Windows Media Player 12 Sucks Eggs

Totally agree with jberenyi and CircuitBreaker and others, there's no other way to describe WMP 12 but that it sucks eggs, there's just too many usability issues and regressions compared to WMP 11. I'm sure it works better in some ways, and it's nicer, but the mini player, the minuscule window for video playing, the 2 confusing "Switch to Library" and "View full screen" buttons, the disappearance of the "Rip" tab, the disappearance of being able to play songs by ratings, like all 5-star only, you can't edit the tags anymore!!!, such as Parental rating, Mood, and so on, it's all totally frustrating.

And no progress done on library management at all, no support at all for ripped DVDs, no integration between purely audio files and video clips under a single "Artist" entry, I still need to remove manually duplicate tracks pointing to nonexistent files every week or so, there is still 4 artwork files per CD, there is no stats about how many artists, CDs, albums, which do you play most, no export to list feature, you still can't browse by any tag (only Artist, Album, and Genre), although it's all in the library database, and the list goes on.

Major formats such as Flash and mkv are still not supported by default (thanks, Shark!), you can't open several instances of WMP, there is still no radio management: You need to find a radio URL, open URL to play it, drag & drop to a new playlist that can't appear under a separate "Radio" category, it's different from WMC which supports FM tuner adapters, etc.

I still use it because the Library is great regardless, but come on, MS should acknowledge WMP 12 is just barely adequate and has still a lot of work to do in terms of usability. I was hoping that now it is dissociated from Windows, there would be more support for other file types such as mkv that are offered on third party players, or that installing WMP 11 would be easy (not an awful downgrade hack). This has yet to happen.

And don't get me started on Blu-Ray or x64 WMP 12! ^-^

jberenyi said:

Because WMP 12 sucks so badly; does anyone have another media player that they like better. Boy did MS screw up royally this time.

You have it backwards. Windows Media Player 12 is great, and I can assure you I am not a Microsoft fanboy. It handles a lot more file formats than before. Though if you're looking for an alternative, you can use iTunes, Songbird, Mediamonkey, Winamp, or Foobar2000 for music. VLC and Media Player Classic are great for video.

- Fred

Chimel said:

husky said:

Also, there is really nothing wrong with 64 bit wmp

Only that none of the plug-ins I use seem to support it (last.fm, Trillian, Windows Live Messenger), and Microsoft does not seem to be very proud of it, because the default player in Win7 x64 is still the x32 version, I had to change that manually, and then revert back to the x32 player for the plug-ins.
Microsoft should make it the default player on Windows x64 to encourage developers to support it, and maybe create a dev kit to show how to do dual 32/64 bit support.

There is nothing wrong with 64-bit WMP. Ask your plugin manufacturers to support it. It's their fault. If MS were to make 64-bit default there'd be still more folks like you complaining. There already is a developers kit that shows how to target 32/64. You simply retarget and recompile and then add both plugins to your installer.

husky said:

I actually think that windows media player is a cool piece of software ...
The mini player is a great way to simplify the experience. Anyways, you can easily just go to the library view with a simple click. The software is great for beginners to computers (my grandparents). Who uses the view full screen button? Click on F11 or Alt+enter.

Its true, though, that mkv and flash should have been supported. However, the divx splitter is good mkv and who has that many flash videos anyways?

Hallelujah! No directshow junk on my system either. Maybe that's why I have no gripes... I consciously avoid flash video because I've never seen one that I want to watch because of either awful quality or sophomoric content. I think Microsoft have made the proper decisions not to natively support Matroska or Flash video container formats. Matroska might be open source but certainly cannot be considered open standard until the standard is controlled by an independent third party. As such MS chose not to support either format because neither are truly open.

husky said:

Yes, the program doesn't have a lot of new features, however the new interface is cool and the simplicity of the program gives new users a good edge. Also, there is really nothing wrong with 64 bit wmp...I mean, there isn't really an alternative 64 bit media player....right? If you really need something that does more, sure, go ahead and run alternatives. I prefer how nimbly and lightly the program is.

Also, with the media foundation, windows media player 12 is crazy in terms of cpu usage. H.264 videos can player with less than 8% cpu. Avi files and mp4 files, the same....Can you accomplish something like this with vlc? It is very performance oriented. The only reason why it would require more cpu is if you start adding those nasty directshow codecs.

Very few folks seem to get this. I have Windows 7 with a quad core CPU and a ATI video card that does DXVA2. Why on EARTH would I want to use DirectShow which was designed for Windows 98, is single threaded and usually cannot use even DXVA1?

People -- just because it seems to work doesn't mean it's working correctly.