Windows Media Player 11 is the next version of Media Player that will be included in Windows Vista. Earlier today I was given a walk through of the software by Mark Pendergrast of Microsoft during a Windows Vista Community event. Unfortunately there were not many new features for WMP11. It appears that most of the work on the media player was spent on updating the look with the new vista "glass" look and refining some of the annoying features in previous versions that did not preform well. The few new features that were added seem to bring the media player more up to date with it's competitors products. However, Windows Media Player 11 still is missing some key features that its competitors have. One of which is music library sharing and play-list sharing. Microsoft needs to take what they have learned from XBOX live and build a community for WMP11 that has real interactivity. There is still a lot of work to be done and a lot of time to do it. We can only hope that Microsoft spends more time developing more features. Otherwise, iTunes will still be my primary media player.
Update 1/9/06: Today when I finally got around to playing with the December CTP's Media Player, I noticed that on it's first run it asked me if I wanted to set up Library Sharing. It seems that there has been some confusion between the Microsoft marketing folks and the developers or Mark did not understand my question. To clear it up, Windows Media Player 11 will have library sharing. To the extent of iTunes? we will find out.
