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Windows Media 9: What's in the box?
The lowdown...

By CNET Networks

Published: Thursday 05 September 2002

Windows Media 9, formerly code-named Corona, has been in development for nearly four years at a cost of about $500m.

It improves on earlier versions of Microsoft's digital player and server technology on a number of fronts. For businesses, the technology includes improved media management features, for example. For consumer media playing, the system is updated for speed and seamless playback to create a more TV-like experience on the PC.

Microsoft has made several changes to Windows Media Player 9, some of which will be available only with Windows XP. Microsoft issued a release candidate, or near testing version, on Wednesday for Windows 98 Special Edition, Windows Me, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Many of the biggest improvements were made to the audio and video performance. As expected, Microsoft released new audio and video codecs, which, like MPEG-4, use a smaller file, or bit, size. The company estimates content creators can get 20 per cent smaller file sizes with the same quality that they get now. Another audio enhancement lets content providers stream in 5.1 sound, which would improve the quality of sound for concerts or movies streamed over the Web.

Windows' latest audio with 5.1 surround sound, will be featured with the 25 September release of Peter Gabriel's new CD, "Up."

Like its predecessor, Windows Media Player 9 offers only limited support for MP3 files, unless the consumer pays for an add-in product. The media program will play MP3s but won't rip files in the format without extra costs and third-party components from CyberLink or InterVideo. As it did with Windows Media Player 8, Roxio provides the CD-burning engine.

To the player, Microsoft added Auto Playlists, which are in some ways similar to the SmartPlaylist feature part of Apple Computer's iTunes 3. Both features help to quickly organize digital music files. The new Windows Media comes with more than a dozen preconfigured Auto Playlists for organizing songs such as by genre, rating or most played. Like iTunes 3, which Apple released in July, Windows Media Player 9 Series rates songs on a 1- to 5-star scale. Both programs also can organize playlists based on rating. By default, Windows Media Player assigns all songs 3 stars.

Windows Media Player 9 comes with an ample selection of "skins," or different colors or motifs, but on Windows XP consumers also can manually change the color scheme of the player.

The player is updated to improve the quality of video playback so that viewers don't have to wait for the video, a process known as "buffering." Called FastStream, the technology uses the available bandwidth to the PC to deliver more of content at once, so that the viewer can fast-forward or rewind relatively seamlessly.

The new player offers other enhancements for organizing songs such as more intuitive file folders, a Windows XP feature. Windows Media Series 9 Player also can systemize songs from the metadata or even clean up and add missing metadata from older songs ripped without the information.

Microsoft's media player adds cross-fading between songs, similar to the transitions heard over the radio. The consumer has control over how many seconds of overlap between two songs. Apple introduced a similar feature with iTunes 2 and increased control over it in the new version. RealNetworks' RealOne now supports the feature, too. Windows Media 9 also can level the sound level among songs, a longstanding feature of MusicMatch and new to iTunes with version 3.

When consumers minimize the program to the Windows Task Bar, a mini-player control appears on the task bar for listening to digital media, adjusting sound, or accessing other commonly used features. A video pops up in a mini-window when the task bar control is enabled.

Stefanie Olsen and Joe Wilcox write for News.com