Talk:Comparison of media players/Archive 1

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Contents

Mplayer feature

Under "features, continued", most no answers should be yes, unless it's the graphical user interface (gmplayer) and not mplayer itself that is being considered.

DRM proposal

Whether a media player supports DRM, or unprotected content, or both is an important question, and these charts are largely vacant of this information. I propose someone add one. It may also be useful if the nature of the DRM were somehow noted, perhaps in footnotes.

Audio device proposal

Audio devices are often limited to what media players they will sync with. It would really be useful to have a chart that shows the relationship between audio players (or families of audio players) and media players, in terms of synchronization. Though it could get ugly considering the numbers of audio devices in existence, so the charting would have to be clever to keep it concise.

'Optical disc support' became 'Optical media publication support'

I have changed the vague use of the term "support" in the header to "publication support". It's nonsense to talk about whether something "supports" something without clarifying what is meant by the usage of the term "support", at least when there is ambiguity. I'm assuming the original author intended to illustrate *burning* capabilities, since it's really the responsibility of the OS to [i]read[/i] DVD media, not the application. If the table trully reflects read support, someone should correct my changes.

Also, I know for certain that iTunes will burn audio to DVDs. So I have changed iTunes::DVD-Audio to a "yes". (maybe older versions of iTunes did not?)

Perhaps the chart would be more meaningful if the "yes or no" cells are replaced with "read or write". I'll leave that for someone else to decide.

LEGEND

PLEASE include a legend that states what the pink/green colors mean, otherwise new viewers (like me) get confused easily between the various shades of colors. Thanks! PS - thanks for your hard work in gathering/organizing this information

Ripping/Encoding format

HIII I'd like if online radio support was included. I'd like to see something added to show what format(s) each player is capable of ripping/encoding to, and whether it is able to automatically make a playlist when you rip.

Schu


amaroK & JuK metadata support

If it's handled via TagLib, that means it's supported. (It's quite likely many of the other players use an external library as well, just don't say so). No would be like saying you can't walk because you use feet to do it. I've edited the article to reflect this. --Illissius

drm matrix

What media players have support for a some sorts of acceptable DRM technology? This is a crucial question when thinking about what applications & media file formats can be used to play commercial legal media. Preferably without breaking patent & licensing issues.

iTunes Video Playback?

iTunes is capable of video playback, but AFAIK it only plays trailers or music videos that are available through the iTunes Music Store.

I'll leave it to someone else to decide whether that is enough to qualify for a "YES" in the "Video Playback" box. AlistairMcMillan 14:20, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I would say no as I wasted the best part of an hour downloading ITUNES and installing it only to find out it would not play my Xvid MPEG 4 files as they were not available from there store. mit rekab--130.36.75.20 10:49, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

But if you had instead made them regular MPEG 4 files (.mp4) instead of baking on that Xvid wrapper, iTunes would have been able to play it fine. Same goes with Divx or AVI. iTunes can play the files, as long as they aren't wrapped. --Ctachme 18:31, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
IMO many iTunes and QuickTime entries can be merged as iTunes can play what QuickTime can play. See iTunes' article. --minghong 13:35, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
iTunes does have one restriction that QuickTime doesn't: it doesn't accept certain containers that QuickTime does. The big one is AVI, but a hack allows it to work. [1] Since the hack involves creating a QuickTime movie wrapper for the other container and having iTunes play that (though the data is still in the other file), I'm going to remove AVI from iTunes' list of supported containers. Also, it seems iTunes will only parse ASF files with the WMA extension, and Flip4Mac should now provide decoding. Can anyone confirm? --Dicey 03:22, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Rhythmbox

Why was Rhythmbox removed? It is certainly not minor.

If you feel Rhythmbox isn't minor, then add it back in with an edit summary of "see talk page".
Well, FWIW, I'd never heard of it until I saw it here...
James F. (talk)
Rhythmbox is based on xine or gstreamer. These should be listed here instead.
DonDiego
The libraries a program uses are not the same as the program. (E.g., gstreamer isn't even a media player. First question on the gstreamer FAQ: "Is GStreamer a media player? No.")
iTunes uses the Quicktime libraries to play music (AFAICT), but that's hardly a good reason to remove iTunes from the list.
Correct. Amarok also uses Xine and Gstreamer to play music, but yet amarok is allowed on the list. Rhythmbox is not only common, it is the de facto media player on Gnome, which is one of two largest desktop environments on unix. Far from minor.

Outbound streaming

This refers to the ability to broadcast a music stream, effectively creating your own Internet Radio station, correct? If so, shouldn't it be noted if this is possible through official plug-ins? A prime example would be Winamp, which has the ability to broadcast a SHOUTCast server using plug-ins and server software from Nullsoft. --Pidgeot 23:34, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Isn't iTunes stream able too? Though it requires the airtunes AP, it could be considered stream able. PPGMD

Why is this a feature of media player? Media player is a client, not a server... I suggest to drop this column since it is confusing, e.g. see the footnote of QuickTime: "Avalible with Quicktime Streaming Server". We should be comparing QuickTime Player, not QuickTime server... --minghong 08:54, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree. This shouldn't be a feature used to compare the media "players". --Kamasutra 02:39, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

The article claims that MPlayer supports outbound stream - as far as I can tell, this plain isn't true

It does, somehow. Look at TOOLS/netstream/ in the source distribution. It's a rather obscure feature, but it exists.

Nag ware

I think we should consider a line item, on what suites are nagware or other forms of built in annoyances like spyware. For example both QT, and RP have some sort of nags to get you to pay for the full version, while GPL, and WMP don't have anything of the sort. PPGMD

That's a standard feature in shareware, not worth noting. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 00:49, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
how about call it 'user friendly-ness' and then take into account how quicktime and realplayer and wmp are pains to install and uninstall. of course judging how friendly a player is will cause a lot of fighting, so nevermind Compn 16:12, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

iTunes is skinnable

though it involves replacing one of its resource files (in the .app folder) link

thats a hack, not really a feature of the media player. --Eean 23:28, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Split table - Audio and Video players separate

The table seems to be somewhat artificially combining two categories of programs:

  • the manage-your-music, plays-only-music applications like iTunes, Musicmatch, and Winamp
  • movie players like Quicktime, MPlayer, and VLC

There seems to be little overlap between them, except that you can play an audio file in a movie player (though it's usually pretty clumsy).

Imagine a row called "playlists". I think that such a row would be almost the opposite of the "video playback" row. That's the big distinguishing factor: movie players play movies but don't offer good music playback features (like playlists), and "jukebox" programs offer neat features like playlists but don't do video playback.

These really feel like two separate categories of programs. (4.16.250.8 forgot to sign at 2004-12-07T03:30)

  • I couldn't agree more. Comparing an audio jukebox-type media player to a primarily video media player isn't useful, and I would argue that the table is far too large. I would recommend first creating two new comparison articles: Comparison of audio players and Comparison of video players, and then breaking out applications which clearly fit into one or the other from here into there. Any "media player" that can't play any video format should go into the audio players comparison, for starters. - McCart42 (talk) 02:37, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
Yeah... I agree too, it should be split. --Ctachme 03:27, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
Disagree Music videos exist. --Hhielscher 09:30, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
What does that have to do with anything? Soundtracks exist to... but that doesn't mean there isn't a difference between video players and audio players.--Ctachme 16:14, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
That means that a distinction between audio and video players does not make sense, since modern audio players can be used to play video (e.g. music video) — and video players can be used to play audio only.--Hhielscher 16:29, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
Hhielscher: Foobar2000, JuK, MediaMonkey, Musicmatch Jukebox, musikCube, Quickplayer, Rhythmbox, Sonique, XMMS, XMPlay, and Zinf all cannot play music videos. amaroK, currently probably one of the most popular music players for Linux, also cannot play video well. However, all of these players excel at music management functions by ID3 tag, whereas many of the video players completely neglect ID3 tag recognition. There is a definite separation between players designed for audio and those designed for video. Of course, there may exist players that do both well, and those can stay in this article; however, players that have no inclinations towards being both shouldn't be listed in this comparison. - McCart42 (talk) 02:17:11, 2005-07-29 (UTC)
I am not sure about the other players above, but for XMMS there are many plugins that play video (e.g. smpeg-xmms, XMMPlayer). But the main question is: how would you distinguish what programms are video and what programms are audio players? What is the criteria? Playlist, Equalizer, Meta Data Support?--Hhielscher 14:26, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
For video players it's difficult to distinguish between a pure video player and a multimedia player. However, for audio players, it's simple: if the player cannot play video in the DEFAULT configuration, that is, the version that is downloaded sans plugins, then I would say it is an audio player and not a "media player", and certainly not a video player. There is certainly room for disagreement in terms of individual players being audio players or media players, but I don't believe there is any doubt that popular audio-only players exist. It may be that they are becoming rarer as many players add video functionality, such as iTunes. - McCart42 (talk) 18:37:03, 2005-07-29 (UTC)

I agree it should be split, maybe if a player plays audio and video it could go in both tables?