For information, Microsoft has released Windows Media Player 11.

Windows Media Player 11 is designed to work with all versions of Windows XP with Service Pack 2, including Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional, including Windows XP Home Edition N and Windows XP Professional N. (Note: N stands for "Not with Media Player". Details here.)

WMP Download Center

waldwolf

Be careful. WMP 11 will not allow you to back up or transfer any licenses you have aquired through Mucrosoft DRM. If you've bought music or videos using WMP DRM do not upgrade to WMP 11 as you will lose the ability to transfer them to another machine.

rip to audio cd then convert back to mp3 or wma format.

Strange, I've been running Windows Media Player 11 for a couple of months now.

Best video player at the moment: VLC. Never put songs in .wma. If you do, go stand in a corner by yourself.

Strange, I've been running Windows Media Player 11 for a couple of months now.

Beta version

Strange, I've been running Windows Media Player 11 for a couple of months now.

Beta version

The version number I have is 11.0.5358.4827 and no indication of Beta, and Beta usually expires after a certain time. Guess will find out if mine stops working shortly. I rarely use it anyway but it does look a lot better then previous versions.

Beta version

correct

Beta version

correct

Thanks for that info.

Best video player at the moment: VLC. Never put songs in .wma. If you do, go stand in a corner by yourself.

Ok I've downloaded VLC have managed to play a cd but can see no way to make MP3 etc in interface. Any suggestions?

Best video player at the moment: VLC. Never put songs in .wma. If you do, go stand in a corner by yourself.

Why?

Best video player at the moment: VLC. Never put songs in .wma. If you do, go stand in a corner by yourself.

Why?

There really is no reason that I can think of. WMA is better at low bit rates (voice quality), but not any better then mp3 at high bit rates (music quality). That may change though with WMP 11 where it may surpass mp3 and trying to beat ACC format, however that will probably be short lived as mp3 codecs improve. Has been a leap frog process between the two for a long time.

However, I will not download a .wma file due to the possibilty of it containing a DRM (digital rights management) wrapper. These will often try to go out to the Internet for licensing information. But to encode to wma is not an issue. Having said that, I will only encode in MP3 due to the larger support across many platforms and devices.

Perhaps he's just anti-microsoft.

The version number I have is 11.0.5358.4827 and no indication of Beta, and Beta usually expires after a certain time. Guess will find out if mine stops working shortly. I rarely use it anyway but it does look a lot better then previous versions.

Probably it's updating itself automatically (default setting? )