. Basically, the problem was that I could not move forward or backward in video files. I could only use the Play and Pause functions.

 

[RayEarth]

used the the RC with no problems and updated to final with no problems as well, everything plays fine.

 

[andrey]

I upgraded to WMP 9 yesterday and so far it seems to work faster than WMP 8 which I had before. Besides having more options for audio and video playback, the visualization and skins are very neat

 

[GrumpyMan]

The sound on it is good and it does load quickly. Streaming vids are good too. No major complaints yet.

 

[Woodchuck2000]

I'm really impressed with MP9 - It supports a number of funky features such as minimizing to the taskbar under XP which is <very> handy...

 

[Zobork]

Yeah, I'm just staying with MP7 for now. It works fine for me and my old computer (the one I'm on now) usually explodes if I put something on.

 

[Nothinman]

WMP 6.4 was the last decent media player MS released. Luckily I'm on Linux fulltime now so I get to use mplayer, which kicks WMP's ass.

 

[prosaic]

WMP 6.4 was the last decent media player MS released. Luckily I'm on Linux fulltime now so I get to use mplayer, which kicks WMP's ass.

<comforting mode>There, there, my little WMP. Nothinman is just speaking metaphorically. You can't go over to his house, but you can play in my house and in millions of others. And you'll have more company than the players used by those enlightened (but grouchy) Linux users.</comforting mode>



- prosaic

 

[Thor86]

Originally posted by: prosaic

WMP 6.4 was the last decent media player MS released. Luckily I'm on Linux fulltime now so I get to use mplayer, which kicks WMP's ass.

<comforting mode>There, there, my little WMP. Nothinman is just speaking metaphorically. You can't go over to his house, but you can play in my house and in millions of others. And you'll have more company than the players used by those enlightened (but grouchy) Linux users.</comforting mode>



- prosaic

LOL!

 

[Edman]

I been using the WMP9 for a while, and I still have noticed the same problem that it has haved for a while, (it stops when you use the next button for more that 20 times, the U have to click the play button again, some times takes like 20 secs to change for a track to track, and so on), but for everything else, I´m using it as my default player.

 

[Mem]

Working fine here,layout looks nicer but not a lot of difference IMHO.

 

[MGMorden]

I've been using the Release Candidate for a while and it works well. I'll upgrade to final this evening when I go down for a reboot.

As for Mplayer (which I have on my Linux box) vs WMP, I'd have to give the edge to WMP. Mplayer is decent (well, it's the best player for Linux) but it has a few issues:

1. when you maximize the video window the video stretches instead of maintaining proper aspect ratio. this problem doesn't occur in full screen though.
2. There's no skin or option to have the player controls docked with the video window. I can't stand having video in one window and controls in another.
3. It has some problems with leaving the video overlay drawn when it's not supposed too, ie, when you come to the end of a clip. This can cause serious problems if the overlay is so large os to obstruct the close button on the mplayer window. I then have to switch over to a text console and do a pkill, which is a hassle to say the least).

 

[Gooberlx2]

Works fine for me.

 

[Nothinman]

As for Mplayer (which I have on my Linux box) vs WMP, I'd have to give the edge to WMP. Mplayer is decent (well, it's the best player for Linux) but it has a few issues:

I'd say mplayer crushes wmp, hell mplayer can seek in wmv streams that I could never get wmp to seek through. And does WMP9 support VBR MP3 audio properly yet?

1. when you maximize the video window the video stretches instead of maintaining proper aspect ratio. this problem doesn't occur in full screen though.

I have my config setup to scale all the videos to the same size, I can't stand maximizing things, so I never noticed.

2. There's no skin or option to have the player controls docked with the video window. I can't stand having video in one window and controls in another.

I've always used the keyboard commands to pause, play, rewind, etc so again I never paid much attention =)

3. It has some problems with leaving the video overlay drawn when it's not supposed too, ie, when you come to the end of a clip. This can cause serious problems if the overlay is so large os to obstruct the close button on the mplayer window. I then have to switch over to a text console and do a pkill, which is a hassle to say the least).

Or, you could hit the q key to quit the program.

 

[MGMorden]

And does WMP9 support VBR MP3 audio properly yet?

Well, I play any plain mp3's in XMMS (Linux) or Winamp (Windows), so I don't know about standalones, but I've played many, many video files with a VBR Mp3 audio stream without problem on WMP.

I have my config setup to scale all the videos to the same size, I can't stand maximizing things, so I never noticed.

I generally maxize everything so it gets on my nerves quite a bit (the exception to this being when I'm programming I generally keep 1 Emacs window on one end of the screen and two xterms on the other).

I've always used the keyboard commands to pause, play, rewind, etc so again I never paid much attention =)

That works ok for the buttons, but I usually want to use the seek bar to click and jump to a specific location in a movie/cip.

3. It has some problems with leaving the video overlay drawn when it's not supposed too, ie, when you come to the end of a clip. This can cause serious problems if the overlay is so large os to obstruct the close button on the mplayer window. I then have to switch over to a text console and do a pkill, which is a hassle to say the least).

Or, you could hit the q key to quit the program.

Didn't know about that (I generally hate keyboard shortcuts ), I'll try it next time. Still, it's a bug that should be fixed.

 

[stash]

Anyone get the "Step into Liquid" video on this page to run on their system?

I have a athlon 2000+, 256 of pc2700, and a geforce4 4400 and I cannot get it to play video. I only hear the audio track.

 

[prosaic]

Originally posted by: STaSh
Anyone get the "Step into Liquid" video on this page to run on their system?

I have a athlon 2000+, 256 of pc2700, and a geforce4 4400 and I cannot get it to play video. I only hear the audio track.

Wow! That is a beautiful trailer!

Yes, it worked perfectly on my 2.22 GHz Pentiuim IV. It's a Sony VAIO (purchased specifically for doing video editing) with a Maxtor 4G120J6 hard drive, 512 MB DDR, nVidia GeForce4 MX 440 (64 MB video memory). I played the trailer while capturing a cable show to the HD and using my browser (here on the forum) and Outlook.

There must have been a problem with the way the file downloaded onto your system -- or perhaps with your WMP installation? (Is it working for other stuff?)

WMP also handled the smoothing demo very nicely.

I love toys.

- prosaic

 

[stash]

Yeah, WMP works great for everything else...

I'm going to try redownloading the file, then reinstalling if that doesn't work.

Edit: I think I know what the problem is. My main system has two monitors one it, and that seems to have some effect on that one file. I installed WMP on another machine that is a bit slower, but only has one monitor and had no problems. Oh well.

 

[prosaic]

<Arte Johnson mode>Velly Interesting!</Arte Johnson mode>

I don't have any dual monitor systems to fiddle with. I'd be interested, as I'm sure you would, to see if this is a universal effect of such systems. Or perhaps it's limited to particular display subsystems and / or drivers?

- prosaic

 

[stash]

yes, I would be very interested to see if any other multi-monitor users have this issue. I'm running Win2k sp3, which, by the way, does not seem to support that task bar minimizer feature.

 

[MGMorden]

I have my video card doing multi monitor and I can only see vid overlay on the primary display. This happens on anything doing overlay though (TV tuner, DVD player, etc), and isn't limited to WMP. Don't know if this is the same problem that you're seeing.