Don’t upgrade to Windows Media player 11, yet. (01-27-2007)
I bypassed my usual Audio app iTunes on a newly built machine in an effort to force me to use Microsoft’s new Windows Media Player 11.
I experienced a major issue right away: Inline Videos would load the web page plug-in for WMP11 and WMP would re-size the ratio to a 3×2 format which would badly distort the video ratio and quality. Viewing same videos in WMP 10 did not produce this affect. Is this a WMP 11 bug or must video hosts update their code for 11? Either way, extremely lame. Thankfully many popular sites use platform/format independent Flash video player otherwise I would have had to downgrade right away.
11 has a nice skin but the interface is still a mish mosh of confusion. For example it took me two days of looking to find how to get Radio Stations (I can’t tell you how as I can’t find it again). Speaking of menus, where are they? Of yeah right mouse click the title bar… wonder how many of millions of people never figure that out. Where’s Jukebox mode? Still looking…. 11 Looks nice but what is it other than a DRM and skin upgrade? Not much except it breaks video sites and still has the most annoying problem that has plagued Windows Media Player since it first starting streaming radio stations – why o why is this not fixed yet?
Windows Media player when streaming radio forces you to load the providers Web Page within the player. These web pages are amongst the most obnoxious useless web pages ever developed – they don’t fit the view port, they run multiple animations, banners ads and keep multiple streams open to your machine other than the audio.
Worst of all many of the sites (all?) on any media player version on any computer I’ve owned (lets not discuss how many…) generate the comical Internet Explorer Script Error messages. These messages pop up over and over. Over and over and over. What a pain, and how embarrassing for Microsoft. I want to listen to audio not click Yes or No 50 times in an hour. Note to Microsoft iTunes does not stuff error messages down your throat (yet).
Windows Media Player
– Internet Explorer Script Error
– “An error has occurred in the script on the page”
– error: undetermined string constant
– URL: some useless advertising page
