Fuck I hate this shit. I’ve been using WMP since it came out many years ago. Media Player 9 was working like a champ. I tried WMP 10 when it was in beta and it took all my songs and mixed them up and put a ton of albums into the “Unknown Aritist” even though the songs had artist info on each track.
I figured that it was just a bug in beta so I uninstalled it and went back to 9 with no problem.
But the fucking thing bugged me all the time to update to 10 so I figured I would give it a shot.
ITS STILL FUCKED!!!
It has taken 25 or so albums and put them under “Unknown Artist”. The kicker is all of the fucking albums clearly display the artist in WMP!!! WTF?!?! The goddamn program is showing me artist info but won’t put the albums into their appropriate artist category!! So if I want to listen to the new Audioslave I have to go into the Album sorter or dig it out of unknown artist in the Artist sorter!! The first Audioslave is properly categorized.
If the artist is in the title WMP or any other program for that matter won’t be able to sort it. The artist must be in the ID3 tag else it will be put into the unknown artist section.
I bet if you edited the properties of the unknown artist songs you’ll find the artist section of the id3 tag is empty.
I’ve only experienced WMP 10 for a couple of minutes, as my son allowed it to be installed on his system via automatic updates. One thing I noticed is that it opens with a huge ad filled screen. In the few minutes I looked at preferences and options, I was unable to find a way to turn this off. I took a look at Microsoft’s Knowledge Base, and it’s geared totally towards connecting the user to music stores. If I ask for the ads on my system, fine. This player however doesn’t ask, it just goes on the offensive like that ol’ piece of crap, RealPlayer.
Tomorrow I’ll take the time to get it off of my son’s computer. I usually have no problem with Microsoft, but in this case they can kiss my fuckin’ ass. Aggressive advertising doesn’t annoy me - it actively pisses me off. If this is the path that will continue to unfold on the desktop, then here’s to open source and Google/Sun eating MS’s lunch.
Apart from System Restore, there really is no way of removing WMP10 cleanly. Your best bet is to download something like Media Player Classic and use that.
Actually, my Windows Media Player doesn’t start up with any ads or any homepages or anything like that; it looks like Windows Media Player classic with a blue skin. (Yes, I did check).
I vaguely remember fiddling it for 15 minutes some weeks ago to get it to appear that way, but point being, it -is- possible to tame WMP10. I like it a lot better than 9, actually, or VLC/Zoomplayer/any of the other 3rd parties. It’s the only one that works right on TV-out. VLC did a fairly decent job but you couldn’t move the screen between monitors without having to restart the video.
What if I just want to shave my ass? Do I still get to keep wmp 10?
Actually, if you don’t want it to start in Guide mode (the ad-filled screen), just click on the library tab or the “now playing” tab and exit. It should remember your choice. I don’t there’s even a setting in the options menu (like in 9) that you have to set to tell it to remember.
If you stop short and only shave your ass, you’ll have to reboot alot to keep your house from burning down, but it will burn down anyway, so just uninstall the hair on your ass.
My beef with it is that it makes the job of trying to listen to online radio unnecessarily difficult, and makes it way too easy to connect to pay-per-download sites, and has the friggin nerve to state that this is ‘personalised’ radio.
Though ‘level 13’ seems to be the release number software companies superstitiously avoid releasing; based on Stinkpalm’s assessment of WMA-10 and the near universal disgust with MusicMatchJukeBox-10, perhaps the wonks were off the mark by 3 digits.
Thanks for the tips. Once spotted, it’s easy to hide the Guide page. I would like to make it unavailable all together on any system in my household, but I suppose that’s unrealistic on my part. I still would like to have more control over what modules of the program get installed. All that guide crap could be a plug-in rather than a main “feature”.
I’m curious, if it sucks so hard why not switch to winamp? I’ve been using it for quite some time and haven’t launched WMP once in like 3+ years. Does WMP do something that WinAmp doesn’t?
My experience with every version of Microsoft Media Player is the same as others. Every version may be an improvement functionally, but it also goes one step further in making your media files suit Microsoft’s purposes, rather than suit you. I only use it when there is absolutely no choice, and then I spend half the time fighting it to do things my way, dammit!
And once you upgrade it’s near impossible to roll back to the previous version.
But I personally have no problem with WinAmp. I just only use it for video, nothing else. For the rest I use WinAmp, the rest being mostly folders with mp3s or internet radio, for which Winamp cannot be beat. Shoutcast (www.shoutcast.com) forever!
