Media Player in Vista

Vista ships with Windows Media Player 11 (WMP 11), a major update that includes quite a few new features:

• Cleaner interface The overall interface is a bit simpler than in previous versions.

• Album art If you've downloaded or scanned album art, it appears throughout the WMP 11 interface, which is much nicer than previous versions, in which album art appeared only rarely.

• Grouping and stacking of media The grouping and stacking techniques that I mentioned earlier for folder windows also apply to the WMP library. For music, for example, WMP offers several views based on media metadata, including Songs view, which groups songs according the values in the Album Artist property and then by the values in the Album property, and Genre, which stacks the albums using the values in the Genre property. You get a different set of views for each category (Music, Pictures, Video, Recorded TV, or Other Media).

• Advanced Tag Editor You can easily apply media metadata by downloading the relevant information from the Internet, but most WMP metadata is editable. A new innovation in WMP 11 is the Advanced Tag Editor, which gives you a front end for much of the metadata available for a particular media file.

• As-you-type search The WMP 11 window has a Search box in the upper-right corner that enables you to perform as-you-type searches. After you type your text in the Search box, WMP searches filenames and metadata for matching media files; it shows the results in the WMP window.

• Synching with media devices Synching items from the Library to a media device is a bit easier in WMP 11. When you insert a WMP-compatible media device, WMP recognizes it and automatically displays the device, its total capacity, and its available space in the Sync tab. Also, WMP 11 supports two-way synching, which means that you can not only synch files from your PC to a media device, but you can also synch files from a media device to your PC.

• Easier ripping Ripping files from an audio CD is more convenient in WMP 11 because the program gives you easier access to rip settings. For example, if you pull down the Rip tab list, you can select Format to display a list of file formats, including various Windows Media Audio formats (regular, Variable Bit Rate, and Lossless), MP3, andnew in WMP 11WAV. You can also pull down the Rip menu and select Bit Rate to choose the rate at which you want to rip the media.

• Burning options Burning music or other media to a disc is more flexible in WMP 11. For one thing, WMP supports burning media to a DVD disc. For another, WMP 11 comes with a new Burn tab in its options dialog box, which you can use to select the burn speed, apply volume leveling to audio CDs, select the file list format for a data disc, and set the file quality.

• URGE support WMP 11 automatically downloads and installs the URGE store, which is the online music store that Microsoft has created in collaboration with MTV.

• Library Sharing This feature enables you to share your WMP Library with other network users, just like you'd share a folder or a printer.

• DVD playback When you play a DVD in WMP 11, a DVD button is added to the playback controls. Clicking that button displays the DVD menu, which offers a much wider array of DVD-related commands than in previous versions. Welcome additions to the DVD arsenal are the capabilities to select audio and language tracks (if available), display subtitles (if any), and capture frames.