Media Player 9 going for gold

Posted on 7 Aug 2002 at 17:39

Windows Media Player 9 looks to RealNetworks for inspiration as it offers premium content, at a price.

Online news service news.com reports that at a recent preview, the new version of Media Player 9 was seen to sport a tab for 'premium services' - one of which was already in place: a trial subscription to online music service PressPlay.

RealNetworks already has its subscription-based RealOne Superpass and MusicPass services offering premium audio and video content with some 750,000 paying punters. Clearly, Media Player is in a position to offer something similar, and the fact that it comes bundled with the dominant desktop OS won't hurt.

There are plenty more features the new player has adopted to make it a more capable rival. It can organise music by rating, cross-fade between songs, create Auto-Playlists to create different moods and atmospheres - all of which, for example, are present in Apple's iTunes.

Media Player 9 will also support surround sound for DVD audio, although you'll need a separate player app to watch DVD movies. Both WMA and MP3 formats are playable, but to create MP3 files, you'll need to buy a separate piece of software. Microsoft has been even more coy with no support for the MPEG4 standard video format - supported by both RealNetworks and QuickTime - preferring instead its own codecs.

It may be that Microsoft is erring on the side of proprietary codecs in order to push sales of its Windows XP Embedded, Windows 2000 and Windows .NET server, but RealNetworks tells us that its newly announced Helix server will support Microsoft's new codecs for Windows Media 9 (and by the way, that's not reverse-engineering).

It also boasts increased security and privacy controls, allowing users to block Internet sites from identifying the player and to decide whether to allow the tracking of music file history, which may be used by external sites.

Author: Matt Whipp