Jump to content

Windows Media Player 12

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Ethan94 (talk | contribs) at 03:39, 29 November 2009 (Added downgrade info.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Template:Infobox Windows component

Windows Media Player 12, developed by Microsoft, is the release of Windows Media Player superseding Windows Media Player 11. It was first introduced in October 2008 at the 2008 Professional Developers Conference and has been released as part of the Windows 7 operating system. [1] It is unknown if it will be released for Windows XP and/or Windows Vista.

New features

Windows Media Player 12 adds native support for H.264, Xvid and DivX video codecs, AAC audio[2] and 3GP, MP4 and MOV container formats.[3]

Microsoft has recognized AVCHD as one of the popular implementations of H.264 encoding scheme, and has file extensions M2TS and MTS pre-registered in the system. Windows Media Player is able to index content of these files, while Windows Explorer is capable of creating thumbnails for each clip.[4]

The user interface has been redesigned such that the Now Playing view, plays media in a separate minimalist window with floating playback controls, and also gives access to the current playlist, visualizations, and enhancements. [2] Enhancements are housed in individual undocked windows. The library view includes the rest of the media management functions. It also can preview songs from the library when users hover over the media file and click the Preview button.[2] Windows Media Player 12 uses Windows 7's libraries instead of its proprietary library database format and can play unprotected songs from the iTunes library. The taskbar-integrated Mini-player has been replaced with controls in the taskbar's interactive thumbnail preview (called the Thumbnail Toolbar) [5], albeit minus the following functionality:

  • Volume control function (which can be done in the Volume Control, which has supported per-application settings since Vista).
  • The displayed information shown whenever a new song is played.
  • The quick launch button (which allows you to access different artists, albums, etc).
  • The album information of the song in question.
  • The bar which can move ahead of behind for the song in question.

The taskbar icon also supports jump lists introduced in Windows 7.

Media streaming features

While previous versions streamed media to UPnP compliant devices (Digital Media Server role) and could play media by fetching it from a network share (Digital Media Player role) [6], Windows Media Player 12 can access media from the shared media libraries on the network or HomeGroup, stream media to DLNA 1.5 compliant devices and allows itself (once the remote control option is turned on) to be remotely controlled by Digital Media Controller devices which stream media (Digital Media Renderer role).[6] Similarly, the Play To feature once enabled for remote PCs, by turning on remote control of the player, allows compliant devices and computers to be discovered and controlled remotely from a computer running Windows Media Player 12 (Digital Media Controller role).[6] If the devices do not support the streamed format, Windows Media Player 12 transcodes the format on-the-fly. Media from a home network can also be streamed over the internet using an Online ID Provider service, which handles discovery of the computer's IP address, authorization, security, connectivity and Quality of Service issues.[6]

Removed features and issues

As mentioned above, there is no longer the option to enable the media player toolbar on the Taskbar.

The Advanced Tag Editor (ID3 tag editor), which allows users to edit information concerning an WMA or MP3 file, was removed. By editing media attributes in the Details pane of Windows Explorer, users can fill in some of the metadata fields they did from the Advanced Tag Editor.[7]

The "Party Mode", "Color Chooser", "Find in Library" from Now Playing, and "Media Link for E-mail", features present in previous versions of Windows Media Player, have been removed in version 12.

Windows Media Player 12 is unable to read ID3v2.4 tags, the latest version of ID3 tags, even though the standard has been official since November 1, 2000.[8]

These feature removals have become criticized by many of it's users, prompting some to go as far as making an unofficial downgrader to be used at the users' own risk.[6]

See also

References

  1. ^ Windows Media Player 12 in Windows 7
  2. ^ a b c "Hands on: Windows Media Player 12's surprising new features". Peter Bright. Condé Nast Digital. October 30, 2008. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
  3. ^ "Windows 7 RC to natively support .mov files". Chakkaradeep Chandran. Neowin.net. February 26, 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
  4. ^ "Windows 7 next generation camera support".
  5. ^ Introducing The Taskbar APIs
  6. ^ a b c d e Media Streaming with Windows 7 Cite error: The named reference "WMP12Streaming" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  7. ^ "WMP 12 - Where is the Advanced Tag Editor?". Mark L. Ferguson. Microsoft. February 19, 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
  8. ^ "Windows Media Player 12 not reading music tags". Microsoft. May 18, 2009.
Stub icon

This Microsoft Windows article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Windows_Media_Player_12&oldid=328512722"