I watch quite a few movies on my computer. The default version of WMP that came with Win98SE was great - I used it all the time with nary a complaint. Then I upgraded to WinXP, and discovered to my horror that Microsoft had “improved” WMP to the point that it now sucks donkey. Specifically, here are the changes that make me want to put my fist through the screen:
The biggest one is that in the old version, you could pause and unpause the movie with either the space bar or the left mouse button, which came in handy as I was lounging in my easy chair in front of my computer. I could pause the movie with my foot and go do whatever. Now, the only way to pause is the incredibly awkward “Cntl-P”. Ever try to do THAT with your foot?
In the old version, there was a time elapsed/total time display. If you were 15 min into a 2 hour movie, you’d see “15:00/2:00:00”. Now, it only shows the elapsed time, so I can’t check and see how much longer the movie is, except by eyeballing the slider and making a guesstimate.
Speaking of the slider, in the old version, the time elapsed would change as you dragged the slider around, so you could see what part of the movie you were going to, to the second. Now, you guessed it, it doesn’t do that anymore. If you want to move to a new chunk of the movie, you have to, again, just eyeball it and hope.
I could go on, but those are the biggies. So I need a replacement player that will send me back to movie-watching bliss. Free, of course. Any suggestions?
You can try Winamp3 , I’m not sure if it has the features you require for foot-pausing and non-eyeballing-seeking but it can play videos and its not made by Microsoft!
Personally I use Real One Player even though it sucks. The interface is cumbersome and they supply you with all kinds o’ crap you don’t need but it will support almost all formats including the ever-elusive .ram or .ra for most TV show episodes.
I remember once seeing the Big Toe Player made by Foot-Control Technologies Inc. made for people with no arms:eek: , but I can’t find the link…
Download Zoom Player, the last multimedia player you’ll ever need. It’s compact, powerful, and infinitely customizable. It’s also very stable and, since it’s constantly under development, whatever bugs that may pop up are rapidly fixed. It also has the best support for dual-monitor systems that I’ve seen.
Caveats are that, since it’s so configurable, the options menus are very complex and can be quite confusing. It also can’t stream video or play audio CDs (bug in MS DirectShow filter, apparently). Otherwise, it’s an excellent player.
BTW, you can also go back to mashing the keyboard with your foot. You can map any key to any function you please.
You can even program your mouse wheel to function as a time jump. I have it set to jump five seconds for every click on the wheel.
You can very easily make a whomping playlist that you can scroll through to find your common files. It plays almost everything. I looooooove it.
It also displays the time progression of the file and lets you jump around by clicking on the slider.
The only thing I can think to wish for is to let me fast forward by dragging the slider like you can with Quicktime.
I heard about this player on this very board.
Well, I just tried playing a CD on Zoom Player, and it seems that Hodge is right. Hmmmm. I hadn’t really noticed that. Ick. But I love it for everything else.
Ah HA! That’s so crazy, it just might work - plus, it has the benefit of me doing almost no work. If you didn’t notice from my foot talk above, that’s a plus in my eyes.
Still, I just may try out Zoom, too. I’m intrigued.
Okay, just wanted to report that I tried Zoom player yesterday because of this thread and it does, indeed, kick ass. The installation size was about 1 mb and it has literally every feature I could think of…and a few that I didn’t even know I needed until I saw it in action. My God, this thing is cool. How in the heck did I use wmp6 for so long?!
Any suggestions?