Windows Media Player

[Mog]

Ok, I've finally had enough of the ****ty Windows Media Player ****ing up my CD burns, freezing mid song and generally not working. So what I am after is a reliable, stable media player that I can replace it with. Preferably something with similar features as the Media Player, just not as crap.

So if anybody knows anything that fits the bill. let me know. What's Winamp like these days?

 

[choc_a_holic]

nah windows media player 9.0 is good stuff

 

[Mog]

Ah, a quick check of mine says it's version 8. Microsoft forcing people to upgrade perhaps? Still, I'd like to get away from it altogether if I can.

 

[nonchalance]

Winamp 5 is very nice.

I'd given up on them after WA3, but a friend got me back on to it.

The new version of MilkDrop is the best visualisation software for any media player currently available.

WA uses much less memory than WM9 also. The downside is that you have to find something else to watch your video on - I'd recommend Quicktime.

For ripping CDs, I use Audiograbber, still the best, but not free.

 

[The Scarecrow]

Winamp's pretty good, you could try Real One Player. It plays WAV. RAM, and MP3, pretty good, it plays AVI's, and MPEG aswell.

 

[Ten Ton Hammer]

Can you guys help me out, I need to know what an AVI is and where I can find something to play em

 

[nonchalance]

RealOne irritates me. Too much additional crap for my liking, although the earlier versions of RealPlayer were okay.

iTunes is also pretty good for mp3 playing and creation, incidentally.

AVI files are video files. Pretty much any player that does video should do AVIs.
If your default player doesn't work with them, check out www.divx.com for the DivX player.

 

[lioness]

Originally posted by nonchalance
RealOne irritates me. Too much additional crap for my liking, although the earlier versions of RealPlayer were okay.

I find that RealOne freezes up my computer - even more than Windows Media Player does!

I don't know if it's just me, but EVERY version of Media Player that I've had freezes up, even if it's the latest one at the time!

 

[ClintEastwood]

Originally posted by Ten Ton Hammer
Can you guys help me out, I need to know what an AVI is and where I can find something to play em

AVI is, from memory, a Microsoft invention. It stands for Audio Video Interleave. Basically, it's a movie clip file. Internally, it stores the sound and picture information in separate chunks, ala...

Start of File
some picture
some sound
some picture
some sound
some picture
some sound
some picture
some sound
etc...
End of File

As has been pointed out, windows media player will play them (as will virtually all media players). But you may need to download and install a compression/decompression driver (codec), such as DivX, Indeo, etc.

One good thing about windows media player is that it will nearly always detect the type of codec, and automatically download and install it for you....you don't need to do anything.