Windows Media Player 11 on XP

[aleeonline]

News finally broke about WMP 11 XP edition.. Its going to be release in late June.. It wont have all the features that the vista version has. But, MS has been very tight lipped over what they will include in the XP incarnation. The Vista version will have the following features included:


The Vista version, which has been in public testing for months, offers significant changes from the current version of the media-playing software, particularly when connecting to portable devices. With the new media player, consumers will be able to "reverse sync," meaning they can send content from a digital device to a PC. That will allow users to transfer pictures taken with their camera phone, or music purchased on a wireless device. Other sync options include synching a player to multiple PCs and filling a device with random tracks--a la Shuffle in iTunes--according to a Windows Vista product guide that was briefly made available on the Internet last week.

Another change is the ability to alter protected music and video files to change their quality level. With the new software, protected Windows Media files can be converted to smaller file sizes for playback on mobile devices, where there is less need for very-high-quality video files. Of course, the player that most people want to connect with is Apple Computer's iPod. And no, Windows Media Player 11 won't allow conversion of purchased Windows Media Songs into iTunes' proprietary FairPlay format. So songs bought from a Windows Media store still won't play on the iPod.

"When people are taking their songs off their computer, it's usually to an iPod," said Yankee Group analyst Nitin Gupta. It is unclear whether Microsoft plans to build any special options to connect to the world's most popular digital music player. With the Xbox 360, Microsoft allows users to play music from the player, even though it can't process songs purchased from iTunes. "That's certainly something they could implement," Gupta said. "The real issue is the purchased music portion. That's not going to change anytime soon."