Windows Media Player 10 Final Released

2 Sep, 2004 at 10:29am ET Article published in Tech

As expected Microsoft has released its latest version of Windows Media Player. This release coincides with the unveiling of the software giants Online Music Store earlier this week, the new player comes with added functionality to support such ventures.

The player though not accompanied with new audio and video codec’s sports a cleaner interface with many of the added features designed to accommodate the ever growing trend of using the modern PC as a jukebox. Support has been added for MP3 encoding, a fundamental feature that has been missing from WMP up until now. WMP 10 will also only work on Windows XP.

Download: [b]Windows Media Player 10[/b] (12MB)

Windows Media Player 10 gives you more music and more choices, and for the first time makes it possible to sync high-quality music, video, and photos to the latest portable devices.

Source: Microsoft

Comments

2 Sep 2004 ~ 10:42am Medlock

Spinner wrote:

Support has been added for MP3 encoding, a fundamental feature that has been missing from WMP up until now. WMP 10 will also only work on Windows XP.

Woohoo mp3!! There was a registry edit for mp3 in WMP9 but I lost the link. I'll have to get that sometime soon. Hopefully it can keep all my current playlists...
2 Sep 2004 ~ 11:14am TheBaron I'm going to just go out on a limb here and ask a very important question ...

who the hell cares? i've been using MPC for ages
2 Sep 2004 ~ 11:15am Cyclonite Cleaner, eh? I may grab this after work.
2 Sep 2004 ~ 11:33am Templar Downloading just to get rid of that annoying WMP9 look
2 Sep 2004 ~ 11:55am Spinner

TheBaron wrote:

who the hell cares?

I'm not even going to answer that.
2 Sep 2004 ~ 12:08pm Lammypie Its good to see you back posting news spinner!

I just gained over 160GB of WMA format, and the media library was really struggling in WMP9. sometimes it would take 5 mins to stop playing a track and load a different one. Lets see if WMP10 is any better, downloading now!
2 Sep 2004 ~ 12:55pm -Ben Tis quite nice

Kepps all the settings from wmp9
2 Sep 2004 ~ 12:58pm -Ben BTW wha the hell is that visualisation i can't find it anywhere :Z
2 Sep 2004 ~ 3:53pm drasnor

TheBaron wrote:

I'm going to just go out on a limb here and ask a very important question ...

who the hell cares? i've been using MPC for ages

I agree. Windows Media Player sucks: codec support blows, interface is ugly and unskinnable, visualizations take it from behind from Winamp 5's Milkdrop, and it has DRM support.

Winmp 5, MPC, or XMMS. Friends don't let friends use WMP.

-drasnor
2 Sep 2004 ~ 8:06pm Jengo XMMS > All media players

sorry boys and girls, its only for linux
2 Sep 2004 ~ 10:39pm TheBaron

Jengo wrote:

XMMS > All media players

sorry boys and girls, its only for linux

i agree!
3 Sep 2004 ~ 12:08am Spinner

Lammypie wrote:

Its good to see you back posting news spinner!

Thanks, but I'm still on extended leave, we've all got to unplug for a while every now again right... and besides KingFish is doing a sterling job picking up the slack. He deserves a medal or something. But fear not, I shall return to daily news postings hopefully soon. I kind of miss it.

I haven't had chance to really mess with WMP10 yet on my own rigs, but so far I'm pleased with the more user friendly GUI, but WMP10 isn't without it's flaws. The library search functions are still nothing compared to Apple's equivalent and even though on a fundamental level Microsoft have once again laid down the foundation for a very welcoming application for platforming online music stores such as Napster for example, currently it's just a fresh face for WMP. Worth upgrading though if you use it regularly like I do. But there are no doubt better alternatives out there for people who have no use for some of the player's more far reaching features.
3 Sep 2004 ~ 12:30am Thrax Mpc! Mpc! Mpc!
3 Sep 2004 ~ 4:20am EQuito If this is a final release, how come it doesn't show when I click "help/check for player updates" on my 9.0 version?
3 Sep 2004 ~ 10:25am Medlock It's not a player update, it's a completely different program. Like upgrading from 8 to 9. Follow one of those links up top an you can downlaod it from microsoft.

EDIT: You probably could find it in Windows Update though, if they've released it for that. The probably will within a few days if they haven't already.
3 Sep 2004 ~ 12:08pm GnomeWizardd YES!! something for me to play with during the hurricane as long as we still have power!
4 Sep 2004 ~ 8:32pm EQuito

TheGr81 wrote:

It's not a player update, it's a completely different program. Like upgrading from 8 to 9. Follow one of those links up top an you can downlaod it from microsoft.

EDIT: You probably could find it in Windows Update though, if they've released it for that. The probably will within a few days if they haven't already.

oh ok, that makes sense. Thanks for replying.
4 Sep 2004 ~ 9:58pm danball1976 Just because it has an integrated MP3 encoder, doesn't mean its the best. I had to reinstall my Cyberlink MP3 Encoder as well as the Radium MP3 Codec after installing WiMP 10.