Why does Windows Media Player seem so unpopular?

Because its shite.

Gary,

Yes I have gathered that is the general opinion.

But my question remains - why?

Peter

- it is SLOW and limited.

- No secure/"proper" ripping

- I dont think it natively supports all codecs.

- Not customizable.

- Does it offer a way to bypass the windows OS, e.g. ASIO, WASAPI etc?

There are so many superior players out there I am not sure why anyone would use it.  But if it works for you that is great.

Hardly anyone uses J River Media Center, compared to iTunes, but I am not worrying about it.

I have extensively tested almost every major player and have fallen in love with MC for hundreds of reasons.

-patrick

And it sh*ts all over your album art as I once found to my expense having ripped everything with dBpoweramp and then 'stupidly' viewing the resulting files with WMP (not only did it copy its own idea of what album art I should have used over the top of my own pain-staking choices, it also marked the resulting folder.jpg files as hidden system files, making it rather more difficult to diagnose and resolve the issue - luckily it left the artwork in the metadata alone so I could recover it using dBpoweramp but I now make sure that I uninstall it from Windows before I use a PC).  Never again!

... even worse than iTunes!

Thanks for the replies and interesting comments.

I only really use WMP for ripping and burning CD's at present and I confess that I haven't had any problems/issues. But I guess this type of use would place few demands on any half-decent media player. Maybe if I was using it as a library/playback tool then limitations would become more apparent.

Peter

I would suggest using dBpoweramp to rip CDs on a Windows PC.  One benefit is that it verifies the rip by comparing a hash sum with other peoples rips, another is that it is pretty good at finding track names.

Nothing wrong with iTunes.

It has taken many many years but i am with Gary 100% on this.

ITS SHITE.

Stu.

Even Microsoft has a better alternative: Zune. Not that it's got any audiophile options, just saying...

If we except the fact that it can't properly rip an audio CD on my computer, when MS media player is able to. Problem is that the latter can't properly handle a music collection, when iTunes is perfect for the job! I thought that EAC + iTunes would be the perfect pair but EAC relies on LAME to encode MP3 files and it can't write Unicode tags; for those, I need to rely on MS media player. This is getting pretty annoying compared to using a gold old fashioned CD

There are MANY tools to do the job on a windows machine.  I wouldn't mess with either iTunes or WMP.

You are onto something with EAC though.  It is a great ripper.  I think every CD i have was ripped on EAC without any issues whatsoever.

If you want an all-in-one solution with:

- legit ripping

- tagging

- FAST database with gigantic collections

- UPNP Serving/Rendering to as many zones as your PC can handle.

- gorgeous 10' interface (Theater View)

- great internal volume (64bit data path... not sure what that means but it sounds impressive)

- Awesome 3rd party and average native iOS solutions for remote control

- Native Android app

- ALL codec video support and serving. 

- Internally developed "Red October" video engine (that is beyond my understanding).  It uses all of the widely used "filters" and whatnot for great replay.  You can ditch VLC.

- unlimited customization of views and lists (not talking about skinning although that is avail as well).

- Unprecedented support via the forum where you get the help of owners/employees/devs of the software as well as many well seasoned veterans who seem to live on there.

Then drop $50 on J River Media Center.  It is worth every penny.

-Patrick

Thanks for the info Patrick. I might consider dropping some money in dedicated software when I'll do the switch to streaming. Currently I'm stuck with cdparanoia and lame on the Penguin OS though, it's almost sufficient for my needs (mp3 encoding to my portable player which doesn't like free and open stuff) although I can't find a way to write Unicode tags in MP3 files. Wouldn't be a problem if encoding to OGG or FLAC though.

Christian

I'm using dbPowerAmp and seem to be very happy with it.

Agree that WMP is shite (and so is iTunes!) but I have found it can swiftly rip cds that EAC just can't get over the sync errors on. This only affects home made cds of live music and I guess I could adjust EAC settings but not something I want to mess with  for the occasional disc now I have it all set up. So worth a try for ripping if you have a damaged/dubious cd that proper rippers turn their nose up at.