Correct me if I’m wrong but I think it’s been at least two Windows releases since any new or updated Windows Media Player visualizations. Sure, what comes in the box are still visualizations by definition, but I couldn’t consider any of them eye-candy. Recently, a new visualization pack made by two Microsoft employees in their spare time is worth checking out.
Stephen Coy, the designer of the Windows Vista screensavers and Tim Cowley, a software engineer on the Office team have come together to release a visualizations pack for Windows Media Player called “Psychedelia” two years in the making. But don’t worry, no LSD drugs involved.
As a requirement to run these visualizations, you will need a graphics card that supports at least shader model 2.0 (most DirectX 9 graphics cards will), which might seem like a high requirement for visualizers, but how else are you suppose to create visual magic right?
Included in the single package are 7 visualizations with over 40 variations in total, including
- Album Art 3D - 3D cubes with the album art of the song you’re currently playing
- Bubbles - inspired by the Bubbles Vista screensavers also featuring the album art
- Distortion - distorts the album art in a 3D waveform
- Hypnobloom - hypnotic checkered purple rings
- Ribbons - inspired by the Mystify and Ribbons Vista screensavers (as seen above)
- Gigertron 3D - 3D layered visualizer bars
- up cuber - a pigment arrangement of 3D hexagon cubes
I’ve never been a big fan of visualizers before but I’m hooked onto “Ribbons”. If you’re looking for some awesome WMP visualizers or something to match your Vista screensavers, then give Psychedelia a try. It’s a reasonably light download at 5MB but best of all it’s free!
Comments for "Vista screensaver inspired WMP visualizations, “Psychedelia Visualization Pack”"
Dan
Wow, just wow
They’ve should of included them in Vista.
Matt Sharpe
They’re alright, but personally I still prefer Soundspectrum’s G-Force!
http://www.soundspectrum.com/g-force/
Michael Mc
I would so go back to WMP if they had the integration with a store that Apple’s iTunes does. “URGE” or whatever it is is only available in the US, leaving me with the crappy “MSN Music UK” which doesn’t really integrate at all.
Michael
I don’t know if anyone else experienced this, but after installing these visualizations, I went to listen to a playlist in WMP11 and started getting ‘You do not have the media usage rights to play this song (sic).” And these are songs that I burned from my own CDs mind you.
Are these visualizations the true culprit?
Michael
I right clicked the file properties and found no DRM protection on the files. Re-adding them to my library fixed this problem, but still weird nonetheless.
Albert
I agree. Visualizations NEED to be updated…I expected at least a couple in Vista with WMP11, and yet I was dissapointed.
ning
It’s nice and beautiful for Vista Screen !!!!
ning
For Vista Screen To my computer????
Riva
About time someone created a visualization which looks great
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กำโหลดตรงไหน
ANthony
Wow these guys should be hired on the non-existent Vista Ultimate Extras team!
madonion
oooo ultra cool, i remember someone made a thread on neowin about a microsoft page about wmp11 and it had that ribbon viz and everyone wanted to know when it was coming out i guess this is it
Edward
By golly these are the sort of neat things that Microsoft employees should be being paid to make.
Bundle it with the WMP download and give those chaps a bonus- this provides some much needed rejuvination to the WMP visualizations.
If only WMP wasn’t so bloody flawed.. the way it puts all mixed-artist-albums under the artist name ‘Various Arists’ when you sort by artist is almost enough to make me swith to iTunes… I just want to see ALL my songs damnit. Sorted by artist. Is that really too much to ask?
Koogle
they should port this over winamp.. would be much more popular there.. either that are make some decent improvements to WMP… no black background sucks.. and poor skins
Imran
Cooooooooooooool
anonymous
Do they work with WMP11 in XP?
boke
Supper bence cok sahana ve gorsel effekler cok hos
masterstars
baaaaa WMP11 sux i use WMP 10 with VTP and WINDOWS BLINDS makes my system look vista but is actuly windows XP pro SP2 runs like a bute … if there was a FREAKING DOWNLOAD LINK FOR THE VISUALS it would be FRGEN NICE! later chaps
xxx
good work
memberjoe
Download Psychedelia Viz Pack:
http://www.wmplugins.com/ItemDetail.aspx?ItemID=1116
jhon
# Bubbles - inspired by the Bubbles Vista screensavers also featuring the album art
# Ribbons - inspired by the Mystify and Ribbons Vista screensavers (as seen above)
these 2 seem to be not working pls help.
Allen
How to download it?????? I don’t know!Who can tell me?
memberjoe
Direct link for Psychedelia Viz Pack:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/b/1/8b1173c7-df99-4a78-bf26-3 ad9751bf9ac/PsychedeliaVizPack.msi
Tim Cowley
Thanks for the positive review and comments!
To clear some things up: dev time was more like several months’ worth of hobby coding, months and months of tweaking, and a year of bureaucracy.
Hypnobloom does other colors! Your music is just purple music. Try some talk radio or bitpop, you’ll get pretty blues and greens.
anon: Yep, they work in wmp11 in XP.
Edward: My thoughts exactly
jhon: do any of the others work? Your video card might not be shadertastic enough. We do all of our blur in hardware so that we don’t chew CPU. What video card do you have?
Matt Sharpe: customisability and extensibility is coming in ver 2. We’ll catch up, and in typical microsoft fashion, probably get it right in ver 3.1
jhon
Hi
Tim Cowley
i am using Radeon™ X1900.
thx for the reply.
Kevin Gordon
Bloody hell! This pack is fracking awesome!
Album Art 3D is the best viz ever!
Stephen and Tim, I love it - Thanks for your effort with this one!
Dody
Can I download this program ?Can I have it ?please
mohamed
amazing
Jon
@Tim Cowley
I have the same problem like Jhon.
# Bubbles - inspired by the Bubbles Vista screensavers also featuring the album art
# Ribbons - inspired by the Mystify and Ribbons Vista screensavers (as seen above)
These 2 seem to be not working.
I’m using a Radeon™ NX8600GTS, 1024MB RAM and a AMD Athlon™ 64 processor 3200+ ~2.0GHz. My windows version is XP Pro SP2.
Plz help?!
Stephen Coy
Hi guys,
I don’t know why Bubbles or Ribbons should be having trouble on both cards.
Jon, you seem to have mixed up an Nvidia part number (8600GTS) with an ATI brand (Radeon).
In both cases your best bet is to go to either the Nvidia or ATI web site (depending on your card) and download the latest drivers.
scoy
nezinho
seus norte americanos bandos de viados kkkkkkkkk
Jon
@ Stephen Coy
Thanks for you’re answer!
“Jon, you seem to have mixed up an Nvidia part number (8600GTS) with an ATI brand (Radeon).”
Yes, you’re right!
Sorry.
I’ve used a ATI Radeon before.
The correct information is a Nvidia GeForce ‘NX8600GTS’ with updated drivers.
Is it possible that the language of my windows version is the problem?
I’m using the Dutch XP Pro.
Jon
bola
helllllooooooooo“Jon, you seem to have mixed up an Nvidia part number (8600GTS) with an ATI brand (Radeon).”
Yes, you’re right!
Sorry.
I’ve used a ATI Radeon before.
The correct information is a Nvidia GeForce ‘NX8600GTS’ with updated drivers.
petos
Man, whats up with microsoft. they took so long to upgrade their media player. Finally its here but still need some good looking ones. ones that make you wonder and say awe!
Stephen Coy
Hi Jon,
I just tested Bubbles and Ribbons on an 8800GTS and they work fine for me. I doubt there’s any functional difference between an 8800 and an 8600 other than speed. Neither vis does anything cutting edge anyway. Also I can’t think of any reason that the language version should make any difference.
Sorry, but I’m stumped.
scoy
Jon
Hi Stephen,
I’ve just reinstalled my PC and downloaded the lastest drivers.
Everything is working fine, except … The Bubbles and Ribbons.
But thank you for testing.
Sorry for my bad language, I’m Dutch.
Jon
Tim Cowley
Enh, Hypnobloom is cooler than those ones anyway.
diego
lsdddddddd mmmmmmmmmmmm
Stephen Coy
Hey Tim, aren’t you supposed to be working or something…
Jon Henbest
I downloaded this Viz yesterday and I can’t get them to work. If I select one of the new vizzes, it just stays the same as what I had previously selected. Other times, when I select one, the window (where the viz should be) goes black. I checked my drivers (on Microsoft Update)and it said that it didn’t need to update any drivers. I’m running a Dell XPS M140 with 1268 RAM. Any suggestions??? I REALLY WANT THESE VISUALIZATIONS!!!!!!!
Stephen Coy
Hi Jon,
I’m afraid you’re out of luck. The visualizations require a graphics card that supports shader model 2.0 for both the vertex shaders and the pixel shaders. According to the info I was able to find the M140 comes with the Intel 915GM graphics chip, which doesn’t support hardware vertex shaders at all.
Of course the blame is not all Intel’s, Tim, we should change the framework so that we detect this case and fall back to software vertex processing.
scoy
Jon Henbest
Stephen….Thanks for the additional information!!! I guess I’ll just have to be happy with what I’ve got…..unless you and Tim make the changes to the framework!!! (hint, hint)
Tim Cowley
Actually, _making_ a framework in the first place would be good. These are all seperate binaries, with a lot of re-used code, but many differences.
For the ‘open architecture’ version 2, falling back to software VS is a good idea. The first step with that will be generalizing and re-making these vizzes anyway.
Jon Henbest
Well, if you ever get around to getting it completed, let me know!!!
od3n
cool visual… wanna grab it also
Lou
I like the visualizations which work fine with WMP 11, but when I try to run with the Vista Media Center all I get is the desktop displayed, maybe with some controls (like play/pause), but no viz.
I saw on other forums that others were seeing this problem. Has anyone resolved it?
I just got a new dell with I think 8600 GTS. Windows says the drivers are updated. Like I say it works with WMP, so I don’t think it’s the video card/drivers.
Stephen Coy
Hi Lou,
I’m not even sure that the Media Center vis plugin format is the same as that for Media Player. Anyone know for sure?
scoy
kuba
can I download Vista screensaver to my pc? i have windows xp professional sp2! answer me to jkaczor96wppl
kuba
sorry, jkaczor96(at)wp(dot)pl
Tim Cowley
@kuba: these work on XP and Vista, and we’re investigating why they don’t work on media center.
slobone
Hi, your visualizations crash and freeze the display on my WMP. How do I delete them from my computer?
Stephen Coy
Sorry to hear your having trouble. The files are installed into the directory “\Program Files\Windows Media Player\Visualizations” if you want to remove them manually. The easiest way is to just run the install again. The install dialog will have an option to remove them. Choose this and they’re gone.
Tim Cowley
Control Panel | Add and Remove Programs. They’ll be in that list.
Tim Cowley
Slobone, I’m actually VERY interested in your case, because I thought I had gotten rid of any crashing problems. Which OS and video card have you got?
slobone
Deleting the files doesn’t work, they just reinstall themselves the next time I open WMP. (And by the way there are two separate folders, Visualisations and Visualizations!). I’m running Windows XP Version 5.1 Build 2600, from 2001. I have an Intel 82865G Graphics Controller, I guess that means I don’t have a video card. Hmm, it sounds pretty inadequate, doesn’t it? Your visualizations don’t do their full thing on my WMP, in fact they’re rather dull. The nature of the crash is that when I choose Hypnobloom Kandinsky from the submenus, the display freezes, and all I see is the submenus. If I go to fullscreen mode, or click on Library and then Now Playing again, they go away. That’s the only visualization I’ve had that problem with.
Tim Cowley
slobone:
yeah, you should instead go into control panel, then add/remove programs, find ‘next generation visualisations’ in the list, and remove it. The new setup scripts try to repair themselves if their files are deleted.
Yep, your card is a dx8 / opengl 1.1 level card. We used dx9.0c / opengl 2.0 - specific features for these.
-phew- I was worried that we were bluescreening/rebooting your machine or managing to take windows down. It sounds like the code is doing the right thing in your case. Sadly, this is unhelpfully boring and frustrating.
To attempt to elicit a little sympathy - we thought about adding UI that would pop up and say “your video card isn’t expensive enough”, but if we’d done that, we would have had to translate it for every locale… and with no actual budget we couldn’t do that.
Wesley
It looks great inside WMP 11 with Vista but how come it doesn’t work in Vista MCE when I choose visualize from after selecting the song to play? WHen I choose Visualise, it goes to the desktop with two black boxes in the bottom task bar and then the album information is transposed on my desktop while the music is playing but I am looking at the desktop at this point? Is there a way to make it compatible with Vista MCE?
Dan
Hey Guys
Downloaded the other day and spent a good half hour playing around with different types of music - best free vis’s available for WMP - well done. A couple didn’t work on my business spec lappy (appeared to keep playing the previously selected one) but reading above I gather that’s cos I don’t have a graphics card. Now though, I get a BSOD if I go to the Now Playing tab in WMP - unless it runs in Safe Mode (like when you open it after a crash)… any clues? I’ll just uninstall for now.
Cheers
Dan
Mike
I’m running XP MCE 2005 and I too cannot get the visualizations to work on Media Center. They work great on WMP11. In fact not even the default viz’s work when the PSYC VIZ PAK is installed. But when I uninstall it the defaults return in Media Center. Any progress on researching this problem?
TimC
Wesley, Mike:
what video cards have you got? The vizzes all work in Media Center in Vista Ultimate, provided you’ve got a DX 9.0c - level video card.
Jordan
I’m so happy to have some new visualizations in WMP.
I had been using Itunes for the last few weeks on my new Comp, b/c I liked it’s vis. better….but these just made me switch back to wmp. Also, it appears to use much less CPU time than itunes (I assume b/c of what you said about using hardware accel, vs. software), so that’s great!
Thanks guys!
PS - current fave is hynobloom -> Delerium Line Assembly
Oh, one thing I noticed is that when WMP is maximized to full screen, the hypnobloom Delerium vis. runs at considerably faster frame rate than when it’s not maximize (even if it is expanded to be as large as possible)…just a note. I actually like it better running at the slower frame rate.
Sys Specs: EVGA 650i motherboard, Intel E6750, 2GB 800MHz RAM, EVGA 8600GT
Wesley
TimC:
I’m using an nvidia 7600 GS AGP with 512 megs..
Stephen Coy
Hi Mike,
Sorry, the only “progress” I can report is that I have the same problem on my home machine. I’m running XP MCE with an Nvidia 7900GTX graphics card and none of the vis’s (including the default ones) run in media center.
Jordan, I think the speed-up is being caused by the fact that when not running full screen the image has to be rescaled to fit the window. As for the animation rate being tied to the frame rate, I’m just guessing but that sounds like the cause is slacker developers.
take care,
scoy
Tim Cowley
WMP limits the framerate during windowed mode to 30 fps (or possibly one half actual framerate) - which you can see if you run FRAPS. It lets loose and the things scream along at full throttle in fullscreen mode, which is where I do most of my vis watching.
mrstoney
I’m running MCE vista-ulti and have the same problem that’s been listed by Mike and Wesley (works in WMP but no in MCE).
However, I’m running a silent MSI 8600GTS 256MB DX10. Do I have to do anything special to have this work in MCE?
By the way, great work!
Brandon
Same prob here..
I have MCE vista ultimate… works well under media player.. but not under MC….
Silent MSI 8500GT, Intel Core2 Duo….
Stephen Coy
Sad to say the issues with MCE will probably never get fixed. I’m not even sure if it’s something that we’re doing or something that MCE is doing. I would guess that since the visualizations run fine under WMP that the problem is on the MCE side but that just may be the developer in me saying “not my fault”.
Neither Tim nor I know anyone in the MCE team so we can’t go directly there for help. Any MCE devs out there reading this? With our “day jobs” keeping both of us plenty busy it’s hard to find the time to dig into something like this.
Lou
Stephen said, “Sorry, the only “progress” I can report is that I have the same problem on my home machine. I’m running XP MCE with an Nvidia 7900GTX graphics card and none of the vis’s (including the default ones) run in media center.”
FWIW, when I removed ‘next generation visualisations’ I was able to get the default visualizations to work in vista mce.
I’d love to get that 3D album cover effect, and I’m disappointed I can’t, but I understand the day job issue. You guys have done a great job getting these working to this level — too bad it’s hard to find the right people at microsoft to help you with the final mile.
Best of luck.
Wesley
The amazing thing is that everyone that has reported it so far is using an Nvidia GFX card. Unless I overlooked someone posting about an ATI setup?
Stephen Coy
I know that when WMP encounters a visualization that fails it just tries to skip it in the list of visualizations and moves on to the next one. It appears that adding a vis to MCE that doesn’t work causes MCE to stop trying to display any visualizations at all. Either that or Tim and I wrote some code that breaks MCE even when it’s not running. And they say the pen is mightier than the sword. Beware my keyboard!
Hitesh Dhiman
Hello there!
I installed these visualizations but they do not seem to work, the screen is just blank, or changes to one of the existing visualizations.I have an Intel GMA X3100 and 2 gb system RAM.Pls Help!!!!
Stephen Coy
The specs for the Intel GMA X3100 looks like it should be fine so I’m not sure why it’s not working for you. About the only thing I can suggest is to be sure that you have the latest drivers from Intel.
Ryan
Is there anything that would prevent developers from creating a visualization that featured a tap tempo function like that found on a light dimmer? I think that would allow users the best visual reactivity to the music.
Mike
I installed these on my computer, and none of them work. Some show a black screen, others completly crash my computer, giving me a Blue Screen Of Death. Also, I can’t fully remove these. I’m not sure if this means anything, but I have a RADEON 9100 PRO IGP Series Display Adaptor, and the Processor is an Intel Celeron 2.80GHz, and I have 960 MB of RAM. Does anyone have advice to make these work? Please Help!!!
Tim Cowley
Hey Mike.
Sorry to hear about the bluescreening. It shouldn’t be possible to happen, it’d be interesting to get more details from you.
In any case, your video card is underpowered for these vizzes. It’s only a directx 8.1 level card, and these vizzes require a directx 9.0 card at least.
To remove them, just go to the control panel and use ‘remove programs’. Look for ‘next generation visualizations’. You can also just go delete the dll files for the vizzes, which will be in
c:\program files\windows media player\visualisations\
or something very similar.
-Tim
Mike
Thanks, Tim.
I didn’t realize I had a lower video card (I’m not really a computer expert). I’ll try uninstalling them for now, and maybe eventually I’ll get a better video card. It won’t be anytime soon, though.
Thanks for the help.
-Mike
James
Disappointed…
I have the same MCE issues as everyone else. Installed “Next Generation Visualizations” and ALL Visualizations stopped working in Vista Media Center. Removed them and the default ones are back to normal. I’ve got an NVidia GeForce 8600M GS 256MB in my Laptop. DX10 compatible. What’s the deal here? These are great visualizations, but they’re in my Recycle Bin. Sorry guys.
Wesley
Please keep in mind that they developed these for fun and they are great for Windows Media Player! Although I would like to have them functioning in Windows Vista Media Center, I wouldn’t say that I’m upset with their efforts! I commend them on their work and if they have the time or want to spend the effort, it appears many people would like to see this type of visualization inside vMCE as well!
Tim Cowley
Thanks, Wesley. It’s funny how Steve and I are getting criticized as if we have the full resources of MS behind us. Or -any- resources, really. It’s just us. All the slashdot-style criticism in the world isn’t going to get us a hotfix from the Media Center devs.
Keith Townsend
Much applause for these sweet visualizations! They all work perfectly in WMP 11 on my Dell XPS M2010 with Vista Ultimate.
After reading the issues others have with getting them to work in MCE I gave it a try and sure enough I just get the desktop image instead of a visualization. It would be awesome to have these working in MCE, so I’m crossing my fingers and sending praise
Rob Linegar
Guys.. I believe there is a simpler solution to your problem.. somewhere… I found ’something’ that i’m sure will help solve the issues with this pack.
Like everyone else.. I love these visualisations.. and have run into the problems using it with MCE on my nice new Vista home premium laptop.. however.. most ran today.. working albeit intermittently at times.
Like the others above I also have an NVidia card.. Its an 8400M GS.. Direct X 10, Shader 4. However now for some reason they wont work with MCE at all.
The programmer in me hoped that this was some kind of error you could pin down. And knowing i’d being looking at album art 3d and upcuber a lot today I wondered if the issue was with another vis dll.. so I fiddled a bit.. the goal to get them installed manually (otherwise your install reinstalls everything..)..
first i tried another test.. I replaced ALL your VIS DLLs with copies of a “known good” one that is fine without this pack installed.. it didn’t work.. odd huh?
so i took copies of the upCuber dll, the 4 dlls i think you use as helpers? (dont have depends.exe at home..) and.. saved off the registry entry for upcuber + the clsid associated..
after uninstalling the pack and then adding back the files and reg values..
i’m pleased to say that so far (my favourite) upCuber works fine..
will try some more soon..
Tim Cowley
Rob:
Thanks ^_^. You’ll get better perf out of them if you turn off transparency effects in the Vista desktop, they have to fight with it.
Each vis is contained within it’s dll, other than the directx dependencies. The names don’t match up exactly, for silly technical reasons. Clarity.dll is the ‘distortion’ vis.
We don’t know what exactly is broken with media centre. We will probably not find out, since we’re just going to make version 2 and test that on things while developing, and try to make it work everywhere.
If you want to manually install/uninstall these dlls, they just have to be regsvr’d - so, from a command prompt in the same dir as the dlls:
regsvr32 upcuber.dll
will register that dll. To uninstall,
regsvr32 /u upcuber.dll
you will most likely have to do this from a command prompt with admin privileges, and you may need to do it in the same dir as the d3dx_xx.dll files. I’d be interested in any more results you get out of this, and if you’d like to help with version 2, I’ve just got the prototype working and have put out the call for help. Check out my project blog for details:
http://www.apparentlythisispossible.com/blog/
Rob Linegar
I had wondered if they had to be registered that way
.. i’ve found if either value isnt there MCE has the same issue…
Thanks.. I’m halfway through another post..
also from my testing so far… only albumart3d is causing a problem.. full results in 5 mins
but I HAVE seen it run today.. which I find very strange!
Rob Linegar
ok the results.. from adding/removing 1 by 1… just manually editting the registry etc.. oh and i’ve moved all dll’s to a different folder..
all working together.. upcuber, ribbon, bubbles, gigertron3d aka threeDbars, hypnobloom aka metabars, distortion aka clarity
the bad.. as mentioned albumart3d..
Tim Cowley
Rob:
Okay! So, to be perfectly clear: after unregistering albumart3d.dll, all the other visualisations work in MCE?
Rob Linegar
Yup!
Michael
@Tim Cowley:
Wow, you guys really need to put this by default in WMP 12 or so on.
It doesn’t make sense why WMP 11 (the best media management/playback program there is) doesn’t include these. I always thought the WMP visualizations were lame compared to the ones in iTunes (on Mac). But I’m so impressed by these.
I hope you guys continue working on even more visualizations.
Oh, and on a side note: Would it hurt for Microsoft to tweak WMP to allow the Zune to work on it?
Can’t you guys mix the best of the fluid ZMP UI, with the graphical elements of the WMP 11 UI?
I mean, that would be the bomb. The ULTIMATE media player ever. Just think about it, ok?
Stephen Coy
I was able to verify Rob’s “fix” on my home machine. Unregister the albumart3d dll and the rest all seem to work fine. Still no clue why this should break MCE though.
Thanks Rob!
scoy
Tim Cowley
Michael: from what I’ve been able to ferret out, it’s always been like this; MS approaches outside designers, but they usually want WAY too much money. Or, the graphics projects are on the schedule but get cut to make more time available for actual feature work, and graphics hackers with too much energy implement something on their own. According to hallway rumor, the previous screensavers and vizzes were all like this.
The iTunes vis was done the same way as the glowey lines screensaver on vista - contracted out to a design firm, rather than coded up by company people.
Ultimately, with so many great vizzes on the wmplugins site, and the testing cost and risk potential brought in by putting the things in the box, there’s very little reason for WM to include these. I’d certainly be happy to see it, but it’s unlikely. It’s not so bad, anyway: WMP’s embedded browser takes you to windowsmedia.com the first time you run it, so the visualisations are easily discoverable. Web site stats show that psychedelia is getting 8 thousand downloads _per day_ (~740k at last count, 10% of those through the wmplugins site) so we’re not exactly toiling in obscurity.
Maybe Dell will start installing them on their machines. I should ask them.
As for the zune: you need to find the right people to talk to about that. I work in Office, and Stephen’s in Research. :/ My personal, ultra-cynical opinion, if you’d like to hear it, is that if we made Zune work with WMP, someone (coughapplecough) would attempt an antitrust suit against us, for something like exploiting our market dominance on the desktop to attack apple’s market dominance in digital music.
Michael
@Tim Crowley:
Thanks for explaining.
Wouldn’t it be better to just hire/keep these graphical designers, instead of depending on outside work? I mean, isn’t design just as important as function?
3rd party is of course nice. #1 reason why I love WMP 11, and the WMplugins site. But having it included with the initial out-of-the-box experience, definitely boosts up the usage and discoverability. But it’s awesome people are discovering this.
And if Apple complains and all, they’re being a hypocrite. That’s the exact same thing for Apple. You buy OS X on Macs only, you can (legally) manage your iPod on iTunes only, etc. To me, that seems MUCH more closed.
WMP 11 supports a ton of add-ons, syncs with a ton of PlayForSure devices, many online stores, I mean, this is SO dumb. That is pretty much VERY open.
As if Zune + ZMP is any different from being ‘proprietary’.
I just feel Microsoft has so much potential, but these little things stop it. Well anyways, it was great hearing your thoughts about this.
Thanks for helping make this, and making this free. I would love to see more from any of the teams.
Keith Townsend
I just discovered that with Vista MCE I just had to go to the visualization settings in Media Center and uncheck albumart3d from the available visualizations then close and restart Media Center to get the other visualizations working. Didn’t have to unregister the dll. I haven’t had a chance to experiment with this on my other XP MCE system to see if that option is available. This is good news for those who aren’t comfortable unregistering DLL’s, at least for Vista’s Media Center.
Keith Townsend
XP’s MCE has the same option to enable/disable which visualizations to use that I had found in Vista’s MCE, but I still had to unregister the albumart3d.dll from the system to get the other visualizations to work in XP’s MCE. I guess Vista&