XP and Vista to get new media player | CNET News.com: Well I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. Which do you want first?
The bad news of course is that Vista was recently delayed and moved from a Fall 2006 release to an early 2007 release. But the good news? Well CNET is reporting today that a standalone version of Windows Media Player 11 will be available for XP before the end of June. Windows Media Player 11 of course is also the underlying music engine for Microsoft’s Media Center Edition software.
This is really, really, great news. For those of us with large digital libraries WMP 10 (as great as it is) has been a huge hassle for trying to sort through these tracks. Windows Media Player 11 (according to Microsoft insiders) has been tested with over 2 million tracks and runs much more smoothly.
When I had dinner with Microsoft exec Jim Allchin earlier this year I asked him directly about whether or not we’d see a version of WMP11 for XP and he said yes, but I’m surprised that they would be bringing us this as early as this June.
I’m really looking forward to this one. Hopefully it’s everything in speed I hope it will be.
Yes! Just what I was waiting for… This may finally allow me to switch to MCE to consume music instead of J River’s Media Center, which until now is vastly superior in managing large libraries.
I’ve been waiting for this too. I recently converted my collection to work with my MCE box but I haven’t been impressed with the performance of WMP 10 on my ~400 gig music collection. This is great news!
Oh boy…can’t wait to see how many MCE PC’s will require recovery installs after their owners try “updating” to Media Player 11.
Isn’t it just a Beta though, not the final version?