Windows 7: WMP12 flaws, they're killing me...

I am extremely dissatisfied with the changes Microsoft has made to WMP.

Just a quick start of changes which annoy me a great deal:

1. There is no advance tag editor anymore.
2. WMP always jumps to the foreground when opening a file from within Explorer.
3. There is no "search file in media library" feature anymore.
4. There is no WMP bar on the taskbar anymore.
5. WMP does now have the default Windows "window", WMP11 was beautiful because it had its own window controls.

And I'm sure that I'll find lots more annoyances...

I hope Microsoft listens to its customers and does something about these things within a few months...

I don't know why I should stick to WMP when there are more effective and free media players? Give a try to some other as mentioned in another thread. Personally I am using VLC and MPC home cinema. They both are very good.

But none of those has library functionality that even comes close to WMP.
Let alone the looks of it, even though I think WMP12 is ugly(I liked 11 way more), compared to MPC and VLC, WMP12 is Miss Universe...

I would recommend giving the AIMP2 player (latest rc version) a try. It has a great library function (great everything actually). It's awesome, very elegant and beautiful and easy/intuitive to use. Tons of great features, easy to customize, sounds great. In short, the best media player for audio I've tried yet. And it's free.

For video, I'm very pleased with the latest version of MPC-HC x64 (with AC3 Filter as external audio filter, although it works fine w/o it too.) Haven't hit any video files it can't play well so far.

Thanks, I will try AIMP2 out.
I already use MPC-HC x64, but it's very buggy, I will revert to x32.

No bugs for me and I'm using the latest beta version of MPC HC x64 (1.3.1296.0).

WMP12 on Windows 7 is a huge improvement over earlier versions. I used VLC as the media player of choice on XP. With WMP12 on Windows 7, there is no reason to use VLC anymore.

Yes, there is. After you import a folder into the library, you can right click the album art and select: Find album info... I know, it's not the same as it was, but the option exists nevertheless.

Yes, there is. Click "Music" on the navigation tab, which will list all the songs imported in the library. The Search function is at the top right corner of the library.

Instead, you have the "Now Playing" window which you can strech and size however you want it. I usually tend to place it between gadgets so it looks like a sidebar gadget


Not really. I'm not saying that WMP12 is perfect, but after years of "giving a go" to tons of media players, WMP12 completely stands up to my expectations in every aspect expect ripping CDs. And I'm not the only one saying that. You won't believe how many people don't use WMP12 just because they never actually tried it, with all it's cons and pros

They did that's why WMP12 is what it is.... For the most part...

1. That is totally not the same, first off, it requires 2 clicks instead of 1 to access, secondly, it's nowhere as option-rich as the real thing; where do I add lyrics? Where do I add all the other ID3-tags?

3. That is also really, and I mean really not the same, imagine for example that you have a nice playlist playing, and all of a sudden you see that there is a typo in the title of the song, now you have to click on Library, click in the search box, type in a keyword of the title and be lucky that there aren't 15 other songs with the same word, and only THEN you are at the song... That is so totally NOT the same as simply right-clicking and selecting "Find in Library", is it?

Now tell me, WHY, WHY on earth did they decide to REMOVE those things? For what?

Because, like I said, instead of manually tagging files (which you CAN do if you really want to) you have the internet service with a vast database of information... And let's face it, it's not just WMP, but a lot of things in Windows 7 are "two clicks instead of one", right?
So that's not surprising to me and instead of complaining about it, I decided to take WMP for what it is, with all it's cons AND pros.