Windows Media Player 11 (final) is now available

Filed under: Audio, Video, News, Windows, Microsoft

Windows Media Player 11 (final) is now available

by Ryan Carter (RSS feed) Oct 30th 2006 at 7:04PM

Windows Media Player has long been a ~~bain~~ mainstay of our Windows computing existence, whether by choice or by force. Finally, the WMP version I consider a serious contender of a media player is out. WMP 11 can be downloaded and is the best to date. I have been using the beta for months now, and despite being a bit of a memory hog, it does a nice job of organization, ripping, syncing, and has some new features you will like. If you haven't been a fan in the past, this version may change your mind. Besides the obvious eye-candy, this version logically organizes all types of media and by default provides many different views you can use to quickly drill down to the media you want. Creating playlists is an easy task, as well as search, renaming tracks, and new media discovery. The interface is clean, not clunky anymore, and clearly holds an advantage over previous versions. Music store integration is still good, including URGE (if you are into that sort of thing), and many other stores like WMP 10 had, but WMP 11 has better search this time. All in all not a bad player, which now has something called media sharing for access to your media from XBOX 360 or Soundbridge. Give the new Windows Media a shot and see if you like it. I was previously a WMP hater and die hard Winamp fan, but WMP 11 turned the tables a bit. This release seems to take less memory, and runs at 10-14MB while playing, which is a bit better than the beta. Not bad.

Tags: 11, media, player, windows, wmp

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Michael Cicconi said 10:58PM on 10-30-2006

Though its use may be 'extremely wicked' (http://www.answers.com/bain), the word bain typically leads to the writer's ridicule as most readers notice they meant to type 'bane' (http://www.answers.com/bane).

:p j/k

Tom said 5:30AM on 10-31-2006

Does the beta auto-update to the final release? I've had the beta for a while, but I ran the 'check for updates' feature and it told me that my windows media player is already up to date.

Matt Burris said 5:42AM on 10-31-2006

All the more reason to use Firefox 2 for its inline spell checker feature.

Personally I can't stand WMP11, the organization of music is inefficient, at least compared to iTunes. Searching also seems to take too long showing results, which is complicated by it also searching on URGE, which I don't use and don't intend to.

asurroca said 11:58PM on 10-31-2006

Sorry, Matt, but I call BS on your comment. How anyone can find WMP11's interface or music organization inferior to iTunes' is completely beyond me. iTunes' multi-pane mail client style interface is a mess, and collapses under the weight of a huge (10,000+ songs) music library.

It's nice to be able to type the first few letters of a song title and instantly see it appear immediately, have the program automatically update every song' information and cover art in the background, etc. The only problems in WMP11's interface are predictably carry-overs from previous versions [e.g. the ineffective breadcrumb system (why it isn't the same as Vista's?) or the playlist pane].

Also, integration with Urge is completely optional. You can simply choose not to install Urge integration and select from a dozen or so other music download services instead. It's nice not being locked into one music download service or one media player (scowls angrily at iTunes).

I'm running Vista RC2, and WMP claims my version is up to date. It appears WMP11 on Vista is a different version from WMP11 on XP because my version is 11.0.5744.6324 (includes Vista's build#)

Bboyfeifei said 9:41AM on 10-31-2006

I just installed WMP11, and it seems mine is using alot of memory than RyanCarter's. My taskmanager shows Media player 11 (wmplayer.exe) using 22Mbyte RAM when playing music or radio, it used about 17Mb when idle, but on top of that there's also the WMP network service (wmpnetwk.exe) that takes up another 21Mbytes.
And surprising to said I also installed Ms Desktop Search yesterday, and its using huge amount of memory, windowsSearch.exe 18Mb + SearchIndexer.exe 33Mbytes!!!! Anyone else's systems begs to differ?

Bboyfeifei said 9:46AM on 10-31-2006

I seem to like what they done with WMP11, but just don't understand how i could get back to the default mediaguide when i first started WMP11, which it shows the mediaguide to fill up the whole WMP windows. but now after i clicked it, it is now media guide with some empty space on the right and long list which i scroll up and down...

BTW, anyone had experience with Google desktop search or Corpenic desktop search? does it use less memory? I also want to be able to customise what it can search, don't one someone coming by and can easily find stuff on my PC which are located someplace else :P

Chris said 12:40PM on 10-31-2006

I was excited about WMP 11 and used it while in beta. I fell in love with it until I realized they removed the ability to back-up licenses! That's right, you can NOT back-up or restore your licenses with 11. So if your HDD crashes, or you upgrade to a new computer you're toast, unless you use URGE of course, then you just redownlaod.. hooray for options!

Jimbo said 8:11AM on 11-01-2006

Will this download install and run on vista RC1?

Jose Pais said 10:03PM on 11-04-2006

I just download WMP 11 and install it.
Each time I run it mal all system craches, and PC resart again.
I launch WMP 11 agais and the same crash happen.
I am using the final cersion of WMP 11 on a Windows XP Pro system with 2Mb RAM.
Can anyone juste help me on this?

Best regards
Josè
spais@nqf.pt

Nazeer Brohi said 6:07AM on 11-27-2006

excelleant

Nazeer Brohi said 10:29AM on 2-04-2007

Excel ant I like it, this web site I heard by My friend

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Windows Media Player 11 (final) is now available