Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

New Windows Media Player Leaks 363

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the early-is-just-more-fun dept.
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."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

New Windows Media Player Leaks More

New Windows Media Player Leaks

Comments Filter:

  • Leak or astrohyping? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by XorNand ( 517466 ) * on Monday May 15, 2006 @07:05PM (#15338748)
    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.

  • OGG support (Score:5, Funny)

    by Neil Watson ( 60859 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @07:05PM (#15338751) Homepage
    Any word on OGG support?

  • Leaks what? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @07:08PM (#15338768)
    > 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.

  • /.'ed (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15, 2006 @07:09PM (#15338776)
    Looks like their SERVER was running Windows Media 11.

    Oh, wait...
  • Two comments on this story and flexbeta is already down. Coral cache and mirrordot didn't even have time to grab a copy. Great job, everyone.

  • Slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15, 2006 @07:11PM (#15338792)
    Mirror,

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

  • Oh No! (Score:5, Funny)

    by inKubus ( 199753 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @07:12PM (#15338796) Homepage Journal
    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... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hardaker ( 32597 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @07:12PM (#15338798) Homepage
    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...

    • This also means open source needs to make software worth any hype it recieves, as opposed to just hyping something no one's seen yet that often turns out to be crap anyway.

      Personally I like that sort of release method. Less hype, less disappointment, more working as it should.

    • Are you kidding? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by twitter ( 104583 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @11:51PM (#15339944) Homepage Journal
      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? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Draconix ( 653959 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @07:15PM (#15338814)
    Awesome! Does this mean yet another round of new media formats I won't be able to play without using MS proprietary software?

  • MPlayer (Score:3, Interesting)

    by linux pickle ( 974544 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @07:15PM (#15338817)
    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.
    • Or you could, you know, not use media player on Windows.

    • Re:MPlayer (Score:3, Informative)

      by DA-MAN ( 17442 )
      I have a PIII running Windows 98SE with Windows Media Player 9 - it is very slow to load.

      Bloat at its finest. . .

      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.

      This really pisses me off. I use iTunes to manage my music library (got an iPod), but WMP detects my podcasts trying to download and wants to takeover. I stream some radio shows from the east coast (I love JV & Elvis on 92.3 FreeFM in NY, the
      • "They have one, but it doesn't work with the latest windows codecs. It's called mplayer2."

        Hey, thanks for that! Count me amongst those who can't stand the all-singing, all-dancing GUI of recent versions of Windows Media Player. If you like that classic look but need the latest codecs, you should also check out Media Player Classic: http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/ [sourceforge.net]

    • Re:MPlayer (Score:2, Informative)

      by gol ( 635335 )
      you could always give Media Player Classic (aka guliverkli) a go. I've found it to be much better.

      link [sourceforge.net]

    • Re:MPlayer (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dnaumov ( 453672 )
      "I have a PIII running Windows 98SE with Windows Media Player 9 - it is very slow to load."

      So you run an ancient OS on an ancient CPU and you expect what to happen exactly?

  • Sourced through PC Mag? (Score:5, Funny)

    by acvh ( 120205 ) <geek.mscigars@com> on Monday May 15, 2006 @07:17PM (#15338828) Homepage
    Are these the same screen shots that PC Mag published online this morning?

  • News.com has a good series of images available (Score:5, Informative)

    by Vapor8 ( 240870 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @07:28PM (#15338887)
    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]
  • Does DRM not protect media player?

  • Memory Leaks? (Score:3, Informative)

    by i.of.the.storm ( 907783 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @07:44PM (#15338977) Homepage
    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.
    • 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

      Wow, not only did you not read the article, but you didn't even read the summary of the article before posting.
  • Who thought this article was about the new WMP having memory leaks?

  • The first on-topic one... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mazzarin ( 895581 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @07:47PM (#15338998)
    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... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by boomerny ( 670029 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @07:49PM (#15339007)
    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

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @07:50PM (#15339015)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • about the media player looks. It's the quality of the pR0n on it that really matters!

  • WGA? Pfft. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by TwoTailedFox ( 894904 )
    Open Exe, WGA stops me.

    Unzip, run the seperate hotfix-style executables, right-click-install on a few .INFs, and WGA is bypassed entirely.

    Way to go, Microsoft.
    • It's not designed to stop everyone, just the unknowing user who has been sold/given pirateware.

      Of course, I must be some kind of luddite with WinAMP 5.2 in classic style.

  • Does this one support CDTEXT? Or is it full of useless features?
  • What are these screenshots showing us? I see nothing more than a glossed up GUI and a bumped version number. Perhaps this is all it includes?
    • Read the news.com article listed in the other posts. Instantaneous search across huge music archives is a MAJOR improvement.

  • Screenshots (Score:5, Informative)

    by slashflood ( 697891 ) <flow@NoSPaM.howflow.com> on Monday May 15, 2006 @08:06PM (#15339107) Homepage Journal
    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 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by schmiddy ( 599730 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @08:15PM (#15339144) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • While we're at it, isn't most of Microsoft's software long past mature? I do my finances in Excel 95, and not only is it more than sufficient for the task (graphs included), on a modern processor its response time is literally instant--you hit Tab or Enter and it's immediately waiting for your next input, recalculations and everything done, and this in a ~100k cell file. The 1-second loading time is nice too (hi, OO.o).

    • Re:Feature Creep in WiMP (Score:5, Informative)

      by anethema ( 99553 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @10:28PM (#15339696) Homepage
      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 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by konfoo ( 677366 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @08:22PM (#15339189)
    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.
  • I could never get used to the Media Player interface. It feels like everything is slightly off and it's a lot of effort to use. I would compare the feeling to the difference between a diner and a restaurant. It's just subtle and hard to explain. In the very late 90's I was a combination Real Player/Real Radio fan, then switched to Winamp/Shoutcast and haven't looked back since. Now Winamp is starting to slide ever so gently since the original team left and AOL took it over. Real play is not an option anymor
  • ... it's been available to everybody that's ever had their hands on a beta version of Vista?

    Maybe I'm missing how this is news, but I saw these screenshots months ago.
  • Leaked? Really? Pretty sure I could have snapped some screenshots of WMP11 from the last few copies of the Vista CTP from TechNet. :P
  • ...in the voice of that talking space-ship from "Flight of the Navigator":

    "I don't leak. You leak!"

    (Best talking space-ship urination joke ever!).
  • ...I'm now certain that Microsoft must have a new contractor [wikipedia.org].

  • Why is it always designed for non professionals? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jackie_Chan_Fan ( 730745 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @10:18PM (#15339653)
    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! (Score:3, Informative)

    by timothy ( 36799 ) on Monday May 15, 2006 @10:51PM (#15339776) Journal
    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

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close