Windows Media Player 9 Beta

[ps]

Now Available at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/player.asp

Probably will buggar my system in only the way that Beta's can, but I will have a play nevertheless

Ps

[scook17]

So how did you get on?

Kind Regards,
Shane Cook.

[ps]

In short, it is not hugely exciting. On first appearance it is only really a face lift. It is very stable, which is good (especially for Microsoft!) and looks nice. The floating window surround disappears so you have a groovy "none square" application (but then you could kinda do that with skins on the old version anyway).

The "always on" feature for streaming, I have not yet managed to get to work. To be honest I have not had a huge opportunity to play with it as much as I would have liked and I think the always on thing would benefit more if our encoder was on version 9 aswell.

Other than that it is pretty much the same as version 7. The Radio stations feature is nice and the copy to CD is quiet cool, though it is only really for music so if you have already got a CD burning app (most likely bundled with your CD burner) then it is a bit pointless. Both are stable which is always good.

The only downside I can think of it is the scrub through track bar at the bottom is a hassle to use and doesn't always respond.

Other than that I would say give it a go. It hasn't done a damage to the PC and it has a nice icon!

PS