Media Players 

There was a time when media players were used just to listen to music or watch videos. Since then, media players have seen substantial changes. Now, there are players that can rip CDs, burn them, organize audio/video files and play DVD s as well.

Your prime concern while buying a media player should be that its lightweight and does not use much memory or CPU power. If such a player can also play a movie once in a while, it makes it worthwhile to have. A player that has music/video on CDs and DVDs and can rip, organize and even burn them on other CDs for us-then that would be a great plus. With cheaper availability of bandwidth, streaming has also become popular. Online radio and video-streaming stations are very popular and so are media players that play them.

In this shootout, we've chosen eight popular media players and tested each for their features and performance. We tested their performance-both video and audio-and factors like streaming quality, CPU and memory usage, and chose the best one. 

For testing, we used a P4 machine with 256 MB RAM running Win XP SP2. Then we simulated a normal work environment with MS Office applications like Word, Excel and Outlook opened up. 

We then launched the particular media player and played both music and video files one by one. We left the player at its default settings. While the player was busy with audio/video, we opened the Windows Task Manager and noted the CPU and memory usage at the moment.

As a general comment across all the players, CPU and memory utilization goes up when using visualization (the fancy dancing lights and patterns). 

Also, different types of visualization give different usage figures because of their levels of complexity. Our CPU/memory figures are with visualization turned off. We

have also rated the players on the number of functions and audio/video formats that the player supports. All the players that we've reviewed have been given on this month's CD. Do let us know how good you found them.

iTunes for Windows 4.8 

+ Fast search 



- Supports very few audio/video formats 



iTunes for Windows has been around for about two years now. This player from Apple can play audio/video formats like MP3, AAC, AIFF, WAV and a new format called 'Apple Lossless'. Apple Lossless delivers good quality uncompressed audio files of half the normal size. iTunes has a cool looking interface, which is very easy to navigate. It also has a media organizer which offers fast search. iTunes is gaining popularity because of seamless integration with the iPod. It's auto-sync feature with iPod lets you sync music really quickly. You just need to connect your iPod to your PC/Mac and iTunes will automatically detect it and transfer your music to it. Plus you can encode an audio CD into MP3 or AAC format and can burn an audio CD of it. iTunes plays the streaming audio/video very well, but it takes more buffer time compared to other media players. On playing an MP3 file, it gave above average performance and gave crystal clear audio quality. 

Generally, iTunes can do a larger bit-rate range for MP3 than the Windows Media Player. For instance, WMP sometimes skips or breaks out of an MP3 while playing, iTunes plays such files also properly. The same also applied while playing the video. In the earlier version of iTunes , video was not supported at all. However, in this player we found the video quality to be stunning. But before you get excited by all this, note that iTunes can only play Apple's MOV and MPEG-4 file format format. This player utilizes 5% of CPU and takes around 32866 KB of RAM. 

JetAudio player 

+ Can rip to all free formats 



- Cluttered interface



JetAudio player's latest version is an all-in-one that supports loads of audio/video formats including the latest open source one — mastroska. Its interface looks a little cluttered to navigate through. 

It lets you to rip audio CDs and you can even convert any audio files to formats such as Ogg, WAV and RM. It can also record from your sound card's line-in. The player has a button to broadcast (stream) media. Though, its streaming performance was found to be average. JetAudio also has a lightweight streaming server called JetCast. This lets you broadcast audio easily. JetAudio's an organizer that lets you manage media files efficiently. Coming to its performance, JetAudio turned

out as an above average performer in terms of quality. 

CPU utilization was around 3 to 5 % which is negligible and its memory consumption was largish at14760 KB.

Musicmatch Jukebox 

+ 10 AutoDJ 



- No video, tedious streaming process 



This is a jukebox meant for audio lovers only-no video included. After Yahoo's takeover of this popular player, it now runs on Windows XP only. It has a neat media organizer and very fast search option. Plus, it can copy audio CDs into MP3s and can even burn the CDs for you. It has a built-in AutoDJ tool that allows you to select artists to build a playlist and set variety that you would like. The player can support a lot of formats available and can even convert between them.

MusicMatch Jukebox was one of the first players to feature DRM support, which is continued in this version as well.

Coming to its performance, the player performed above average while playing the audio files. However, playing the streaming audio was little tedious and took time to connect to the streaming server. While playing an MP3 audio Musicmatch Jukebox 10 gave minor 3 % CPU usage and hogged 7308 KB.

RealPlayer 10 

+ Plays DVD movies 



-Cannot rip CDs with free version



Equally popular as Winamp and WMP, RealPlayer has a very neat interface and is very easy to navigate. It supports all the audio/video formats including compressed DVD quality MPEG-4 videos. RP10 supports multi-channel surround sound and over a hundred portable music devices. Compared to its older version, the v10 has no pop ups making it much easier to use. RP10 has a flexible media organizer and allows you to manage audio and video files separately. To rip an audio CD to MP3 you have to get the paid version. However, normal CD-burning is possible. RP10 has seamless audio/video streaming and it takes much less time to buffer compared to other formats . DRM protects downloaded music. 

On playing audio and video the player performed very well. While playing, its CPU utilization was around 5 % and the memory usage was 13944 KB. 

Sonique Media Player 

+ Light-weight 



- No video player



This is the lightest media player that we reviewed in this shootout. It has a stylish interface which is also the smallest among all the players that we tested. 

Sonique Media Player can play a number of audio formats, but unfortunately it doesn't support any video format. Besides the volume control, amp, pitch and balance there is a 20-band equalizer. The buttons in the interface are too small and you may find it difficult to use. If you want more skins, then you can download them from its website. The media player only has a playlist and no media organizer, ripping or CD-burning capabilities. 

Sonique Media Player does have audio streaming support and comes with a few pre-configured radio stations. 

In our tests, this media player performed quite well in audio with negligible CPU utilization, which was around 2-3% and its memory usage was 6120 KB. 

Ultraplayer 

+ Excellent video playback 



- Streaming performance



This is a lightweight media player, which can play both audio and video files. It has a very small interface and small buttons, which you may find difficult to use. Those with bad eye sight should avoid using this player. 

It does not have a media organizer-just a playlist. For streaming, it takes you to a local Web page, from where you have to select the radio station. And then it will download the streaming playlist file for you, which you need to drag and drop to play. So, our streaming experience was painful to say the least. Secondly, the streaming itself was also not upto the mark, with disconnects and bad audio quality. 

However, Ultraplayer performed well while playing a video file. The player uses 5 % of CPU while playing an MP3 file and hogged around 13516 KB. This is strange; being a lightweight media player it takes a lot of

memory. 

Winamp Pro 5.09 

+ Large number of audio formats 



- Cannot play DVD movies

Winamp, earlier was just an MP3 player, but now it's a full-fledged multimedia player with support for video as well. Media organization and video support features are noteworthy. The player supports almost all the available audio formats and a few video formats such as MPG, WMV and NSV. Unfortunately it does not play DVDs movies. The player has support for audio CD ripping. 

Its main window makes it very easy to access all modules like playlist, media library and visualizations. Media library now is designed to allow easy organizing, finding, modifying info and sorting of all media on your PC. Its media organizer includes links for Shoutcast audio and video servers. To get the available streaming station, you just need to go to the online media from the organizer link and click on the Refresh button. The player will automatically hunt for the audio/video streaming severs and according to your taste select the room. We found its streaming was excellent compared to other players. 

Winamp provides you with a large number of plugins. Some of these are free and some paid. Plugins can be used to increase audio quality and can be downloaded from its website: winamp.com. Besides this, it also has plugins that let you play games, improve the equalizer, add visualization effects and so on. Plugins are also extremely customizable, you can use Winamp's own editor for this, which is accessible from the Configure Plugin button.

In the tests the player also performed very well on playing audio and video files. While playing the music its CPU utilization was 4 % and the memory usage was 10564 KB.

Window Media Player 10 

+Simple ripping process 



- High CPU utilization 



Windows Media Player 10 from Microsoft needs little introduction. It can run on both Windows XP and Server 2003 SP1. When it is installed, an automatic restore point is created. This gives user an option to rollback to the earlier version (version 9) if needed. 

WMP10 supports lots of audio/video formats, besides having a fast music organizer. This organizer automatically searches for media files on your hard drive and classifies them neatly based on artist, album, music name, rating and how frequently you have listened to it. 

WMP also supports portable devices such as PDAs and portable MP3 players. This helps you sync your favorite music to your portable devices. 

Its search feature is very handy for quickly locating particular music. Modifying and managing media information has also been enhanced. 

Ripping an audio CD to either WMA or MP3 formats is a lot easier than before and involves clicking just a button. A 'burn' option that can compile an audio, MP3 or WMA disc from your playlist is also present. 

You can play DVD movies and the player includes a parental control system. On the streaming front, it supports streaming from HTTP, MMS and RTSP protocols. WMP also supports

DRM. 

The streaming performance was better than the earlier WMP9. Coming to the performance part, its audio and video performance was very good. 

We also observed that if you're using visualization, the CPU utilization goes up to 70%, therefore we recommend using WMP10 without the visualization if you're not on a fairly new system. CPU utilization was 18% and memory utilization was 8128 KB. 

Sanjay Majumder