Picture Walk-Through of Windows Media Player 11

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_5231ctp2_gallery_02.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_5231ctp2_gallery_02.asp</a><br /><br /></div><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/vista_5231_wmp_0011.jpg" /><br /><br />Paul Thurrott has published a whack of pictures from the upcoming Windows Media Player 11 release. They're all in JPEG and a bit over-compressed, but it still gives you a good overview of the player and some of the new features. The one thing you'll notice as you click on the pictures is the lack of horizontal scroll bars everywhere. That's one of my pet peeves with WMP10, it was far too scroll-licious. You'll also notice <a href="http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcase/vista_5231_wmp_0008.jpg">stacking of multiple items</a> based on metadata, such as <a href="http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcase/vista_5231_wmp_0011.jpg">what year the album was released</a>. They seem to have integrated the <a href="http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcase/vista_5231_wmp_0033.jpg">Windows Media Connect</a> client in some way, and the <a href="http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcase/vista_5231_wmp_0040.jpg">pictures interface</a> has been cleaned up.<br /><br />What I'm really curious about though is if they're changed the way WMP discovers new music and changes in music. That's a huge pain point for me, and likely many others. Here's an example: today I fired up my Media Center Edition 2005 to listen to some music. I went into the genre filter, and noticed that my metadata was screwed up: I had one category called "A Capella" and another called "A Capella A Capella". So I exited out from MCE, fired up <a href="http://www.mediamonkey.com/">Media Monkey</a> (an awesome tagging program) and fixed my metadata. I fired up MCE again, and of course it had all the old metadata still. Why? Because it relies on Windows Media Player 10 for the catalog of song data, and I first would need to start up WMP10, press F3, let it scan all 9000 songs to see what's new (that takes about 5 minutes), then exit WMP10, and finally start up MCE2005 to see the updated information.<br /><br />Am I the only one who thinks something is fundamentally screwed up here?

[brianchris]

Sorry for asking such a basic question, but in all the recent talk about WMP11, I haven't been able to determine whether it will be availible before Windows Vista (possibly even real soon) compatible with Windows XP, or will it be released only as part of Windows Vista?

[Jason Dunn]

Sorry for asking such a basic question, but in all the recent talk about WMP11, I haven't been able to determine whether it will be availible before Windows Vista (possibly even real soon) compatible with Windows XP, or will it be released only as part of Windows Vista?

I think it will be for Vista AND XP, but I'm not 100% sure.

[Jeremy Charette]

The fundamental problem stems from the information architecture that modern operating systems are based upon. Having files in folders and embedding metadata information in the filename is archaic. There has to be a better, faster way of making this information available. I hate to say it, but when it comes to file management, Apple has Microsoft beat, hands down.

From what I hear however, Vista should level the playing field. MS supposedly has a few tricks up it's sleeve concerning how it manages files in Vista vs. XP.

[Jason Dunn]

I hate to say it, but when it comes to file management, Apple has Microsoft beat, hands down.

In what way?

[Jeremy Charette]

This is a great summary of the differences between OS X vs. XP:

http://www.xvsxp.com/find/metadata.php

Here's what I feel are the highlights:

"Both OS X and XP index the files and content on your computer for fast searching. And both operating systems allow you to control how they perform their indexing.

"OS X: When you first start using OS X Tiger, Spotlight performs an initial indexing of your entire computer and any connected volumes. This period of indexing varies and depends on how many files you have stored on your computer.

"After Spotlight finished, any additional indexing of files and content on your computer is performed on-the-fly when a file is saved. Spotlight will monitor your computer and index only when new files are added, and existing ones are modified. Since some volumes may be removed and reattached, Spotlight will need to reindex those volumes when they are reattached."

"XP: XP must index your drive's contents at regular intervals. Indexing can be processor intensive. Search results of content are only as accurate as the last most recent index. XP has no ability to specify locations not to search or which types of items should appear in a result."

In addition, OS X has the ability to search through more types of metadata than XP, and has the ability to search for additional file types in the future through Spotlight plug-ins.

[Jason Dunn]

Ok, so you meant searching, not file management. I'd never argue that plain XP searching is useful. :wink:

"After Spotlight finished, any additional indexing of files and content on your computer is performed on-the-fly when a file is saved.

That is cool!

"XP: XP must index your drive's contents at regular intervals. Indexing can be processor intensive. Search results of content are only as accurate as the last most recent index. XP has no ability to specify locations not to search or which types of items should appear in a result."[/i]

Right, but XP's basic search sucks and always has. You have to use MSN Desktop Search to see where Microsoft is going.

[Jeremy Charette]

Not just searching, but also indexing. It's a mentality at Microsoft, not just within XP, but also within WMP. As you mentioned, even though you had modified the metadata in all 9000+ songs, WMP wasn't "smart" enough to modify the index when you did so. iTunes and OS X would have updated the index on the fly. When I try to open the "My Music" folder in Windows Explorer, it takes several minutes. Same goes for "My Pictures". To me, this is unacceptable. OS X Finder displays files nearly instantaneously, even in massive directories with large numbers of music or photo files.

I suspect this has to do with the way that Windows Explorer re-indexes the entire folder every time you access it. OS X is smart enough to index the folder on the fly, so when you open it up in Finder it doesn't bog down and display an hourglass for 30-180 seconds.

From what I hear, Vista will behave more like OS X with respect to dynamic indexing.