Windows Media Player 9 Series Final Release
Tuesday, January 7, 2003 by mrsteele | Discussion: WinCustomize News
There's a countdown at Microsoft. Within just a couple of hours, will Windows Media Player 9 be released.
Barry Little
Reply #2 Tuesday, January 7, 2003 7:50 PM
Reply #2 Tuesday, January 7, 2003 7:50 PM
Make sure you've got System Restore running under XP and do a manual restore point before installing it (or better yet a program like GoBack). Media Player 9 killed all of the sound on my PC--not only for Media Player itself, but Quicktime and Real Player!
When I rolled the system back with System Restore, everything was fine except I had to manually re-create my Media Player icon on the Start Menu and the Task Bar. Oh yeah, CPU utilization is still outrageously high (45-60%) when playing anything with Media Player 9, as opposed to 10-16% with Media Player 8.
I'm sticking with MP8 until Microsoft posts a fix for these issues on the Windows Update Site.
When I rolled the system back with System Restore, everything was fine except I had to manually re-create my Media Player icon on the Start Menu and the Task Bar. Oh yeah, CPU utilization is still outrageously high (45-60%) when playing anything with Media Player 9, as opposed to 10-16% with Media Player 8.
I'm sticking with MP8 until Microsoft posts a fix for these issues on the Windows Update Site.
NCK
Reply #4 Tuesday, January 7, 2003 8:15 PM
Reply #4 Tuesday, January 7, 2003 8:15 PM
The new Media Player 9 series is great. It works great for me. I like the miniplayer very mutch. 
elvee
Reply #5 Tuesday, January 7, 2003 8:30 PM
Reply #5 Tuesday, January 7, 2003 8:30 PM
I got it and it installed just fine. You can change the color of the default skin, and third party skins can have color themes. When you minimize the player, you can choose to have a mini toolbar player on your taskbar. When a song starts a little box pops up to give you song information. It also has a pop-up visualization window for the toolbar player...I wonder if this can be skinnable 
kthxbye
Reply #6 Tuesday, January 7, 2003 9:31 PM
Reply #6 Tuesday, January 7, 2003 9:31 PM
Okay - still playing with it myself - and so far, I have to say, I like! The changes to the default skin make it a lot more appealing to me - and the ability to change the colour of it is great for getting it to match the rest of my desktop. 
Fortunately, I didn't run into any of Barry's problems - installation went without a hitch, and it all runs perfectly.
When I saw his comment about CPU useage I got curious and checked - yeah, CPU useage was high - around 40%, but that was with the Alchemy vis (nice vis, IMHO!) running in a fairly large window. Enh - big deal - I set it to no vis and my CPU useage immediately shot down to a -very- respectable 2% - neither Winamp nor WM8 ran that low for me.
All in all - I like!
Fortunately, I didn't run into any of Barry's problems - installation went without a hitch, and it all runs perfectly.
When I saw his comment about CPU useage I got curious and checked - yeah, CPU useage was high - around 40%, but that was with the Alchemy vis (nice vis, IMHO!) running in a fairly large window. Enh - big deal - I set it to no vis and my CPU useage immediately shot down to a -very- respectable 2% - neither Winamp nor WM8 ran that low for me.
All in all - I like!
David3k
Reply #7 Wednesday, January 8, 2003 3:32 AM
Reply #7 Wednesday, January 8, 2003 3:32 AM
I've had windows media player 9 series since the first beta relese and I NEVER came across any problems!
Chris
Reply #9 Wednesday, January 8, 2003 10:31 AM
Reply #9 Wednesday, January 8, 2003 10:31 AM
Hmmm Looks nice, though moving it in regular mode while WB is running results in the it decreasing in size.
As for the player itself, I imported 700 ripped CDs a it feels a bit slow. Seems to be okay for moderate sized music collections, but for the size I'm using (and am continuing to add as I work my way through my CD collection) it falls short of what I hoped in management and editing my collection. I'll still stick with Media Jukebox for now.
Voo's right though. The best thing is its taskbar mode. And the new skin that gets installed with it is pretty sweet.
As for the player itself, I imported 700 ripped CDs a it feels a bit slow. Seems to be okay for moderate sized music collections, but for the size I'm using (and am continuing to add as I work my way through my CD collection) it falls short of what I hoped in management and editing my collection. I'll still stick with Media Jukebox for now.
Voo's right though. The best thing is its taskbar mode. And the new skin that gets installed with it is pretty sweet.
kthxbye
Reply #10 Wednesday, January 8, 2003 2:18 PM
Reply #10 Wednesday, January 8, 2003 2:18 PM
Oh good - the shrinking isn't something just happening to me at least. Fortunately it's no biggie for me to simply exclude it in Windowblinds, I try to keep the Titlebar hidden in it anyway - it disrupts the flow of the skin.
Action_Jay
Reply #11 Wednesday, January 8, 2003 3:11 PM
Reply #11 Wednesday, January 8, 2003 3:11 PM
As cool as it looks, and as neat as the features are, it makes the grave mistake of um... not being able to play half my mp3 files. Maybe they were encoded 'wrong' or something. But winamp played em fine all along, and I'm not going to convert them into wma just so I can play them in this thing. Grr
sthrncin
Reply #12 Wednesday, January 8, 2003 10:31 PM
I love media player 9. It works great for me. I love all the customizations for it. Good job.
Reply #12 Wednesday, January 8, 2003 10:31 PM
I love media player 9. It works great for me. I love all the customizations for it. Good job.
Aqua.
Reply #13 Thursday, January 9, 2003 1:14 PM
Reply #13 Thursday, January 9, 2003 1:14 PM
Is it now uninstallable?
Also, have the fixed the EULA?
Also, have the fixed the EULA?
Chris
Reply #14 Thursday, January 9, 2003 6:13 PM
Reply #14 Thursday, January 9, 2003 6:13 PM
No it still is uninstallable unless you restore your operating system back to a previous restore point
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Reply #1 Tuesday, January 7, 2003 2:59 PM