Window media player to mp3

A breakthough program, Microsoft Windows Media Player 7 (WMP) is worthy of being your primary vehicle for exploring and enjoying the Web's vast media assets, both live and on-demand. The Big Three in streaming media—Apple, Microsoft, and RealNetworks—cooperate to a degree, but never sufficiently to eliminate the need for each vendor's player on your desktop.

A mature product, WMP now handles an unprecedented range of media experiences, serving as a streaming player for Internet-based on-demand content, a jukebox, and an Internet radio receiver. A Media Guide provides frequently updated links for streaming content.

In creating WMP, Microsoft has completely shelved previous interface designs. Controls are more accessible, and Microsoft has added customizable skins and visualization features. For selecting content, building playlists, and similar activities, the program defaults to a large, scalable window that can be minimized to a small menu bar with simple playback controls.

On the left of the window are seven tabs for accessing the program's various functions. The first tab is Now Playing, which contains advanced playback controls and displays visualizations. The next tab is the Media Guide, followed by CD Audio controls, for playing CDs and converting their contents to disk-based formats. You'll also find a cornucopia of album and artist information, licensed from the All Music Guide (AMG), that goes far beyond the limited data contained in MP3's ID3V2 format.

The next tab, Media Library, is the storage bin for media assets. The range of supported media types, which includes most audio (ASF, MIDI, MP3, WAV, and WMA) and video files (ASF, AVI, MPG), makes this feature a true media library. Note, however, the lack of support for Apple or RealNetworks for- mats and for competing secure digital formats such as a2b or Liquid Audio.

The Media Library also hosts the program's jukebox, where you drag and drop music files into playlists for sequential playback or loading into a portable device. Since Microsoft has eschewed complete support for MP3 files, however, the program is incompatible with most current MP3 devices. The last Media Library function, CD-ROM burning, provides CD-R/CD-RW drivers and extremely basic functionality via a licensing agreement with Adaptec.

Radio Tuner lets you search for Internet-based radio stations using a range of characteristics such as format, location, and language, a breakthrough feature originally implemented by RealNetworks. Again, the lack of RealAudio support means that coverage is less than comprehensive, so you'll need another player to access all the content.

Microsoft Windows Media Player 7 demonstrates that Microsoft, finally awakening to the fact that digital media is a huge consumer market, has assigned its top programmers to the task. In doing so, the company has replaced a program best described as a necessary evil with a much more usable player that offers significant advantages over competing products.

Copyright ?? 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in PC Magazine.