Do people use Windows Media Player anymore? At least, the one Microsoft puts out?
Most people I know use VLC or Media Player Classic with codec packs. And Foobar or some other player for their music. Though it seems most just use Spotify or Youtube now for music.
Which the author points out:
"It is not known if this happens due to a bug or whether Microsoft is removing Windows Media Player by default to promote Store apps like Groove Music."
Which is interesting because Microsoft just caved and finally added Spotify support on their consoles(as they were pushing Grove music).
I use Media Player for music, it just works. I have all my music organized by folders with proper metadata, so I don't need any fancy navigation. The startup is instantaneous, which can't be said of other music software
"How very selfish of you to keep all of your listening metadata to yourself instead of sharing. What are you trying to hide? And how entitled are you to think that you should be able to play a track without getting permission each time from the publisher's server after giving it (and a few middlemen along the way) your entire demographic profile, a small DNA sample, and maybe opt-in to a monthly fee for a continued listening privilege?"
-- anonymous big music publisher
"Owned" music and offline listening seems to be dying a slow death. In some ways it represents consumer preference -- the vast majority of current music available from any device for the same price as one new album per month is too tempting for most. I do wonder if the days of being able to actually purchase music and movies for a one-time fee will come to an end. Piracy is probably the only force keeping that from already happening with music and physical movie sales in decline.
Yep. I tried Groove when I first upgraded to Windows 10, but at that time it didn't deal well mp3 files on my NAS. Windows Media Player has worked flawlessly and I use it every week.
If it's included with Windows, then people definitely still use it. The people-you-know circle is just a tiny subset of the people-who-use-Windows circle, and the people-you-know circle likely skews towards the more technically inclined if you're a HN user.
It's included with Windows, but it's not the default for most (any?) of the file types it can handle any more-- the Movies & TV Store app opens video files, and Groove Music opens audio files. So it's not really in the path of most users any more; it's still there for people who know about it, but you're not likely to run into it unless you go out of your way to use it.
Windows Media Player 12 of Windows 7 (and v11 of XP) are perfect. The UI is very nice, the star rating well integrated, the playlist functionality good. It plays mp3 audio, it plays avi, wmv, mpeg and mp4 videos, (and does all the advanced stuff most people don't even know about it has included)
VLC, WinAMP2, MPC, iTunes, foobar2000 are all good for one thing or the other. But for playing music files, there is no better program than Windows Media Player 11/12. The combination of XP or Win7 and Media Player is perfect. One can rate mp3 files in Explorer or in Media Player and create playlists based on that using saved searches, etc. And the cool thing all the data is stored to the metadata of the file itself, not like iTunes were all your manual edited that sits in an SQLite db and cannot be recovered or gets lost. WinAMP2 has not the best interface, and no a good rating system, but otherwise it is second best media player for mp3. Then comes iTunes, older iTunes versions had a much better UI.
Best for videos VLC or MPC
Best for music Windows Media Player or WinAMP
Unfortunately, many noobs prefer to stream music nowadays, and then they cry when they loose access to "their library" or "are stuck in airplane mode".
I use Foobar for music and VLC or MS "movies" for movies. I've dabbled with Groove which is an adequate music player, but not a patch on the old Zune app which I still fondly recall.
I never use WMP because to me it feels like the poor cousin to iTunes (just a feeling, probably not justified), and iTunes is ineptitude incarnate (justified)
My friend uses the Windows Media Server, which was discontinued in 10. He still runs 8 for it. It's his DVR, and it spreads live TV around his house. I believe it requires Windows Media Play on all playback devices. This would make his life even harder.
This is really the only legal way to build your own DVR, isn't it?
Why wouldn't it be legal to use MythTV to build a DVR?
The broadcast flag issues? I think those have been resolved in the USA by having the rules that the FCC tried to implement removed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_flag
edited to clarify the broadcast flag legislation fixes are USA specific
If you just want broadcast ota channels there's plenty of options, however for stability and simplicity, Windows Media Center beats everything currently imo. For encrypted cable channels, WMC w/ Play Ready(MS's DRM) is really the only widely supported suitable option that most cable providers support.
Yes, at least in Star Trek that's actually a thing! In DS9 they use "Ferengi Print" for example during the episode when that Tosk creature comes onto the station.
Doesn't that just make the program opt-in instead of opt-out?
(And it separates the ActiveX stuff from the application too, which I'm happy to hear, applications that use it for decoding now shouldn't require the full WMP install)
Search your start menu for "Add Feature". There are lots of features not installed by default but part of Windows and still supported. They're not installed by default either because they're very obscure or specific functions not everyone uses (e.g. IIS, XPS). Or they're things Microsoft would like to kill off but can't because they're so entrenched (e.g. Active X, WMP).
If anyone at Spotify is listening, please copy WMPs song preview feature. When you hover on a song you get the option to preview, including an option to skip a few seconds once it’s started. Once you hover away from the pop up, the preview stops and whatever was playing before keeps going.
This was super useful for exploring a library and would be more useful for something like Spotify with millions of songs.
Interestingly, this feature is partially implemented on iOS via force touch (or was at some point). Please bring this to desktop. I haven’t used Windows Media Player in years, but that was a killer feature I still miss.
The "victims" (as often happens with MS updates) will be the most vulnerable customers (think of your mom or pop that have a plain Windows install on a tablet or laptop and that suddenly can not listen anymore to their preferred - lets say classic - music tracks).
This seriously rises to the level of being an ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) violation. Figuratively, that is.
I've spent enough time helping the elderly on computers that changes to see these changes as revealing a deeply problematic arrogance. Drastic, forced changes to basic OS functionality should be illegal (not really, but devs should take it that seriously).
They have just taken away the ability of millions of people to listen to music they've purchased on the computer they own. And don't tell me they'll be able to figure out the Zune app. Sorry, Groove app. They won't because they'll just think their computer is broken when the wrong app starts up when they go to listen to their music.
And then they'll call you and me and ask why it's broken. And I, for one, won't have a good answer for them.
We are past the point in the evolution of major OS's where drastic changes like these are permissible. Or make a Windows version that get security updates and nothing else and make it available to the general public. Car makers don't change the stick shift functionality after you've bought the car (maybe Musk has the ability to do this, but the people who have licensed the right to drive a Tesla deployment are a unique population for now).
And further tangent -- wouldn't it be a cool concept if we could buy car hardware and then license the OS (Tesla/GM/Audi/BMW/etc.) we wanted to run on it separately? Cool as in a security and logistical nightmare, but cool conceptually nonetheless.
It's stuff like this that really puts people off the idea of forced updates, to the point of turning it off altogether. What the user doesn't see are the fixes to various security issues; what they definitely do see are these disruptive, completely unnecessary changes to their environment.
To paraphrase loosely someone else's memorable quote (unfortunately I have forgotten the author), "the updates are like vaccinations that also have a large chance of making you grow an extra arm and turning your skin green."
I hope this is a bug and not intentional, but if it is, it's just another pathetic attempt for Microsoft to compel engagement with its storefront instead of releasing products that will convince people to use the Windows Store voluntary. If anybody from Microsoft is listening, this type of shady forced behavior only makes people want to avoid the store more. Also, your spun-off WRT/UWP apps are universally buggier than their old COM/.NET predecessors, and even when they are technically more featureful, they have a doughy, empty-calories-laden vibe that leaves them feeling less responsive.
When has a UWP app ever had more features than the Forms app it replaced? I'd love to know. Windows Mail doesn't even properly support attachments let alone do even a quarter of what Outlook does.
I just checked and I didn't have any trouble sending attachments using the Mail app. I used a different interface to search my inbox for attachments, then checked them in the Mail app and they all seem to be fine.
Yeah, try again in a few weeks. Once the mails reach a certain age they lose attachments. Microsoft's recommended fix is to move the mails to another folder which will make the attachments reappear
The Windows Mail app is the crappy successor to Outlook Express, and Windows Live Mail. They were free (as in beer) and either bundled with the OS or in a free productivity pack.
Outlook is a completely separate beast, usually acquired as part of Microsoft Office or with a premium Exchange-based email service.
If you're looking for another quick and simple picture viewer, I recommend Irfanview [1]. I've been using it for a couple months and I'm finding it to be fantastic so far.
The other day I found that my Win10 (Home) has the old Win7 Picture Viewer by accidentally opening a TIF. Tada, old Picture Viewer is back (don't know for how long though).
Don't forget MSpaint which is the "go to" place to dump a screenshot after pressing PrintScreen or ALT-PrintScreen (window capture) and pasting into it. And also quick annotations.
God forbid people have useful, compact tool for quick image manipulations! But it competes with 3D Paint so IT HAS TO GO.
I hope they never drop paint and notepad. Since win 95+ i've found myself still using both enough that it would really freak me out if they suddenly got deleted in an update.
That reminds me of a meeting I had with a Microsoft employee a while back --- while we talked, he was taking notes with... Notepad.
Seeing someone who probably had access to use whatever Microsoft software he wanted including Word, OneNote, and whatever else they have, using Notepad, was a bit surprising and relieving.
There's a billion other apps, including ++ which I use. But for just quickly jotting down something, lightweight notepad works great, and being with the OS I know it's always right there.
If they had just fixed the stupid bugs (like ctrl+backspace inserting a square instead of deleting a word, or not supporting LF to terminate lines), Notepad would be a pretty great editor when you just want a very simple plain text file.
About that first issue: both Explorer and Notepad, and probably a bunch more, insert a square instead of deleting a word when pressing ctrl+backspace. I just don't understand why Microsoft doesn't fix that kind of bullshit, and instead leave it in for decades. It's the same thing with cmd.exe; instead of improving it, they've left it in the exact same broken state since (probably before, but at least including) Windows XP, and instead of fixing the issues with it, created a whole new shell.
This will turn any windows installation into Windows N if it's not a bug and it removes not only the player but also everything bundled with it.
Which could be a problem, since some software depends on media player codecs/libraries for playback - for example vivaldi browser has problems with some types of youtube codecs (with mime reported as AVC/mp4a.40.2 not pure AVC) without the media feature pack, some other video sites also have this problem without it.
You know that saying about The Cloud? "It's just someone else's computer"?
Well, it's not your computer. It's Microsoft's computer, and they are going to do with it as they please. It's not your computer anymore. That's what happens when the cloud comes to your desktop. It's someone else's computer.
61 comments
[ 243 ms ] story [ 1940 ms ] threadGoof in timing? Their pay-to-stream app isn't out yet.
Most people I know use VLC or Media Player Classic with codec packs. And Foobar or some other player for their music. Though it seems most just use Spotify or Youtube now for music.
Which the author points out: "It is not known if this happens due to a bug or whether Microsoft is removing Windows Media Player by default to promote Store apps like Groove Music."
Which is interesting because Microsoft just caved and finally added Spotify support on their consoles(as they were pushing Grove music).
-- anonymous big music publisher
"Owned" music and offline listening seems to be dying a slow death. In some ways it represents consumer preference -- the vast majority of current music available from any device for the same price as one new album per month is too tempting for most. I do wonder if the days of being able to actually purchase music and movies for a one-time fee will come to an end. Piracy is probably the only force keeping that from already happening with music and physical movie sales in decline.
VLC, WinAMP2, MPC, iTunes, foobar2000 are all good for one thing or the other. But for playing music files, there is no better program than Windows Media Player 11/12. The combination of XP or Win7 and Media Player is perfect. One can rate mp3 files in Explorer or in Media Player and create playlists based on that using saved searches, etc. And the cool thing all the data is stored to the metadata of the file itself, not like iTunes were all your manual edited that sits in an SQLite db and cannot be recovered or gets lost. WinAMP2 has not the best interface, and no a good rating system, but otherwise it is second best media player for mp3. Then comes iTunes, older iTunes versions had a much better UI.
Best for videos VLC or MPC
Best for music Windows Media Player or WinAMP
Unfortunately, many noobs prefer to stream music nowadays, and then they cry when they loose access to "their library" or "are stuck in airplane mode".
I never use WMP because to me it feels like the poor cousin to iTunes (just a feeling, probably not justified), and iTunes is ineptitude incarnate (justified)
This is really the only legal way to build your own DVR, isn't it?
The broadcast flag issues? I think those have been resolved in the USA by having the rules that the FCC tried to implement removed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_flag
edited to clarify the broadcast flag legislation fixes are USA specific
> I believe it requires Windows Media Play on all playback devices.
So in order to watch all the streams in your house you'd have to use WMP.
(And it separates the ActiveX stuff from the application too, which I'm happy to hear, applications that use it for decoding now shouldn't require the full WMP install)
This was super useful for exploring a library and would be more useful for something like Spotify with millions of songs.
Interestingly, this feature is partially implemented on iOS via force touch (or was at some point). Please bring this to desktop. I haven’t used Windows Media Player in years, but that was a killer feature I still miss.
iTunes is magical compared to it and that is saying something...
I've spent enough time helping the elderly on computers that changes to see these changes as revealing a deeply problematic arrogance. Drastic, forced changes to basic OS functionality should be illegal (not really, but devs should take it that seriously).
They have just taken away the ability of millions of people to listen to music they've purchased on the computer they own. And don't tell me they'll be able to figure out the Zune app. Sorry, Groove app. They won't because they'll just think their computer is broken when the wrong app starts up when they go to listen to their music.
And then they'll call you and me and ask why it's broken. And I, for one, won't have a good answer for them.
We are past the point in the evolution of major OS's where drastic changes like these are permissible. Or make a Windows version that get security updates and nothing else and make it available to the general public. Car makers don't change the stick shift functionality after you've bought the car (maybe Musk has the ability to do this, but the people who have licensed the right to drive a Tesla deployment are a unique population for now).
And further tangent -- wouldn't it be a cool concept if we could buy car hardware and then license the OS (Tesla/GM/Audi/BMW/etc.) we wanted to run on it separately? Cool as in a security and logistical nightmare, but cool conceptually nonetheless.
"that's anticompetitive!!1!11"
>microsoft makes WMP opt-in
"muh workflow!11"
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/10/02/micro...
To paraphrase loosely someone else's memorable quote (unfortunately I have forgotten the author), "the updates are like vaccinations that also have a large chance of making you grow an extra arm and turning your skin green."
Relatedly, another forced update recently left some of my coworkers using Win10 and IE pissed off about an extra useless search box appearing: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie11-iewindows_...
When has a UWP app ever had more features than the Forms app it replaced? I'd love to know. Windows Mail doesn't even properly support attachments let alone do even a quarter of what Outlook does.
The Windows Mail app is the crappy successor to Outlook Express, and Windows Live Mail. They were free (as in beer) and either bundled with the OS or in a free productivity pack.
Outlook is a completely separate beast, usually acquired as part of Microsoft Office or with a premium Exchange-based email service.
Now the default has been replaced with one that takes much longer to start up. Prob for a bunch of features I'll never use.
And they removed the one I actually find useful, which is where it restarts at the top of the list when you reach the last image. =(
[1] http://www.irfanview.com/
God forbid people have useful, compact tool for quick image manipulations! But it competes with 3D Paint so IT HAS TO GO.
That's right. New Windows 10 removes mspaint.
Next up, stop installing shitware in a *!^#$ corporate environment just because we didn't purchase the enterprise licensing!
Seeing someone who probably had access to use whatever Microsoft software he wanted including Word, OneNote, and whatever else they have, using Notepad, was a bit surprising and relieving.
About that first issue: both Explorer and Notepad, and probably a bunch more, insert a square instead of deleting a word when pressing ctrl+backspace. I just don't understand why Microsoft doesn't fix that kind of bullshit, and instead leave it in for decades. It's the same thing with cmd.exe; instead of improving it, they've left it in the exact same broken state since (probably before, but at least including) Windows XP, and instead of fixing the issues with it, created a whole new shell.
Which could be a problem, since some software depends on media player codecs/libraries for playback - for example vivaldi browser has problems with some types of youtube codecs (with mime reported as AVC/mp4a.40.2 not pure AVC) without the media feature pack, some other video sites also have this problem without it.
You know that saying about The Cloud? "It's just someone else's computer"?
Well, it's not your computer. It's Microsoft's computer, and they are going to do with it as they please. It's not your computer anymore. That's what happens when the cloud comes to your desktop. It's someone else's computer.