New Windows Media Player Leaks

TacoLL writes "A new version of Windows Media Player, Windows Media Player 11, is set to be made public on Wednesday, however, it has found its way into the hands of internet users before its public release. Flexbeta has some early screenshots of the next Media Player for Windows users."

Leak or astrohyping?

If the source found its way onto the Internet, that would be a leak. If early prototypes were released months ago, in time for Real Networks, Apple, and others to dissect what MS was cooking up in the lab, then I would consider that a leak. But "leaking" a yawn-inducing product two days before the official release? It sounds to me more like a marketing tactic intended to drum up press at just the right time, akin to the same BS that beta testing has evolved into.

Re:Leak or astrohyping?

I was hoping for something tasty like a memory leak. Something that would gradually bring your machine to a crawl over a 2 hour period. Pissed-off users rebooting all day and not knowing why. Wailing and teeth-gnashing at Microsoft. Now that would have been worth the read...

Re:Leak or astrohyping?

Something that would gradually bring your machine to a crawl over a 2 hour period.
 
You mean like the one Firefox has?

Re:Leak or astrohyping?

mplayer2.exe is actually Windows Media Player 6.4 if you take the time to check out the About dialog box.

If you like that however, you should definitely check out "mplayer2's" open-source clone, Media Player Classic [sourceforge.net], a full featured Media Player.

tasty

I was hoping for something tasty like a memory leak. Something that would gradually bring your machine to a crawl over a 2 hour period. Pissed-off users rebooting all day and not knowing why. Wailing and teeth-gnashing at Microsoft. Now that would have been worth the read...

Your hopes are not in vain. Just read any review of M$ AdCenter [washingtonpost.com] or Vista (train wreck ... not compelling to human beings) [winsupersite.com]. The slow down is not gradual, it's instant, and the damn thing might not work at all [washingtonpost.com].

Re:Leak or astrohyping?

I'm perfectly willing to disagree, since I don't want or think it's the responsibility of my OS vendor to provide me with a heavyweight media player

Yes, why should Microsoft catter to ordinary users, they should instead please the geeks who will compile their own geeky media player from OSS CVS repositories.

In time it may do a real good for them, and they may reach the staggering numbers of adoption of Linux as an out-of-the-box easy to use Desktop experience your mom and pop could easily work with.

Leak? MSFT was doing public demos last month

This product was prominently displayed at the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) convention last month.

It seems like the main thrust of the (very large) MSFT exhibit was VOD (video on demand), but WMP 11 was prominently displayed, along with a promised new buy-your-music-online program... the partner's name escapes me at the moment.

Re:Leak or astrohyping?

But "leaking" a yawn-inducing product two days before the official release?

Yawn inducing? You can't tell me you're not excited about all the great new DRM options...I hear it can actually keep you from playing anything on it at all!

OGG support

Any word on OGG support?

ffdshow

...is your answer.

http://ffdshow.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

Supports just about everything in use and works great. I use the builds from here when trapped in Windows:

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/FFDShow.htm [free-codecs.com]

yup - simple recompile

just recompile the source with a -lhell-froze-over option. ...also worth noting: -lmonkeys-flew-out-my-butt will compile it for AmigaOS.

Re:OGG support

when "the grain" is "freedom-restricting technology trends", then yes... We must insist on going "against the grain"

Must the founders of America always go against the grain when it comes to that whole England thing?....

Leaks what?

> New Windows Media Player Leaks

Leaks viewing/listening history through firewall directly to MPAA/RIAA?
Security leaks?
Leaks memory?

Oh, wait, you mean, the product itself was leaked.

Never mind, I'm sure the other types of leaks will follow soon enough.

Re:Leaks what?

Never mind, I'm sure the other types of leaks will follow soon enough.

If the new Windows Player has a problem with leakage, perhaps it needs a Wii Controller [engadget.com]?

Thank you, I'll be here all week, try the sushi!

leaks wii

Leaks viewing/listening history through firewall directly to MPAA/RIAA?
Security leaks?
Leaks memory?

it leaks wii.

Re:Leaks what?

Leaks memory?

No, it was made by MS, not the firefox team...

(ducks)

Re:Leaks what?

No, it was made by MS, not the firefox team...

you misspelled Safari.

Re:Leaks what?

All too true.. Up until recently.

I've actually been pleasantly surprised with the last couple firefox updates. At last it doesnt leak memory like a sieve. Finally (*FINALLY*) it actually seems to release memory as you close tabs (eventually). I dont have to worry about leaving firefox running for a few days and having it crash!

/.'ed

Looks like their SERVER was running Windows Media 11.

Oh, wait...

Re:/.'ed

Working link [mirrordot.org]

NOT slashdotted

It's NOT slashdotted guys. It's "Buffering..." :P

Slashdotted

Mirror,

http://www.networkmirror.com/bUeMRHp2JQWoEqXH/www. flexbeta.net/main/comments.php%3Fcatid%3D1%26shown ews%3D19885.html [networkmirror.com]

Oh No!

Are they going to search our call records to determine the source of the leak?! *knock knock* "Oh Hi Bill." *ziiiiiing* (BSOD)

EFF [eff.org]

Why OSS software is boring...

I mean, we never have leaks! You never get that "Wow, I never saw this coming kind of viewpoint".

In the news today: Somone built an early release of KDE by hacking into their publically available anonymous SVN repository and downloading the code. They then released screen snapshots to the Internet. We now turn to our live reporter in bit-land with this breathtaking story...

Are you kidding?

You never get that "Wow, I never saw this coming kind of viewpoint".

What planet do you live on? There's lot's excitement for people who discover GNU/Linux. Expectations are typically low, thanks to massive FUD campaigns. A by product of that FUD is an air of the dangerous and new that's irresistible to many. Those that bother to try and stick with it long enough to overcome the bad habits of commercial software are amply rewarded. In the end, they find the joy of free software, which continues to grow. Browsing software repositories is like walking through a candy store where everything is free and the candy only gets better as time goes on. New programs make it feel like Christmas all year long. What does the five year and counting M$ train wreck release cycle have to match that? Zip, zero, zilch, hype, FUD and other hot air.

Most of the people I know have barely heard of free software and are heavily FUDed about it. They have this strange notion that it's hard to use and won't work with their hardware. Some even confuse it with copyright violation and think it's somehow tainted and immoral. Big players, like IBM, Lowes, Chrysler, etc, have helped to alleviate the "rebel" image but the FUD still stick because the big dumb vendors like Dell still don't offer a GNU/Linux desktop machines for end users.

Anyone who's used a GNU/Linux system for any length of time knows the FUD for the BS but the discovery never ends. Media players are a prime example. I've been using free software since Red Hat 5.x in 1998 and I've watched a steady and constant improvement. Back then, things were so nasty I did not even bother with sound. Then came vorbis, sox, autoconfiguration, ALSA, xine and suddenly audio is easy. Today, you can get live CDs that run Amarok [mepis.org], which has to be one of the finest media players available [linuxreviews.org]. Amarok excels as a media player as Konqueror and Firefox excel as browsers. Everywhere you look at a GNU/Linux system you see more excellence. The product is greater than the sum of the parts and M$ can't keep up to save their life. Hell, they are finally getting a browser with tabs and a multiple desktop GUI, but it's so bloated and top heavy with, virus checking and DRM it won't even work [washingtonpost.com].

The final, unmatchable and exciting discovery is how free software really works [fsf.org]. Far from being evil, free software is morally superior. No free software project has ever sued a public school for copying a text editor [salon.com] and none ever will misuse the government and laws in such a hideous way. What Microsoft dissmisses as "Communism" is actually co-operative capitalism and free market innovation at it's finest. Getting something for nothing and finding out that's the way it should have been all along feels great. The lies and harm M$ heaps on free software all backfire and the user is left with an unshakable commitment to their own software freedom.

More Lockout?

Awesome! Does this mean yet another round of new media formats I won't be able to play without using MS proprietary software?

MPlayer

I have a PIII running Windows 98SE with Windows Media Player 9 - it is very slow to load. Most of the time that I open Windows Media Player, it is to watch a quick video clip - for this, I don't need the whole music guide and library to load. It would be nice if Microsoft would make two separate players - one to quickly play short clips, and one to manage my library.

On my Linux machine (also a PIII) I use MPlayer, which can play almost any type of file and is much faster. If I want to manage my music library, I'll open up amaroK or something similar.

Sourced through PC Mag?

Are these the same screen shots that PC Mag published online this morning?

News.com has a good series of images available

News.com has a good series of images of the New Windows Media Player available:

http://news.com.com/2300-1025_3-6072445-1.html?par t=rss&tag=6072445&subj=news [com.com]

Memory Leaks?

I don't know if this is what was meant, but it seems that WMP11 starts up very fast and at first uses far less RAM than 10, (12MB vs 18MB on mine) but then jumps to around 42MB during playback. But I like the fast startup more than I can actually feel the effects of the RAM usage increasing, so I guess it's a good tradeoff. Of course, I hardly even use media players in the first place, so my POV may be different from someone who has it running all the time.

mirror

http://www.networkmirror.com/bUeMRHp2JQWoEqXH/www. flexbeta.net/main/comments.php%3Fcatid%3D1%26shown ews%3D19885.html [networkmirror.com]

The first on-topic one...

As opposed to the rest of the posts 'OMGLOL WMP LEAKS!!1', this post actually discusses it. I've used it. Its available to download from softpedia.com I found it to be rather nice and would definitely prefer it over iTunes if I still used it (iTunes). URGE is no iTunes music store but I never used that in any case. It has a slick look, uses less mem than iTunes - more than Winamp or foobar of course, and the responsiveness is quite good. I've never really liked Windows Media Player, always thought it was clunky and bloated but this seems to be a release where they got it right. I highly recommend checking it out.

um...

holy who gives a crap, batman! as uninteresting as this is, I'm sure I'll have to package it shortly because some exec wants to watch some shitty video which requires it. I'm also sure it will be a pain to lock out all of the program guides and checking for updates and other annoyances. They supply an enterprise deployment kit to aid in config, but why isn't all that junk turned OFF by default? grumble

Media Encoder 11?

What about Windows Media Encoder 11. I would love to use 10, but it blows at trying to encode VOB files. Using a popular format with surround sound support would be awsome.

I know it's blasphemy to hype up Microsoft, but their WMV format is really good. In fact, right up there with DivX. Just wish their next Encoder appliaction didn't suck so much ass :(

Screenshots

You can find the screenshots here [songbirdnest.com].

No, seriously. Am I the only one who thinks that the screenshots [com.com] are rather unimpressive? I clicked through every single shot and read the description of the features. I can't find anything special.

Feature Creep in WiMP

Windows Media Player is a great example of a piece of software that has reached maturity, and been going steadily downhill ever since. Everyone who's had to struggle with a slow computer with windows knows that version 6 (6.4 specifically, I think) was when WiMP essentially reached maturity. Really, what more possible features could you need in a media player other than the usual play, pause, rewind, etc. buttons, and some useful codecs (which, of course, Microsoft would never even dream of distributing, as they promote "piracy", or help alternative formats like Real).

l I'm even aware of at east one open source media player project based off the WiMP 6.4 design (has essentially the exact same look and feel, but is supplied with all the good codecs), namely "Media Player Classic" (here [sourceforge.net]).

Since 6.4, which was last distributed with Win2k (though the auto-update features try their darndest to sneak the newer versions in), WiMP has gotten progressively worse. Version 9 was a disgrace, and 10 was even worse. Seems like the only innovation Microsoft has to offer in media players is bundling in more DRM features that no one wants, useless and ugly skins, and support for their own worthless WMV/WMA formats.

Please, don't use this new "feature"-laden crapware. Microsoft should take a hint from VLC or mplayer, and realize that we don't want the useless junk they're piling on. The reason why VLC and mplayer are so great is they do one thing and do it well: play media. Period.

Re:Feature Creep in WiMP

Actually it seems to be little known that if you run "mplayer2" instead of the normal mplayer, you get a mplayer 6 style interface with all the codecs of mplayer.

Of course, if you are in the know this much, you might also know about media player classic, which is a vastly supperior media player anyways. It also has a media player 6.4 look to it.

Already leaked by Microsoft themselves

Anyone who attended NAB 2006 in Las Vegas last month would have seen the tons of signage, brochures and other promotional material from Microsoft showing off WMP11.

Why is it always designed for non professionals?

I have a huge problem with windows media player. Microsoft does not support a good step through frame commend, reverse playback, or quicktime like encoding features with export/import of frame sequences etc.

I always use Windows Media Player Classic because it does so much more than the media player when it comes to playback control and it works better overall, and has a better interface.

Microsoft is trying to make it into itunes, rather than turning it into a real media player. It is a one big button ui. Any advanced video control functionality is either missing or hidden (i cant find them)

They may have a pretty skin, but the player itself always falls short of being a real video player.

They want to be itunes, and not a real video player for all who need it. Apple does it far better with quicktime on the Mac, and their PC version while not as good as the mac version is still useable for content creators/video editors.

The Microsoft Media Player on the other hand is a toy, thats chasing Itunes.

My music is already in Itunes Microsoft... If the media player 11 interfaces with my Ipod i'll maybe consider it, until then... i dont really care about the itunes like features.

Microsoft has always been late to the party, and they do this weasel like catch up strategy, that never satisfies...

WMP 11 is just another Microsoft mess. Get it right or get rid of it. Its fucking version 11 already.... How many versions do you need before you add real video playback controls?

VLC 0.8.5 leaked, too!

Don't tell anyone! Shhh! VLC 0.8.5 was released recently -- downloads are something close to 1 per second. The list of supported formats is pretty incredible ...

Plus, Windows Media Whatever doesn't work on my Linux box :)

timothy

Re:Windows Media Player?

Is this really news that is worthy Slashdot?

No, Definately not. But it's an excuse to bash Microsoft, and so here it is! =_)

Re:Windows Media Player?

Hell yes, considering how MS routinely delay their releases, having proof that it is not just more vapourware is good news for all MS shareholders. At least somebody is doing his job over at the MS campus.