Windows Media Player Review: Discovering WMP 12

Written by: Om Thoke • Edited by: Lamar Stonecypher
Updated Jul 28, 2009 • Related Guides: Windows MEdia Player | Media Player | Windows

Windows Media Player is the most popular juke box in the Windows family. It is compatible only with the systems that run on the Windows OS, and to experience the real quality of the Media Player 12 (latest version), you need an up-to-date system that runs on the Windows Vista OS.

Windows Media player 12 Overview

There have been several advancements in features, as well as organization and settings, of the latest version of the media player. So let us look at each of the aspects one by one.

Display:

Managing the display of WM 12 is easy. There are many new colors, and you can change them in the Preferences area. There are different color tablets to choose from, in order to pick the one that you want to keep on the juke box.

Moreover, color and the display effects in this version are quite evident.

Organization
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Though Microsoft has tried many different sorting techniques, the organization of the songs and the playlists within Media Player has often been a matter of discontentment. This has been sorted out in this version. You can search for any song easily in this version.

Users are also provided with the ablity to rate songs on a scale of one to five, and they're given separate access to the songs that have been rated only by the particular user as well.

What's more, you can also select the information you want on the screen, such as the name of the song, album, year of release, ratings, contributing artists, song time, release year, artists, user rating, and other related stuff.

So, it is totally up to the user to display only as little or as much as he/she actually wishes to.

Improvements over the Media Player Version 11

The latest edition of the Windows Media Player is a massive jump from its predecessor - Media Player 11. This version scores over version 11 in almost all aspects from organization and looks right down to its amazing audio features. Retrieving songs in this edition is simpler than the previous one, as you needed to make a manual search with 11, while 12 actually scans through the desired folder making your work much easier.

Added features

Basically, the developments haven't been made in just improving the appearance and organization, but also in the sound quality of the audio. You can make adjustments for the speed of the song, its bass, the overall sound quality, and so on. All this happens below the "Now Playing" tab of the menu. So, this is definitely an attraction for all those who would want to play around with the quality of the music.

The Bad

Turning the focus to the bad aspects of the Windows Media Player 12, you'll find that the player is a bit bloated, and the download file size is larger than Winamp or Real Player. Moreover, there's no mp3-ripper as in case of the earlier versions of Media Player.

However, most of the problems in the earlier version of Media Player have been duly fixed, and the Windows Media Player 12 is indeed the best out of the lot.

The Bottom-Line
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So in a nutshell, this is an amazing juke box in the Windows Media Player family. Those who're interested in awesome audio clarity, excellent graphics that add up to the appearance of the player, and those who are interested in the better organization of the files and details that are given in them, can actually try downloading this as it is bound to fulfill all your expectations.

The search options are better than any other previous version of the WMP and all these factors added together make the Windows Media Player 12 the best ever version of the player to date.

There are many other tools that are available as well and it is recommended that you go through them provided you have a Windows supported OS in your home.

Overall, if I were to rate this cool player, I would definitely give it four and half stars out of five!