RSSWindows Media 9 Series Makes Beta Debut
By Nate Mook | Published September 5, 2002, 6:59 AM
In a star-studded Hollywood event Wednesday, Microsoft unveiled the much anticipated public beta version of its next-generation Windows Media platform. Under the main spotlight was Windows Media Player 9 Series, an evolutionary update to Microsoft's ubiquitous digital media player.
Among the new features in the beta release are improved media management tools, smart playlists, and enhanced audio and video codecs. A new Mini-Player Mode allows Windows Media Player to shrink onto the taskbar, reminiscent of Microsoft's scrapped Shell Audio Player PowerToy.
"We designed our new player for both the typical user who just wants an easier, faster and more flexible experience, as well as the audiophile who demands the highest possible recording and playback quality," said vice president of the Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft, Will Poole.
Subscription services play a major role in Windows Media Player 9 Series. A new Services tab allows users to easily sign up to music and video offerings from pressplay, Full Audio, Cinema Now and Intertainer. "Offering pressplay right inside Windows Media Player 9 Series extends the reach of our service to millions of potential new users," said pressplay CEO Mike Bebel in a statement.
The official beta release -- build 2799 -- differs little from versions of Windows Media Player 9 Series that previously leaked to the Web, and is numbered less than build 2848, which escaped from Redmond late last month. Microsoft did however remove the "Send to Friend" file-swapping option that appeared in early betas.
Windows Media Player 9 Series beta is available for Windows 98, Me, and 2000, along with a separate release for Windows XP that includes additional features optimized for Microsoft's newest operating system. A beta release of Windows Media Encoder 9 Series, a tool for encoding live and pre-recorded audio and video to Windows Media Format, is also available for download.
well...it's working so far, but how to enable the mini-player??? this is what i get:
Mini Player toolbar
The mini Player enables you to perform basic playback functions even if the Player is minimized. When you have enabled mini Player mode and you minimize the Player, the playback controls appear in the Windows taskbar.
Graphic not available in this release.
does anybody knows some help?
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|Thanks to WiNBETA for the info.
This information applies only to users running Windows Media Player 9 Series Beta on Windows XP or Windows .NET Server together with a third party firewall software.
Microsoft has received reports of the Windows Media Player 9 Series Beta crashing when attempting to stream from over the network when there is a third party firewall software installed on the computer.
Problem:
On Windows XP and Windows .NET Server the Windows Media Player 9 Series Beta calls into a new Winsock API for performance reasons. There are some incompatibilities when using this API with existing third party firewall software.
Workaround:
The following steps are intended to serve as an interim workaround for the Beta release of the Windows Media Player 9 Series.
NOTE: Following these steps are not supported and Microsoft is not responsible for any problems that may occur as a result.
1) Quit the Media Player if it is running.
2) Copy the file C:Windows\system32\wmnetmgr.dll to the "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player" directory.
3) Rename the new copy of the file (in the "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player" directory) to wspwsp.dll.
4) Open a command window (click the "Start" button and select "Run" then type CMD.EXE and hit enter).
5) Type in the following line into the command window and hit the enter key:
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wspwsp.dll"
6) Run the Windows Media Player 9 Series beta and attempt to stream content from over the network.
James Wheat
http://belprecomputerwizard.com
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|Those instructions make little sense to me.
If you have a COM .dll on a machine and it is registered, then all of its ProgIDs are already in the registry. What is the point of copying the .dll renaming it and reregistering it? An application which uses a COM component doesn't access it by the file path, it access it via the ProgID or the ClassID.
If this isn't a COM .dll, then why would you use regsvr32 on it?
Not trying to argue here. Am I missing something?
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|I have no idea what sense it needs to make, except I followed the directions, and can now watch the video clips from www.wwe.com ;)
James Wheat
http://belprecompterwizard.com
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|oh wow, thanks man. good call on the sld codec. now i can play videos without crashing.
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|All I can do with this release is play mp3s... no videos work. Divx, mpeg, asf all crash. I managed to get a wmv work, go figure. I was hoping to remove this, but its not possible in XP. They recommend using system restore, but who in their right mind has system restore turned on?
I'm wondering if Microsoft even tested this themselves before releasing this beta... it seems everyone I know that is running XP has had nothing but crashes with this thing. I'm checking everyday in hopes of an update that alleviates the crashes. Until then, it's zoom player for me.
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|I love the player! I'm using it on two XP machines. It's played everything audio and video I've thrown at it. Hasn't crashed or skipped or anything.
I also really love the autoplaylists.
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|This is driving me nuts! Whenever I go into a folder mixed with mp3's and videos it raises my cpu to 100% and my system becomes unresponsive! I'm running XP Pro and WMP9. It seems to go back down once I let my system sit for 5-10 minutes. But it wasn't like this before.
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|I installed WMP9 and its horrible! Yah yah I know some people are going to say it's beta and all, but I've betatested a number of programs from MS and this is the worst to date.
I keep on getting errors with WMP9 its stupid already. Now I can't figure a way to go back to 8.1, since I tried what the guy said in a post, it doesn't seem to work in WinXP.
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|Since I installed the Media Player 9 beta I can only get my front 2 speakers and subwoofer to work. The center channel and rears don't work. I have changed every setting I can find to "5.1 Surround" but it does no good. When I use other software I get all 6 channels. I have an Audigy and Klipsch 5.1s so you can bet I want all six speakers working.
Is this feature just not available because it is a "beta"? Will it be available in the final version? Does Microsoft want us to pay a bunch of money for a plug-in or some other add-on so we can get back what we lost on the upgrade?
I also cannot figure out how to uninstall MP9 so I can go back to 7.1
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|To uninstall:
Control Panel => Add or Remove Programs => Add/Remove Windows Components => Windows Media Player
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|In Win XP Pro that is not an option. It appears to be part of XP and you cannot uninstall it.
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|Excuse me? I use XP Pro, I am also a MS Beta tester, and it does appear and it does work. You can also use System Restore, that's what it's for.
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|You tards.. I installed MP9 and it is freakin' awsome...Away with winamp and the rest... Oh, by the way, This is BETA!!! Send all your problems via email to microsoft so they can fix them.. Tiz what Beta Programs are for Silly People!!!!
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|I agree. What's winamp? Oh yeah, that slow thing owned by AOL. :)
Send them feedback on your issues and they'll get fixed. They've also oopened a newsgroup where you can post your issues. I don't have the info for it, but you should be able to find it easily.
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|microsoft.public.windowsmedia.beta
is the newsgroup on the news server
msnews.microsoft.com
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|Hi I've tried this new beta for Windows ME and it works real fine haven´t had any trouble so far after running it for about 3 days now. And to those who have problems running it on XP, try to read the last part of Nate Mooks article and you´ll find out that there is a separate release for Windows XP Or if you use your eyes there are more than one link to this.
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|Anyone else seen this? I've done four XP Pro installs of WMP9 beta and each time it leaves a file on the desktop named desktop.ini with the following contents:
[LocalizedFileNames]
Windows Media Player.lnk=@C:\WINDOWS\inf\unregmp2.exe,-4
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|Ok, four installations that left desktop.ini on the desktop, and my last install I had to use System Restore to uninstall it. Playing videos of any type made the entire screen flicker so bad it was unwatchable (Nvidia TNT2). The other three installations (ATI) where flawless and I was impressed.
The desktop.ini file on the desktop is strange though (the file attributes are marked as hidden but it still shows up with a faded icon indicating a hidden file)
PS: I am impressed with System Restore, been using XP Pro for nearly a year and this is the first time I have used it. Worked great! Impressed.
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|yeah, i also had such a "problem" with the installation!!
But i deleted the desktop.ini file and nowe it runs and runs and....
BIG B
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|It STILL, even after about 3 different builds, reads a lot of DivX movies as being 20 hours long and adjusts the play bar for that length. It makes moving around in the movie a pain in the ass
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|I got this problem with only one of my many DivX movies, and that's beacause i recieved it corrupted, or the file it's self was badly encoded.
I think that as each new release of WMP comes along, m$ will always continue to update and improve identifing media type protocals, that can cause major problems with movies that are made different.
Infact, the only problem i have with WMP 9, is the slider, alot of time, the slider stays at 0, and doesn't move, thus i cannot skip forward or backward, not until the media playing is played twice, and then the slider works from there on, strange, hope the bug gets fixed, been here since the 1st build.
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|I have been using and developing for wmp9 for the last few months. There are many bugs, especially when creating wmd & wmz files - and using asx files. The file management is very quirky and I hope they resolve that soon.
Another thing to look out for is the errant file saving. If you download a wmd, WMP will store each download in a seperate sub-folder within a virtual album folder (similar to IE caching). Repeated testing of a large file can quickly fill up your hard drive.
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|Well - what do You know ...
It refused to start even once ..........
Something about "internal program error" .
Win 98 SE , Asus CUSI-M sis 630,256 mBt Ram,700 mHz Cel .
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|Usually means you need to reboot.
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|I thought Media Series 9 was suppose to allow copying of a DVD to your hard drive? I read about it back a couple months in the first info about this and now see nothing as to where it is in it. Maybe it is because I don't have a DVD drive in my system? Anyone know of anything on this?
Thanks
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|Dont be such a moron!
Why the hell would they want to allow you to decrypt DVD content to your hard disk?
Its hard enough keeping The CCA off their backs in the first place with projects like Freestyle without them Blatently allowing copyright infringments like you just spirted... I mean.. Did you just make that s*** up or what dude?
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|Microsoft bought the rights to allow this. I read it here on betanews back 2 months at the beginning of the Corona betas. It was straight from Microsoft's site, a press release saying all the new features and that they bought the rights to allow DVD copying to your hard drive. I am not a moron. Look back at:
Next-Gen Windows Media Player Leaks to the Web
By Nate Mook, BetaNews
July 19th, 2002, 11:01 PM
For home users, a big addition to Windows Media Player 9 is the ability to copy DVD movies to disk. It is unclear whether version 9 will also be able to create DVD movies, however in early January Microsoft licensed DVD recording technology from Sonic and has begun pushing Windows Media-enabled DVD players with hardware partners.
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|There are no rights to Purchase. no-one owns the single rights of the movie industry.
However what I think the writer of this article meant is that perhaps the new player has the ability to burn to dvd..
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|"...Microsoft licensed DVD recording technology from Sonic..."
I don't think the statement was that MS has the rights to copy DVDs, only the ability to copy them. Whether or not it is legal to do so is another story...
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|"For home users, a big addition to Windows Media Player 9 is the ability to copy DVD movies to disk."
The way I would interpret the above statement, is that MS now has the ability to creat DVDs. Not that MS can RIP DVD movies and make unauthorized duplication a 'home business.'
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|The feature was seemingly removed, along with the "Copy Video" tab in Options.
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|Weirdly, the Windows Media Encoder documentation says it can encode vob files.
Now where can you find vob files?
DVDs, of course!
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|Try not to show your ignorance.
Encode VOBs: Make new content for DVDs. i.e. Turn your vhs home movies into DVDs for prosperity.
Decode VOBs/rip DVDs: Decrypt and decode the data on a DVD for copying or transcoding into another format.
Yes, there is -HUGE- difference between allowing encoding of vobs versus copying of dvds. I repeat, HUGE.
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|Actually I meant to say encoding from VOB files
(so yes decoding VOB).
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|Ok, so let me finalise this matter once and for all.
Microsoft have bought the DVD recording technology (I beleive Sonic Blue). There is no set standard of DVD R(RW, etc), their are a few differnt types (And a few more emerging).
Instead of microsoft creating their own version they have purchased one. as they have purchase their speech or MP3 encoding/decoding engine.
Being able to burn a DVD does not constitute Ripping a copy righted movie to a region free format.
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