The folks at Nullsoft have completed the beta version of their upcoming Winamp 5 media-player. As you might have heard, Winamp 5 combines the capabilities of version 2 and 3. Imagine the slim and fast Winamp 2 with freeform skinning, video-playback and a lot more. The word is, that the final version will be released in early November.
Whats new?
modern skin updates :
fixed win98 crash with desktopalpha skins
fixed pledit jumping on top of main window when docked and interacting with config drawer
fixed avs hiding main window when docking to editor
fixed vis gammagroup filtering
fixed bgr color for pledit scrollbar background in v1.0 skins
fixed rare crash on skinswitch
added timers resolution autodetection
added configuration of text scrolling speed
added vis_cfg action to toggle vis cfg window via button
fixed config drawer tabs moving the app when not selected
added enable docking checkbox and docking distance editobox in prefs
added tooltip checkbox in prefs
fixed tooltip stealing focus from popup menus
added support for noresize flag in embedwnd so that it spawns the right container
added notransparency flag for embedwnd, made milkdrop use it
fixed potential aot reset by embedwnd (ie, milkdrop)
fixed slow text ticker, made it use timerclient_getSkipped to have consistent speed regardless of timer resolution
added timer resolution in prefs page
added link ratio & alpha in prefs page
fixed empty popups in pledit menubar, commandbuttons and ml menubar when no playlist or devices are available
fixed “mono” display when nothing playing, made songinfo update faster after clicking play
separated link position & link width for main winshade window, changed default to link all
removed move=“1” for song title display on main window normal and shade modes
fixed click on beatvis that would sometime fail to toggle active status
added gammagroup xml param to vis objects
made switching to windowshade open undocked video & vis when video is playing or vis is visible, docks back when coming back to normal mode
made library able to update info on files that dont support tag writing when tag writing is checked
fixed burning bug when using certain .WAV output settings
enabled burning on multiple devices simultaneously
made Winamp check to see if AVS or milkdrop is running fullscreen before starting video playback, and remove
fullscreen if necessary
made AVS and Milkdrop check for video playback before going fullscreen (milkdrop uses fake mode, AVS complains)
(to avoid DirectDraw crash)
However, some features of the new version are limited to Winamp 5 Pro, which requires a registration. These features include:
Rip your CDs into the popular MP3 format
Rip your CDs at the maximum speed your computer is capable
Burn your compilation CDs at your CD burner’s maximum speed
iTunes represent. I don’t care if it takes up more RAM, but man, that’s an AWSOME applacation. iTunes is the most amazing music software out there, easy to use and very well done.
But I might try out WinAmp 5 for laughs & giggles, but why should I download something that limmits my ripping, burning, and other features untill I buy the full thing if I can have it all for free?
I downloaded a “final release” of Winamp 5 today. I can’t find anything on Winamp’s site about winamp 5, so I’m not sure how true that is. Anyone know why they aren’t talking about Winamp 5 on their site?
Wow, I feel silly now. If you go there the first thing you’ll notice is a huge thing for Winamp 5! LOL. I guess the releases we’ve seen so far were hush hush beta tests.
If you go to just http://winamp.com however, you still see the winamp 3 stuff (or at least you did a little while ago) the ‘www’ makes a difference in this case.
Personally I’ve been sticking to Winamp 2 because it’s fast, lite, and small. Crazy skins with alpha-shading are cool and all that, but annoying - all I want is something small to play my MP3s in the background (or rather, at the top of my screen) that doesn’t take up 50% of my computer’s resources. The 5-second bootup period of Winamp 3 also turned me off. Maybe I’ll try this Winamp 5 now…
Did anyone else ever use Winplay3? Made by Fraunhofer IIS… same guys that developed MP3s in 1989. They have interesting papers (if you’re interested in audio) on their site…which I can’t seem to find right now. Hehe, and people thought Napster created MP3s.
MP3s were created in 1989? You sure it wasn’t just some early form of the codec or something? Seems to me like if MP3 was around then, those old '89 DOS games (Commander Keen, anyone?) would be using more than synthesized MIDIs. I honestly don’t know anything about the history of the format, but '89 seems too early for me.
