Media PlayersEnjoy music and movies from the internet with a media player. CW? tests six of the bestThe web is changing. As well as viewing words and pictures, you can now watch videos, play music or 'stream' audio clips online (see 'In Other Words'). And the popularity of this kind of content is soaring - in 2003, consumers watched over 7.8 billion videos online while, in the UK, downloads of MP3 files overtook UK single sales. However, to access online multimedia on your computer you need a 'media player' - software that transforms your computer into a DVD player, radio and CD player, and more. If you use Windows XP, you'll already have Windows Media Player (WMP) - it's included as a component of the operating system. Nevertheless, there are other options. WMP's main rivals are Apple QuickTime and RealNetworks' RealOne Player - 370,000 copies of QuickTime are downloaded every day and there are 300 million registered users of RealOne Player. We tested six media players in all: Apple iTunes 4.2 and QuickTime 6.5, MusicMatch 8.2, RealOne Player 10, WinAmp 5.02 and Windows Media Player 9. Where both free and premium versions of the player are available, we tested both versions (see Table notes for more details on scoring and features). The media player that's right for you will depend on what you want to do with it, so we've reported our results in four areas - accessing website content, such as video clips from the BBC news website, searching for and accessing songs and movie trailers, managing your music collection, and listening to radio over the web. |
In Other WordsAAC Developed by the same companies that brought us the MP3 file format, this is a relatively new standard that's expected to supersede MP3 as the file of choice for internet audio. ATRAC stands for Adaptive Transform Adaptive Coding. Created by Sony, this is the file format supported by its MiniDisc system. DIVX A type of video file based on the MP4 format which will only play within an allotted period. MP3 Short for MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3, MP3 is currently the standard format for compressing audio files. MP4 Short for MPEG-4 this is the movie equivalent of MP3 and a file format that compresses video into manageable file sizes. RealMedia The collective term for RealAudio and RealVideo, Real's proprietary music and video formats. Stream Streaming enables you to play music, video or radio broadcasts straight from the web, without copying it to your hard drive. Your media player downloads the file in bite-sized chunks to a buffer (temporary storage). As the first chunk plays and the player refreshes it with the next - if the buffer empties this creates a pause in the broadcast. WMA Windows Media Audio - Microsoft's answer to MP3. WAV A format jointly developed by Microsoft and IBM. Microsoft built WAV support into its Windows 95 operating system. |
Absolute Beginners For simply playing back the multimedia content you find online, any
of the players we've tested will do. They all share the same, intuitive
interface - a small TV-style 'window' for viewing video and a 'play',
'pause' and 'stop' button - and all six players scored either That said, you may find that you need more than one media player to access all of the content you encounter online - it's not uncommon for websites to support a single player. For instance, you'll need QuickTime to watch clips from Apple's movies site (www.apple.com/trailers), while RealOne Player streams content exclusively for the BBC. Of the six on test QuickTime, RealOne Player, WMP and WinAmp are capable of streaming video; iTunes and MusicMatch are dedicated audio players and more accurately described as music 'jukeboxes'. Thankfully, it's possible to install more than one player on your computer without problems - we loaded QuickTime and RealOne Player on to the same Windows XP computer without any conflicts - but you'll need to pick one player as your default or 'favourite' player (see 'Winner Takes It All', for more details). |
Leader Of the PackPlayback is just one aspect of what is a rich application, however. A media player can also be your 'what's on' guide to the web, multimedia filing system, internet radio and in some cases CD authoring package. These features vary greatly from player to player.</ P> The searchers For exploring the rich multimedia content that the web has to offer
there's no better media player than RealOne. As the longest-established
media player, RealOne has exclusive content deals with a range of big
name partners such as the BBC. Its online content guide
(http://guide.real.com) lists a vast array of multimedia playable with
RealOne Player from movie releases to news bulletins, live events and
more. You'll find that some listings have an asterisk (*) next to them;
these clips are only available if you sign up to its subscription
service, RealOne SuperPass (£11.99 per month). Nonetheless, it still
topped our media search tests (which incorporate both music and video),
scoring Of the remaining players, only QuickTime and WMP offer a video search. MusicMatch and iTunes don't play video files so this is hardly surprising. And although WinAmp supports a range of audio and video files, its limited search facility makes it unlikely you'll come across many 'movies' that aren't music videos. WMP and MusicMatch performed well in our music search and come a close second to RealOne Player. Neither QuickTime nor iTunes can search for music by genre or artist; although this could easily change when the iTunes Music Store opens in Europe. |
Musical Youth Many portable digital music players come bundled with media player or jukebox software to allow you to manage and transfer your music collection from your computer to the device. Some are also tied to proprietary music download services. Apple's iTunes, for example, is designed to be used with the company's iPod music player and its iTunes music store. While the iTunes store won't be available in Europe until later this year, it's likely to prove popular with UK consumers given the recent stampede in the US to buy the iPod Mini - a CW? Best Buy. Similarly, Real Networks plans to launch a music download service (www.listen.com), later this year. MusicMatch's download site is, as yet, only available in the US. Microsoft offers two music services via its MSN website - its own MSN Music Downloads (http://entertainment.msn.co.uk/Music/default.asp) and Tiscali's Music Club; On Demand Distribution service (OD2) runs both services (see 'Website, Music', Sep 03). You can only download tracks from these sites as Windows Media Audio files (see 'Gold'). |
Rock DJAs your video and music collection expands, a media player can help you to organise it logically. While all the media players on test managed to separate the audio and video files, WMP does an excellent job of categorising music by artist, album title and genre. When you download music with WMP, it stores it in Windows XP's 'My Music' folder and automatically creates sub-folders for each individual artist, and folders within those for specific album titles. In addition, you can create 'playlists' of your favourite songs to play on your computer, transfer to a digital music player or burn to CD. By comparison, iTunes grouped all the music into one list, automatically building playlists for 'My top rated', 'Recently Played' and 'Top 25 Most Played'. You can also use 'Smart Playlists' - automatically created compilations of audio files based on a specified criteria, for example Artist equals 'Fleetwood Mac'. These update automatically to include recent additions to your library that meet the given criteria. WinAmp catalogues music by artist/ album, but you can't search by genre. QuickTime doesn't catalogue files at all. |
Movin' On UpYou can do more than merely find, play and catalogue files with a media player - dig a little deeper and you'll discover hundreds of worldwide radio stations, the ability burn and 'rip' audio CDs and a choice of file formats. Radio ga-ga...More people than ever are tuning into the radio via the web; if you're one of them,this will affect your choice of media players. While some radio stations get their revenue from advertising, many rely on subscriptions for funding, so in many cases, you'll need a content subscription as well as a media player to access all the content available. RealOne Player, for example, claims to stream over 3,200 radio stations, but you'll only get access to some of these if you don't sign up for its RealOne 'RadioPass' - not cheap at £8.50 a month. Likewise, MusicMatch separates radio into 'free' and subscription services. The free service gives you access to 200 radio stations. Upgrade to MusicMatch MX Platinum (US $4.95 per month) and you'll get a wider range of stations and some interesting extra features including 'Artist On Demand', which will search the network for a station that is currently playing your favourite artist. Windows Media Player and WinAmp both tune into a good range of stations and iTunes offered around 200 radio streams when we tested the service. QuickTime doesn't stream internet radio.
RealOne Player had the widest choice of stations on offer and achieved the top score ( |
Talkin' 'Bout A RevolutionAll of the players (except QuickTime) can playback audio CDs. The first time you play a CD, the player will search for album information online and download it to your computer. From then on, every time you put that disc into your computer, details of the artist, album title and tracks will appear in your media player. Some software will also download an image of the CD cover, which appears as an icon within your media player's directory, making it easier to search through your digital music collection. While this is hardly essential for playing music, the ability of the player to automatically download track information, for instance, is particularly useful if you want to 'rip' or copy audio files from CD (illegal without the permission of the copyright holder) to MP3 for storage on your computer. The player automatically creates the ID3 'tags' or track information for you so you don't have to type it in manually. With the exception of QuickTime, most players also include CD authoring software, which enables you to burn audio CDs, however, the free version of MusicMatch 'caps' the speed at which you can do this (see 'Gold'). |
Ebony and IvoryWhat you can do with the songs after you download them to your computer depends on their file format - AAC, MP3, ATRAC, WMA (see 'In Other Words') - and the versatility of your media player. Most players can play all the major types of files, but there are exceptions. iTunes, for instance, can't decode or 'read' Windows Media Audio (WMA) files (see Table for details of supported file formats). In addition, some file types, such as WMA, incorporate digital rights management which allows music publishers to 'copy-protect' their content at different levels. For example, at the MSN music download site, http://entertainment.msn.com/Download, you can sample music for free, stream the full song or download a permanent copy to your computer. But, once downloaded, the WMA file's copy protection may prevent you from copying it to a device, such as a portable music player, or burning it to CD. |
GoldAs we've mentioned, some players are available in both free and paid for versions, so the question is, is it worth paying to upgrade? Our tests revealed the biggest difference between QuickTime 6.5 (free) and QuickTime Pro (US $29.99). The upgrade allows you to play full-screen movies, edit video, create photo slideshows and prepare movies for streaming, but still underperformed compared to the other players on test. If you upgrade to the 'Plus' version of RealOne Player (US $19.99), you'll gain access to more online content and the ability to play DVDs (as long as you have a DVD drive and decoder installed) and burn CDs from the one package. The premium version of MusicMatch (US $19.99) offers faster CD burning (see 'Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution') and the ability to create digital photo slideshows. Upgrading to WinAmp (US $14.95) will allow you to play a wider variety of media types, but some of these are supported by free versions of alternative players. Overall, there's not much incentive to upgrade - the free versions cover the needs of most consumers. And while the premium version of QuickTime is a big improvement over its free equivalent, as we've already mentioned, even the paid for version falls short of its competitors. iTunes and Windows Media Player are only available as free versions. |
Media Players on Trial |
Winner Takes It AllIf you simply want to be able to play audio and video files on your computer then chances are the pre-installed Windows Media Player will fulfil the majority of your needs. However, in our tests, RealOne Player outperformed WMP in terms of ease of use, content searching and features. Its biggest downside is that you'll have to put up with frequent pop-up ads touting Real's paid subscription services. If you choose to install both the free versions of RealOne Player and QuickTime (in addition to WMP) to cope with the different kinds of content you're likely to find online, you can set each one up to be your default player for different file types. This means you could set RealOne Player to launch automatically when you come across its proprietory audio or video files, for example. If you regularly stream content like BBC radio from the web, then you may want to plump for the Plus version of RealOne Player - it gives you access to a wide choice of international radio and is the Beeb's exclusive player. Whether you choose to also install jukebox software, such as MusicMatch or iTunes may be dictated by whether you use a portable digital music player and which software it is bundled with. While MusicMatch did pip iTunes to the post this time, we'd expect iTunes to become more versatile following the launch of the iTunes music store in Europe. |
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for ease of use. The players are on a par for playback too. All, bar WinAmp, scored