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| WMP 11 vs iTunes. |
Authored By : Saurav Srivastava, Microsoft MVP. |
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The Windows Media Player 11, in Windows Vista is a complete overhaul of the previous versions. |
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| The WMP is based on the DirectShow engine of Microsoft, which means all video and audio it plays is hardware accelerated & decoded as long as the graphics card is compatible, such as nVidia GeForce 6 & up series using PureVideo or ATI X1xxx series using AVIVO Engine. |
Due to this DirectShow nature, Windows Media Player can support any media format out there, as long as a codec is provided. Theoretically it can even play DRM content, which is not WMA such as iTunes FairPlay; but so far Apple has not released FairPlay decoder for WMP. Windows has a centralized database of codec and any DirectShow compatible media player such as BSPlayer or WinAmp can access this database to play any file. In simple terms, if you have a codec installed, anything will play in any media player of your choice in Windows Vista.
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| Out of the box, Windows Media Player plays all you MP3 & WMA. The supported formats can be extended by installing third party codec & plug-in available freely & widely. Installing a simple codec such as FFDShow will allow you to play many more audio formats including MP4, or you can simply install the Orban Decoder to play non DRM mp4 & m4a files in Windows Media Player or the Matroska Pack for mkv files. The possibilities are endless. |
| WMP 11 has come with enhancement to Library Management taking lessons from some other innovative media players available in the market such as iTunes or Winamp. Now you can search for any song in your library using the inbuilt search. You can sort your songs in various categories such as Album, artist Year, genre etc. |
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| Tagging songs is not a tough task although right now WMP supports tagging of only MP3 & WMA formats. You can either enter the tags yourself using the advanced tag editor or simply right click on a music file & select “Find Album info” which will gather the album info as well as Album art from the Windows Media Database. No matter whether it is a DRM song or non-DRM song or a song ripped from your CD. You also don’t need to sign in to do any of these. Simply go ahead, WMP doesn’t ask for any info of yours. |
| With WMP it is not just about Music Library, because, now you can even make a library of your videos based on tags you define. Just like music you can search for video songs, movies & TV Shows added to your library. |
| By default WMP rips your CDs in WMA format which you can change from the Options. You can also burn your songs which WMP will automatically convert while burning an Audio CD. |
| When it comes to Portable Media player management, WMP beats every other Media player out there. It syncs & connects to thousands of media players out there which support WMP. You just connect any PMP or DAP & it will detect it automatically & ask you whether you want to sync or not, If you do then it will either convert the songs you select to sync in a compatible format, & will sync them with proper tags, folder structure, album art etc. It even syncs to Sony Walkman phone, as long as you are syncing mp3 & not converting them to wma. However with new Walkman phones available from SE which support WMA, WMP can now sync directly saving both & space & quality. |
| You can purchase songs from many compatible online stores whether it is MTV Urge or Napster. The songs play in WMP only, if they are DRM based. If they are not then they play anywhere. Windows Media player is a solution to all your Multimedia management or playback needs. |
One thing which is in WMP & not in iTunes that you can change the interface colour on the fly to anything you like. Even as ugly to red
Now comparing this to the Quicktime+iTunes ecosystem available on Mac OS X. |
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| QuickTime technology & engine is one of the best engines out there which rivals that of Windows Media, however the QuickTime player is a very slow & buggy media player on Windows platform just like iTunes. On a Mac the story is different & I wonder why can’t Apple release it properly for Windows? 90% of the iPod users are Windows users. I am comparing the Mac offering here. |
| QuickTime out of the box, just like Windows Media player plays many formats such as mp3 & mp4. It doesn’t support WMA unless you have the Flip4Mac component installed. It supports DivX content using the official DivX component which you will need to download & install. Just like WMP there is most likely a video/audio codec available for QuickTime. You can also install FFmpegX on a Mac using which you can encode one video format to other. To download more QuickTime Components, you can check Apple website |
Mac OS X uses the QuickTime engine for everything. Whether it is decoding a jpg or bmp in Preview or playing a video in a webpage, it is all handled with QuickTime. It even handles Flash files but you are better off using the official flash codec. QuickTime has hardware accelerated Video using Core Video on Mac OS X 10.4 or later, so CPU usage is reduced a lot while playing H.264 based contents. |
| However QuickTime is not without its flaws. Just to play a video full screen you need to buy QuickTime for $30. Since QuickTime is more like a Multimedia platform, after buying the full version you can also use it for file format conversion such as DivX to H.264. Also to play or export mpeg2 content in QuickTime you will need to buy the QuickTime MPEG 2 component available for another $20. It is just a media player first & not for library management. For that there is iTunes. |
| With iTunes, things are not so good. iTunes is made for iPod & iPod is made for iTunes. iTunes uses the QuickTime audio decoding engine but doesn’t play any file format other then mp3 & mp4. The ability to play other file formats cannot be added at all. |
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| When you import songs in iTunes library, it imports them in form of its own library, making two copies of same song in your HD. One at the original location & second at the iTunes Library location. You can change this option from . |
Advanced > General > “Copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library.”
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| iTunes syncs only to iPod, & this management is superb indeed. You can easily do whatever you want with your iPod with iTunes. iTunes also manages other Apple only products such as iPhone & Apple TV, so if you have Apple products then iTunes is the best bet for you. If you don’t have Apple products & like to use other better choices then iTunes is not for you whether Mac or Windows.
Tagging songs is very easy using iTunes, however if you want to use automatic tagging or download Album art from within iTunes for your songs, you will require to get an iTunes music store account, which isn’t available in all parts of Asia. Though you can easily fool the system I guess.
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Not only Music, you can also manage library of Movies, TV shows & what not you bought from iTunes store. You can also manage your home grown videos provided they are in mp4 or m4v format because iTunes will only support these formats to import. Your DivX/DVR-MS/MPEG/AVI videos cannot be managed in iTunes unless they are converted to mp4 format which takes time to convert.
Searching for a song in your iTunes library is very easy, just type in the search box.
Ripping songs from CDs is possible in either wav mp3 or mp4 with m4a as the default codec.
You cannot copy songs back from iPod to your computer, because Apple doesn’t allows you to re-copy your own songs, you can re-download your purchased music only ones after informing & taking permission from Apple.
Most of iTunes users are Windows users & on Windows iTunes is a resource hogging media player which is not only slow but also eats about 60 MB of RAM just while playing music & minimized to tray. If it is not for iPod management & buying songs from iTunes music store then there is hardly a reason to stick to iTunes on Windows.
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