guarana0324 Posted January 17, 2002 Share Posted January 17, 2002 All across IRC and the internet, people slam Media Player 8. I decided to make up a quick evaluation of what I think is good and bad about it... lemme know if you agree :) The Bad: 1. It just doesn't sound as good compared to MP 6.4 and Winamp! Open a file in both MP 6.4 and MP 8 and set them at the same volume level and compare how they sound... MP 6.4 sounds a lot better. 2. It won't play 75 % of the DIVX files in existence!!! 3. The Media Guide is a good idea, but the Windows Media streaming format sucks ass. Compare trailers on the media guide to these trailers: http://www.on2.com/trailers.php3 4. No native MP3 burning... you have to wait for your MP3s to be converted to WMA, and you don't know if quality is lost in the conversion :( 5. It does not play some .m2v files at the right size, even in fullscreen mode Now to be fair... The Good: 1. Fullscreen controls are great 2. Copies album art when you rip CDs 3. Nice interface with a bunch of skins 4. Media guide is designed good, even though the format sucks 5. It is nice to be able to copy portable devices Ok, that's it :). I think the most important things are that it doesn't sound good and it doesn't play a lot of Divx files. Lemme know what you all think... If you agree, tell MS about these things at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...a/wish/wish.asp Hopefully they'll listen and fix these things in MP 9 For now, I'm sticking with my trusty MP 6.4 :) Guarana0324 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StimpyX Posted January 18, 2002 Share Posted January 18, 2002 Re: Bad list - 2. Isn't this more the fault of the decoder(s) one uses? 4. This is 2 separate issues... If you're converting to a lower bit-rate, I guarantee you'll lose quality. No need to wait now! At least it looks like you've thought a while on this. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hurting101 Posted January 18, 2002 Share Posted January 18, 2002 Another Good: 6. At least its not Real Player Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jessterw Posted January 18, 2002 Share Posted January 18, 2002 The format sucks and the interface is good. Hmm, I have to say I disagree. I really don't like some of the interface or how some things are layed out (personal preference of course). I've always thought that most of the available skins are sub-par compared to those of WinAmp (in fact I use the included Miniplayer skin. As far as DIVX goes I can't comment as I don't ever play any. On the format issue, yes when it comes to movies and other video clips WMP8 can fall behind others such as QuickTime (which I use for most video). And I will agree that it sucks at streaming the majority of the time. However it exceeds Mp3 as format for music. I recently converted over 2GB of Mp3 files to WMP8 at the same bit rate (128) and I freed up almost 1GB. I lost no quality in sound and was actually able to normalize the levels across all the files, making some sound even clearer. Of course this last part was achieved through the use of the Plus! Mp3 Audio Converter, but it is still using the WM format. I've always thought WMP sounded good, and I still do with version 8. Just my thoughts, not saying I'm right :ponder: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeza Posted January 18, 2002 Share Posted January 18, 2002 hah real player Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guarana0324 Posted January 18, 2002 Author Share Posted January 18, 2002 There's no doubt that the standard windows media format is good. I'm just saying the streaming windows media format is bad. They're two different things. Also, your wma files will still sound better in MP 6.4.... try it out for yourself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MxxCon Posted January 18, 2002 Share Posted January 18, 2002 Originally posted by guarana0324 1. It just doesn't sound as good compared to MP 6.4 and Winamp! Open a file in both MP 6.4 and MP 8 and set them at the same volume level and compare how they sound... MP 6.4 sounds a lot better. 2. It won't play 75 % of the DIVX files in existence!!! 3. The Media Guide is a good idea, but the Windows Media streaming format sucks ass. Compare trailers on the media guide to these trailers: http://www.on2.com/trailers.php3 1. all media players use exactly same direct x filters. mp8 also has that 3d sound thingie. but if you turn it off both players will sound exactly same. 2. once again mp8 users exactly same filters as mp6.4 3. don't compare VP4 codec to WMV. different things. VP4 is equivalent to divx...it's a codec, not file format. WMV, AVI and QuickTime are file formats, think containers. divx, whatever wmv uses, quicktime and 3vix are codecs that go inside of file formats. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MxxCon Posted January 18, 2002 Share Posted January 18, 2002 one more thing. from what i read VP3 and now VP4 is very good at low bitrates, below 500kbit. even better than divx. so it's very good for streaming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guarana0324 Posted January 18, 2002 Author Share Posted January 18, 2002 VP4 is comparable to the "streaming" windows media format VP3, Divx, and the standard windows media format ( the kind you make in movie maker) are all MPEG 4 codecs, so they can be compared I personally am a big fan of the standard media format... I think it could overtake Divx if MS made more tools for it, I just hate the streaming format you can find on windowsmedia.com the streaming vp4 codec from on2 is much better than the streaming windows media format as for the sound, i've listened to them both, and MP 8 sounds worse... so I guess we'll just have to see what others think Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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