Whether you call them windows media players, jukeboxes, mp3 apps, music managers, or whatever - we all need a proggy to listen to our digital music with, so we decided it was time for the Online Music Blog media player shootout. For the sake of this article I am only going to discuss players you can get for free and I am not going to go into p2p apps.

So with that, lets dive right in. For my money there are are only 3 choices - Winamp, iTunes, or Windows Media Players - but I'll talk a little about RealPlayer 10 as well. All of these applications share baseline features - playing various media files, cataloging digital media, etc. We'll focus on things about them that are different.

Back in the day, we had Winamp, and it was good. Unfortunately the original Nullsoft team has all moved on and instead of the hacker cred that Winamp used to have back when Justin Frankel et all were on the job it is now just another corporate media player with a hazy future.

Winamp lost a lot of momentum that it had when it released a ( very ) bad Winamp3 - but with the release of Winamp5 they seem to be back on track - it is useable, responsive, and has a lot of plugins and skins created for it.

The major problem is that for all of it's features it is not much, if any, better then the two dominant media players that are tied to successful music stores iTunes and WMP. Additionally you have to pay $14.95 to get the pro version that add features that iTunes and WMP include for free. One of the bonuses of using Winamp is the ability to tune into all of the cool shoutcast radio stations.

iTunes is, of course, is the digital jukebox front end for the iPod and the iTunes music store from apple computer. The iTunes music store was the first to get pay for digital music downloads right and it still has the largest legal downloadable catalog on the net giving the iTunes jukebox a hefty advantage.

If you are using a Mac then it is a no brainer - you should be using iTunes as you media player, but even if you are using Windows iTunes provides an attractive alternative. The iTunes store is superior ( imho ) to the Windows Media based stores such as Napster and with the legendary Apple ease of use in full effect iTunes makes a great Windows based Jukebox. Noteworthy is the Apple Lossless codec that allows one to rip CD's to the ACC format that sound as good as the CD itself to our ears. On the negative side, the iTunes jukebox feels heavy on moderately powered PC's compared to Winamp or WMP. It runs a little slower, seems to use more resources, etc.

Last (of yea, except for RealPlayer... ) Windows Media Player 10 is one of Microsoft's best pieces of software and is some much better then the last generation of MS media players. The jukebox itself is stuffed with features such as its ability to monitor changes to your digital media files and update itself, simple sync and burn, ratings, and the auto tag features are all very nice.

One of the changes in V.10 is the ability to rip files if the format and with ( or without ) the DRM of your choice. You also get the ability to listen to Internet radio streams with WMP, and although they tend to be more corporate then the hip shoutcast radio you can still find some good music. WMP also features a lossless ripping of CD's but I was less impressed with the results then I was with Apples Lossless.

And finally there is RealPlayer. The free RealPlayer 10 is better then previous version although that is not saying much imho. It still takes over your file formats by default, tries to force you register, runs in the background (phoning home ?) unless you can find the settings to tell it not to - all of the problems that it has always have. I say stay as far away from Real as possible even if you can use "Harmony" to use your iPod with the Real store. While I may be being over critical of Real's jukebox - I do think that there are other alternatives that are less intrusive and have better feature sets.

All in all I think that either iTunes or WMP is a solid choice and far and away the best media players available. Winamp is a okay too as long as you don't need to rip music or burn it back to a CD - but it is worth the download and install just to listen to Shoutcast stations from time to time. Personally I use WMP at work and iTunes are home, so take that for what it's worth. I think that I like WMP a little better, but not so much that I would take the time to switch my iTunes set up at home.

To help you get up and running quickly, this section highlights the most frequently used tasks that you can accomplish with Windows Media Player.
• To show or hide the menu bar
• To play files
• To rip tracks from an audio CD
• To burn your own CD
• To add items to your library
• To create a playlist
• To set up automatic synchronization
• To browse the available online stores
• To switch between display modes
• To apply a skin

Windows Media Player 11 offers great new ways to store and enjoy digital media beyond music. It's easier than ever to access all of your video, pictures, and recorded TV on your computer. Play it, view it, organize it, sync it to a portable device for viewing on the go, or share with devices around your home-all from one place.

Storing and enjoying music, video, pictures, and recorded TV

Just as music enjoys its own listing in the Library pane, so do video, pictures, and recorded TV.
There are two ways to easily access these category views in Windows Media Player. You can click the music note icon just above the left navigation pane to reveal the drop-down list, or you can click the Library tab to get to the quick access menu.

Keep things organized

Each category now has its own list view in the navigation pane that is tailored to best sort and organize content. For example, just as the Music view offers the appropriate Artist, Album, and Song options, the Pictures view offers Date Taken, Rating, and so forth; the Video view offers Actors, Genre, and so forth; and the Recorded TV view has Series, Actors, and so forth. Other new features available in the music library, such as thumbnail and stacking views, and Instant Search capabilities, extend to each media category, providing a simple, uniform experience across Windows Media Player 11.

If you face any kind of problem with your computer then go for Computer Repair

Source: Microsoft

To configure Windows Media Player 11 for CD ripping, open the Rip menu by click-ing the small arrow under the Rip toolbar button and then choose More Options. This displays the Media Player Options dialog box with the Rip tab opened.

There are a number of options here, but I am primarily concerned with Rip settings,which determine the file format Media Player will use for the music you copy. By default, Media Player will rip music to Microsoft's proprietary Windows Media Audio (WMA) format. I cannot stress this point enough: Do not-ever-use this format.

Here's the deal. WMA is a high-quality audio format, and much more desirable froma technical standpoint than competing options such as MP3 or Advanced AudioCoding (AAC), the format Apple uses for its own music. But because WMA is notsupported on some of the most popular music devices on the planet (read: the iPod),I advise against storing your entire collection in a format that could be a dead endin a few years.

So what do we recommend? We recommend the MP3 format, which is a de factoaudio standard that is supported by every single audio application, device, and PC onthe planet. Yes, MP3 is technically not as advanced as WMA, or even AAC for that mat-ter. But that's okay. Thanks to today's massive hard drive sizes, you can simply encodemusic at a high bit rate. The higher the bit rate, the better the quality. (And, not coinci-dentally, the bigger the resulting file sizes. But again, who cares? Storage is cheap.)