Adobe just added new video content to its AIR-based Media Player, but it all pretty much sucks in one form or another. The Adobe Media Player is a slick media browser that can play and subscribe to videos from the web, and it also provides somewhat high-resolution content from Adobe's media partners such as MTVN and Comedy Central.
Despite the fact that the player is very visually appealing and easy to navigate, it's just not that useful. It's possible to use any regular, free browser such as Firefox to watch online video content, allowing web-travelers to avoid the installation of an extra app. As a result, the main reason for installing the app (unless you really, really like the subscription feature) is to watch the 25,000+ videos provided by Adobe.
And that's exactly what's wrong here. Adobe's video library is still weak, and most good of the good TV shows aren't full episodes but rather short clips. Furthermore, the full videos Adobe is adding aren't current TV hits like Lost or Battlestar Galactica. Instead, Adobe partnered with CBS and Sony to add tons of clips and a few movies/episodes from old stuff like Men in Black, Jerry Maguire, The Love Boat, Beverly Hilly 90210, Family Ties, and even The Price is Right. They might as well call the app something to the tune of Adobe Senior TV On Demand.
Sure, Adobe has the money to keep it up and running, but why bother if the company isn't bringing its best to the table? Why not partner with Hulu and create an official, fully functional Hulu AIR app instead?
Audio players come in all shapes and sizes, from resource hogging beasts such as iTunes and Windows Media Player, to relatively more lightweight competitors such as Winamp, MediaMonkey. And if you happen to have an iPod or some other sort of portable media player, chances are you are sort of locked in to whatever application works best with your portable device. But let's say you don't care about support for a portable player and just want a capable, lightweight player that has frills but not too many.
Meet AIMP2. AIMP2 weighs in at a mere 2.88MB, has a slightly smaller memory footprint than Winamp and can do just about everything you want except sync with a portable device. It supports anything from AAC to WMA, allows you to record radio streams, has a fully fledged library to organize your music, allows you to manipulate playlists while listening to another, and even supports a number of Winamp plug-ins. And for those who like to wake up and fall asleep to music, AIMP2 also includes a timed start and an auto shutdown timer.
Although lacking some of the features that the bigger media players may have, AIMP2 has an impressive feature set for its size. Additional skins and plug-ins are relatively scarce, but the basic skin works so well other skins are almost unnecessary beyond mere aesthetics. It has also been localized for a number of languages (the default being Russian), which makes this a very international user friendly application.
Overall, AIMP2 just feels right, and is a good alternative for anyone that is looking for something that works the way it should.
Quack Player for Windows touches down on the already crowded media player battlefield. So what are its weapons?
Quack Player claims support for a wide range of codecs and multimedia media file formats, including AVI, WMA, WMV, MPG, MOV, MP3, all the big boys. Quack Player also offers easy playlist building for your supported media files.
The interface is clean, with a few buttons for color adjustment, sound equalizer adjustment, and full screen initialization. The coolest feature in our book is the frame capture option, where you can quickly capture a screenshot of the video and save it anywhere on your hard drive.
Quack Player is easily customizable, with downloadable skins. You can even build your own skin (though the instructions look a little daunting).
Quack Player is a free download for Windows. It has plans to go open source in the future, so if you want to get your hands dirty as a developer, let them know.
Beloved Linux media player Amarok made news today to become the first open source player to include an online digital music store. Amarok has struck a deal with Magnatune to offer music store purchases within the player starting with version 1.4.4, just released. The music store features DRM-free downloads and full-length MP3 previews. The new version of Amarok also features over 100 bugfixes and expanded support for portable devices. The Amarok site is getting pounded right now, but you can see a mirror of the announcement here. A working download link might be harder to come by.
Yesterday, Jordan blogged an announcement from Microsoft's Steve Riley that Vista users will need to have 64-bit superpowers if they want the ability to play HD video. It turns out this isn't entirely true, as Engadget is reporting that Microsoft has clarified the complication: 32-bit versions of Vista can play HD - but not without help from third party folk like CyberLink and InterVideo. The blame game still places the ball in the big media studios' court, as it is they who dictated that HD support be stripped out of Media Player 11 across the board, not simply one version of Vista or another.
While the blame and complications are shifting around, I agree with Jordan's statement that the victims still remain the same: PC users, 32-bit and otherwise. Engadget is holding out that someone's going to cave before Vista ships, but I'm not so sure. Time will certainly tell, but for now it seems like Microsoft has had to strip yet another feature from Vista's drawing board.
A bug was recently found and squashed by the Mozilla team that infected videos in the Firefox browser.
This new bug was found and fixed in less then a week after a security update was made to Firefox. The specific bug prevented the Windows Media Player plug-in from being recognized, thus not allowing videos to be viewed.
To update your Firefox to 1.5.0.6, and once again be able to view Windows Media Player videos, visit the Mozilla Firefox site, or wait for the auto-update notification in Firefox.
So MyTunesRSS lets you use a PSP to listen to your iTunes music collection, but what if you just want to control the music it's piping through your stereo speakers? PlayerPal is a Windows app that lets you control iTunes or Windows Media player from any web-enabled device. Like other apps of its kind, PlayerPal is basically a mini web server that you can log on to from a web browser and control your media player. Unlike others, though, it's tailored specifically to mobile devices. It ships with skins sized for the PSP, a standard PDA screen, and a regular browser, and can show album cover art in addition to titles, which ought to alleviate the squint-factor. PlayerPal looks great for intelligently controlling your media player from the couch. There's a free trial to download from the PlayerPal web site and the registered version costs $20.
With little fanfare Microsoft released Windows Media Player 11 in beta form last week coupled with Urge, the music service from Microsoft and MTV designed to compete with Apple's iTunes Music Store. WMP11 is a sort of preview of what we can expect to see next year in Windows Vista, and the question that seems to be on everyone's minds is whether Microsoft can finally best Apple's rock-solid player and service. According to the Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro, at least, the answer is no. His article can be summed up by its title, "New Media Player: Nice Features, but It's No iTunes." Pegoraro says that WMP11 has a cleaner interface that represents "a smart, creative way to organize a digital music library" and catches up with iTunes in a number of respects, like its ever-present live search box and easy CD burning functionality. Its album artwork downloader, however, is bewilderingly inept. Pegoraro's review of Urge, which has both a la cart ($0.99/song, $9.99/per album) and subscription (rent your music for $9.99 a month) options, is less favorable, saying, "Not only has MTV failed to match iTunes, it has repeated some of the worst mistakes of earlier iTunes challengers." He criticizes the service's lack of extras like lyrics and bonus videos, irritating search behaviors, and the lack of iPod support that has become a cliché among iTunes' competitors. Head over to the Washington Post for the full review or Microsoft's web site if to bite the bullet and try Windows Media Player 11 out yourself.
Everything's
portable! This week saw the release of not one, but two popular Windows media players in portable form. First is Portable VLC from PortableApps.com.
Based on the excellent open source media player VLC, I can't imagine a better way to watch videos on the go. Second is
Portable Winamp 5.1 Lite with iPod support. The "Lite" means it
includes the bare-bones audio player, eschewing video, media library, "modern" skin support, and so on, but as
the name implies it'll connect to your iPod. Portable VLC is a 7.2MB download while Winamp is a scant 1.2MB.
Everything's
portable! This week saw the release of not one, but two popular Windows media players in portable form. First is 
