For those looking for replacements to their default audio player, here is a good candidate. Spider Player is a lightweight yet feature rich audio player for Windows that somewhat resembles the look of old WinAmp (v2). The player takes very little system memory when launched – something you don’t see often on modern media players. It however has a powerful set of features including streaming audio support, internet radio recording, support for playback of 30+ file formats, converter, CD ripper, 10-band equalizer, crossfading support, skinning support and more.

Developer Description

Spider is a free, feature-rich, and easy-to-use audio player for Windows based on "Bass audio library" from Un4seen. This program has Unicode support, powerful tag editors for different file types, music ripping support, CD-text support, CD extractor, easy to use song lyrics editor, internet streaming, skins support, support for different interface languages and more.

Download

There are two versions of Spider Player; Basic and Pro. The Basic version is free and the Pro version costs $20. However most of the features of Pro are already available in the free version sans a few limitations on recording.

[Click Here] to download latest version of Spider Player from official download page

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Pretty awesome news indeed – after a number of 0.X.X builds, VLC Media Player 1.0.0 ‘goldeneye’ has finally been released. This is a major upgrade over earlier versions and incorporates a number of new features and improvements such as on the fly recording for all media, RTSP trickplay support, timeshift, frame-by-frame playback and more. VLC 1.0.0 also includes many new video decoders including Real Video 3.0 & 4.0 decoder, AES3 decoder, New Dolby Digital Plus - E-AC-3 (A/52b) decoder, new True HD/MLP decoder, etc. Best thing about the new features is that they have not made the app bloated – VLC is still a slim, lightweight media player that can play almost any sh1t you throw at it.

Along with many improvements to playback/decoding capabilities, the UI has also got a facelift. There really are lots of new stuff here and a simple blog post is not suffice to describe them all in detail. Some of the new features are listed below ( and some are not so install and discover them yourself).

What’s New in VLC 1.0.0 – Changelog

• Instantaneous pausing
• Frame-by-Frame playback
• Finer speed control
• On-the-fly recording for all medias
• Timeshift for most medias
• RTSP trickplay support
• Subtitles core improvements and fixes
• New AES3 (SMPTE 302M) decoder
• New Dolby Digital Plus - E-AC-3 (A/52b) decoder
• New True HD/MLP decoder and parser
• New Blu-Ray Linear PCM decoder
• New QCELP (Qualcomm PureVoice) decoder
• Improved Real Video 3.0 & 4.0 decoder
• New WMA v1/2 fixed point integer decoder
• Close Caption under SCTE-20 standard are now correctly decoded
• Improvement of WavPack decoder to support all integer modes and float mode
• Corrections on 5.1 and 7.1 channel decoding and ordering
• Support for Dirac, MLP and RealVideo in Matroska files
• Major improvements in RealMedia files opening (.rm and .rmvb)
• Improvements of the TS demuxer for M2TS files from Blu-Ray and AVCHD
• Metadata for mod files are sup...

Download

It’s only been a few hours since this app was released and no wonder VideoLAN’s servers are getting hammered by download requests. The link below will automatically find the nearest mirror that will provide faster download speeds:

[Click Here] to download VideoLAN VLC Media Player 1.0.0 from official server

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Yesterday we talked  about AutoUnpack – a tool that can help you immensely when it comes to extracting multi part (split) archives. If you are too lazy to even do that, check this software out. ‘VLC UnRAR’ is a plug-in for popular VLC media player. Once installed, this cool plug-in will let you watch movies inside multi part RAR archives (without extracting them first) using VLC media player. In short, it adds capabilities of a RAR player into VLC. Apart from individual movie files, VLC UnRAR supports RAR archived DVD images as well. This plug in is free and supports multiple platforms including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD.

The plugin seems to support multiple versions of VLC media player. I tried it on VLC media player 0.9.8a and it worked well during the short time I tested it. The official page however lists some known issues and troubleshooting information – in case you run into problems check this out.

Features (quoted from developer page)

• Completely FREE with full source code.
• Supports multi-volume RAR archives with full support for seeking
• Supports RAR archived DVD images!
• No external programs or special launch scripts needed
• Simple plugin that works with any VLC installation, no separate RAR player needed
• Platform-independent, binaries available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD
• No pre-extraction of files, data is read directly from inside the archive when requested

Download & Walkthrough

[Click Here] to download VLC UnRAR Plugin 2009 03 07 – Direct Download

[Click Here] to download the latest version of VLC Media player

[Click Here] for a short installation guide on how to set up the plugin

 

Thanks to our reader ‘Me’ for mentioning this tool in the previous article.

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VLC Media Player (formerly known as VideoLan Client) just got updated to a new build. VLC is one of the best free media players which lets you play a wide variety of multimedia file formats (including MP4, DivX, XVid, X264, OGG, Mp3 and more) on your PC without the need of additional codec packs. It’s a great software which can be used even on low end machines due to its effective usage of system resources. The new build (0.9.9) comes with several decoder enhancements and bugfixes and is a recommended update for all existing users of VLC.

 

The full feature list of this software is too long to be posed here. To realize the full potential of VLC media player, check out the this page on the official site. Here is the full changelog between VLC v0.9.8a and 0.9.9:

• Decoders: - Experimental new decoder for Real Video 3.0 & 4.0
• Demuxers:  - Various fixes related to real demuxer
• Mac OS X Interface: - Fixed circumstances, which could lead to an empty Information panel - Note that VLC will show information on the currently _selected_ item instead of the currently _playing_ item, if the playlist is visible in the main controller window, Fixed multiple UTF8 issues in the Streaming / Exporting Wizard
• Mac OS X Port: - Improved video playback performance on Intel-based Macs
• New Localizations: –Indonesian, Bengali, Updates of other localizations
• Various bugfixes: - Support for receiving RTP packets on odd port numbers, Lots of small bugfixes, Correct Fullscreen behavior on Multi-Screen setups on Windows, Telnet fixes on Windows, Resampling fixes when transcoding

Download

All setup files can be downloaded directly from official VideoLAN servers. Download managers are supported.

[Click Here] to download VLC Media Player 0.9.9 for Windows (Direct Download)

[Click Here] to download VLC Media Player for other operating systems (Linux, MAc OS X, BeOS, etc)

Note: The latest version of VLC media player can always be downloaded from the following location: http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/latest/

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We’ve talked about freeware media players such as VLC in the past – foobar2000 is another free media player that has often been overlooked in our previous articles. It’s a fully customizable audio player which supports a number of different file formats. One of the great things about foobar2000 is that it does not eat half your system’s resources – the software has very low memory footprint even when a file is being played back.

 

Core features

• Audio formats supported natively: MP1, MP2, MP3, MPC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC / Ogg FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, AU, SND, CDDA, WMA, and more.
• Full Unicode support.
• Customizable user interface layout.
• Advanced tagging capabilities.
• Support for ripping Audio CDs as well as transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component.
• ReplayGain support - both playback and calculation.
• Gapless playback support
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
• Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player.

Download

[Click Here] to download foobar2000 from the official download page. Changelog, readme and other information too can be found here.

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Miro is a product that’s created quite a buzz in the past few months. It’s basically a HD video player with tight internet integration. You get access to more than 6000 free internet TV shows and podcasts and these can all be played right from Miro itself  – no need for additional codecs or software. Apart from video playback, Miro is capable of downloading shows to hard disk as well. A number of video sites such as YouTube, Blip and Google video are supported. Another great feature of this software is the support for RSS based BitTorrent downloads (powered by libtorrent).

If your favorite public BitTorrent site or private torrent tracker supports RSS, you can use Miro to automatically download the latest TV/movie releases. Just make sure that libtorrent is an allowed client on whatever site you use – Libtorrent engine is used by Miro for actual torrent download from the tracker.

There are tons of other features of this application which cannot be summarized in a small blog post such as this. For a full list of Miro features, please refer to this this article.

[Click Here] to download the latest version of Miro (direct download link automatically updated with latest available build – newest version at time of post - v2.0.2)

[Click Here] to download Miro for Mac OS X, Ubuntu & Linux variants

[Click Here] to view How-To guide on homepage – detailed instructions on how to install and configure Miro

[Click Here] to visit Miro Guide – Lets you add thousands of free TV show and channel feeds to Miro application

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There are many applications that allow you to listen to online radio stations and Screamer Radio is one of the more popular ones. Screamer is a totally free piece of software and does not come bundled with spyware, adware, banner ads or any other unwanted crap like that. It supports a number of operating systems including Windows Vista and even the older Windows 98.

I first tried out Screamer about 5 years back and it’s become one of my favorite apps ever since. This software comes with hundreds of preset stations and you can easily add your own stations to the list. One of the cool features of Screamer is that it allows you to record the radio stream in mp3 format with the click of a button.

Supported Stream Types

• Shoutcast and Icecast MP3 Streaming
• Icecast OGG Vorbis Streaming
• WMA Streaming
• AAC Streaming

Recording Features

• Recording buffer: start recording in the middle and still save the entire song!
• Direct MP3 Audio stream saving, no loss of quality!
• Direct OGG Vorbis stream saving, no loss of quality!
• Or encode OGG Vorbis as MP3 using Lame
• Encode WMA or AAC to MP3 using Lame

Direct Download Links (Obtained from official download page)

[Click Here] to download for 2k/XP/Vista - Installer (1650.3 KByte)

[Click Here] to download for 2k/XP/Vista - Portable ZIP (1831.9 KByte)

[Click Here] to download For Windows 9x - Installer (1638.6 KByte)

[Click Here] to download For Windows 9x - Portable ZIP (1814.7 KByte)

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Cyberlink PowerDVD is easily one of the most advanced media players currently around. It’s been around for ages and has introduced new features and support for new file types and codecs with each new releases. The latest version of PowerDVD as of today (25th December) is  8.0.2217.50. There are several different editions of PowerDVD such as Ultra and Deluxe. The Ultra edition (featured in this post) is the most feature rich of them all with support for Blu-Ray playback, AVCHD, SPDIF Mixing, Dolby Digital 7.1 EX, etc.

Note: If you are using a 3rd party codec pack such as FFDShow or CCCP and want to decode movies and music with PowerDVD’s proprietary codecs, you may want to add powerdvd.exe to FFDShow decoder filter exception list (How to).

 

High Definition Playback

• Blu-ray Discs - Enjoy the best video quality and an enriched movie experience with interactive features and next-gen movie navigation. Display advanced content such as crew commentaries, access online content and games, zoom in to details.
• High-Definition video formats - play MPEG-4 AVC (H.264), MPEG-2 HD, WMV-HD, and SMPTE VC-1 files.
• Optimized Output for widescreen displays - Get the most of your movies with up to 1920 x 1080 image resolution.
• CyberLink TrueTheater™ Stretch technology - Display 16:9 and 4:3 videos on your monitor, regardless of its size.
• CyberLink TrueTheater™ Lighting technology - Enhance image details, and naturalize colors, with adaptive adjustments to chroma and luminance. Select your preferred profile.
• Hardware acceleration - Optimization for high-definition graphics processors from Intel, NVIDIA and ATI ensure ultra-smooth playback on the PC.
• HDMI connectors - You can reduce the number of cables to only one and still take full advantage of high-definition audio and video.

High-Definition and Home Theater Audio

PowerDVD delivers uncompressed HD audio and surround sound to make the most of your home-cinema setup, bringing movies to life in your living room.

Supported Audio Formats

• Dolby TrueHD (7.1-channel)
• Dolby Digital EX (7.1-channel)
• Dolby Digital Plus (7.1-channel)
• Dolby Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP)
• DTS-HD (7.1-channel)
• DTS (5.1 channel)
• DTS 96/24 decoding
• DTS-ES (Discrete and Matrix)

Supported Audio Technologies

• CyberLink TrueTheater™ Surround
• Dolby Pro Logic IIx surround sound
• Dolby Virtual Speaker
• Dolby Headphone
• DTS Neo:6

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VLC Media Player is one of the easiest ways to play X264, MP4 and other file formats which are not supported by Windows Media Player by default. One of the best things about VLC is that you don’t need to mess with external codec packs – everything is built-in. Apart from that it’s free and supports a number of operating systems such as Windows Vista, Linux and Mac OS X. The latest available version of VLC media player (as of December 25th) is 0.9.8a.

Developer Description

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

For a full list of VLC Media Player features look here. Changelog for 0.9.8a can be found here.

Download

Both direct download links and torrent links are available.

[Click Here] to download VLC Media Player 0.9.8a for Windows (Direct Download)

[Click Here] to download VLC Media Player 0.9.8a for Windows (Torrent File)

[Click Here] to download VLC Media Player for other operating systems (Linux, MAc OS X, BeOS, etc)

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Here is yet another updated version of Nero – the popular CD/DVD burning and multimedia suite. Official Nero download page has been updated with version 9.2.6.0 and the release is dated 17/12/2008. From the changelog, you can see that the new version mostly features a bunch of bugfixes. A notable new addition is the Nero Live Gadget which allows viewing TV in Windows Vista sidebar.

We have further discussed Nero 9 in two of our previous articles which can be found here and here.

Developer Description

Nero 9 is the next generation of the world’s most trusted integrated digital media and home entertainment software suite. It features new cutting-edge functionality that makes enjoying digital media content simple. This easy-to-use yet powerful multimedia suite, gives you the freedom to create, rip, copy, burn, edit, share, and upload online. Whatever you want – music, video, photo, and data – enjoy and share with family and friends anytime, anywhere. With easy-to-use Nero StartSmart command center, your digital life has never been more flexible, feasible, and fun.

Nero 9 Highlights:

• Fast and easy rip, burn, Autobackup, and copy functions
• Backup files to CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray Discs*
• Create professional-looking DVD movies with integrated 3D menus
• Copy, burn, share, upload, and create music mixes like a DJ
• Convert music, photos, and DVDs to play on your iPod® and other mobile devices
• Quick photo and video upload to My Nero, YouTube™, and MySpace
• Watch, record, pause, and customize your live TV experience
• Play AVCHD and other HD formats

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Here is a little heads up for fans of Ahead software’s Nero multimedia suite. Nero 9.2.5.0 has been released (btw this version is not even listed yet on the official download page). Judging by the version number this looks like somewhat of a major upgrade over previous 9.0.9.4 builds - I cannot confirm that as am  yet to come across an official changelog. Anyways upgrading to the latest build is recommended as it will no doubt contain at least a few security and reliability updates over the older version.

By ‘upgrading to the latest build’ I did not mean upgrading from Nero 6.6 or 7 to Nero 9 but rather to a newer build if you are already using Nero 9. Some people still seem to like Nero 6.6 and Nero 7 better than v8 and v9 because of the suite getting more and more ‘bloated’ with every new major release. It’s actually up to you to decide which version of Nero best matches your needs.

Developer Description

Nero 9 is the next generation of the world’s most trusted integrated digital media and home entertainment software suite. It features new cutting-edge functionality that makes enjoying digital media content simple. This easy-to-use yet powerful multimedia suite, gives you the freedom to create, rip, copy, burn, edit, share, and upload online. Whatever you want – music, video, photo, and data – enjoy and share with family and friends anytime, anywhere. With easy-to-use Nero StartSmart command center, your digital life has never been more flexible, feasible, and fun.

Nero 9 Highlights:

• Fast and easy rip, burn, Autobackup, and copy functions
• Backup files to CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray Discs*
• Create professional-looking DVD movies with integrated 3D menus
• Copy, burn, share, upload, and create music mixes like a DJ
• Convert music, photos, and DVDs to play on your iPod® and other mobile devices
• Quick photo and video upload to My Nero, YouTube™, and MySpace
• Watch, record, pause, and customize your live TV experience
• Play AVCHD and other HD formats

Look here for a full feature list.

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Here we go – the latest build of RealPlayer Plus is here. Build 11.0.0.477 features several minor updates and enhancements over the previous release. The plus version includes several features not included in the free, basic version of Realplayer such as 10 band equalizer, web video burning fast CD ripping and more.

If for whatever reason you don’t want to install RealPlayer on your system, try Real Alternative (a codec pack designed to support playback of Realmedia file formats on popular media players – something like CCCP).

Developer Description

The RealPlayer is the first product that integrates Real's revolutionary new Harmony technology. RealPlayer enables consumers to buy and download music that plays on more than 100 portable devices, including the Apple iPod. RealPlayer is the only digital-media player you need for finding and downloading new music, playing and managing audio and video clips, and taking your digital entertainment with you. RealPlayer offers a streamlined interface that allows you to keep your media library close at hand. Keep all your digital-media clips organized in one place; save CD tracks with one click; pause and rewind live streams; transfer music to CDs and portable devices effortlessly; and enjoy clear, smooth video playback and multichannel, surround-sound support.

Helix Powered RealPlayer is the all-in-one digital media player that lets you find anything and play everything. This popular streaming-media player offers improved video controls and access to 3200 radio stations. RealPlayer also includes an option during setup to install the Real Toolbar for Internet Explorer. With RealPlayer you get an improved graphic equalizer and media services, including a radio tuner and an artist and music guide. Meanwhile, the Take 5 news service can offer you daily sports updates. A contextual video search helps you find interviews with your favorite artists. The RealPlayer music store lets you buy music files. Finally, you can use the software to transfer files to CDs and portable devices.

Supported Formats

• RealMedia formats: RealAudio (*.ra, *.rm), RealVideo (*.rv, *.rm, *.rmvb), RealPix (*.rp), RealText (*.rt), RealMedia Shortcut (*.ram, *.rmm)
• Streaming: RealTime Streaming Protocol (rtsp://), Progressive Networks Streaming Protocols (pna://, pnm://), Microsoft Windows Media Streaming Protocol (mms://), Real Scalable Multicast (*.sdp), Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (*.smil, *.smi)
• Audio: MP3 (*.mp3, *.mp2, *.mp2, *.m3u), CD Audio (*.cda), WAV (*.wav), AAC/aacPlus v1 (*.aac, *.m4a, *.m4b, *.mp4, *.acp, *.m4p), Apple Lossless, AIFF (*.aif, *.aiff), AU Audio Files (*.au), Panasonic AAC (*.acp)
• Video: DVD (*.vob), Video CD (*.dat), MPEG Video (*.mpg, *.mpeg, *.m2v, *.mpe etc), AVI (*.avi, *.divx), MJPEG video playback from .avi files,Windows Media (*.wma, *.wmv and etc) (requires Windows Media Player 9/10), QuickTime (*.mov, *.qt) (Quick Time Player must be installed), Adobe Flash (*.swf) (Flash or Shockwave Player must be installed), Flash Video (*.flv).
• Playlists (*.rpl, *.xpl, *.pls, *.m3u)
• Graphics: Bitmap (*.bmp), GIF Images (*.gif), JPEG Images (*.jpeg, *.jpg), PNG (*.png)

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Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP) is one of the best codec packs out there. In most cases, it’s the only codec you’ll need even if you are a power user. CCCP includes a custom build of FFDShow tryouts which will enable you play back most of the video and audio formats out there (see below for complete list) using your favorite media player application . It also includes VSFilter (a subtitles filter) and optional software to play back media files such as Media Player Classic (MPC) and Zoom Player.

I’ve been using this codec pack for quite a while now and I’ve never looked back since. There are people who install several dozen codec packs on their system thinking it’ll give them maximum compatibility. This is not a good practice and can hinder the performance of your system and lead to conflicts between codecs. If you mainly use your computer to view downloaded TV shows, movies, standard DVDS, Audio CDs, MP3s and the usual stuff, I’d recommend you uninstall every codec pack you have and install CCCP. CCCP is not bloated, fast and supports all major formats including DivX (visit here for Divx Create bundle) and XViD.

Like any other software CCCP is not perfect. Compatibility issues have been reported with recent games such as Fallout 3 and FFDShow codecs but these can easily be rectified by adding the troublesome program to FFDShow’s exceptions list (For step by step tutorial on how to do this, click here). I’ve used the codec pack for more than a year and so far have only had issues with Fallout 3 so incompatibilities are not common. Anyways it’s a thousands times better than most of the codec packs out there and is highly recommended.

 

Contents

• CoreWavPack
• ffdshow-tryouts (custom build)
• Gabest's FLV Splitter
• Gabest's MPV (MPEG-2) Decoder
• Haali Media Splitter
• Media Player Classic Home Cinema
• VSFilter
• Zoom Player

Supported formats

• Container formats: AVI, OGM, MKV, MP4, FLV, 3GP and TS
• Video codecs: MPEG-2, DivX, XviD, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, WMV9, FLV1, Theora, and Generic MPEG-4 ASP (3ivx, lavc, etc.)
• Audio codecs: MP1, MP2, MP3, AC3, DTS, AAC, Vorbis, LPCM, FLAC, TTA and WavPack

More info can be found here.

Download

[Click Here] to download CCCP for Windows XP/Vista/2K (2008-09-21 – CCCP 17)

[Click Here] to download CCCP Insurgent which will detect the presence of other packs and filters on your system

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Version 7.1.7 of jetAudio (aka Cowon Media Center) was released only recently and we already have a new build. V7.1.8 apparently fixes several minor problems such as disc did not starting playback when using Play Disc button, wrong skin file being inserted, etc.  The PLUS VX version of the player (featured in this post) offers several new features over the basic version such as UUE and UUE VIVA audio enhancement packs.

Developer Description

jetAudio is a multimedia player software offers advanced playback option and multimedia file editor even burning capabilities. There are two different versions: Basic and Plus. The Plus version has additional bonus packs and unlocked video/audio conversion. It comes bundled with every player produced by Cowon.

Features

• Supports All Major File Formats
• Video Conversion
• Audio CD burning
• Recording
• Tag Editing
• Multi-channel sound output
• Crossfade
• Skin
• Subtitles
• Internet CD Database
• Convenient album management & Playlist
• Utilities
• Remote Controller
• Media Center Window
• Audio Conversion
• Audio CD Ripping
• Internet Broadcasting
• Various sound effects
• Speed Control
• Resume
• Synchronized Lyric (Karaoke)
• Alarm & Timer
• Equalizer
• Superb Crystal-Clear Sound
• Toolbar mode

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This is one of my favorite media player apps and I’ve been using it since version 4. jetAudio (aka Cowon Media Center) comes complete with the support for over 50 file types, media library, equalizer, audio/video converters, recorder, burner and everything else a good media player app should have. The PLUS VX version of the player (featured in this post) offers several new features over the basic version such as UUE and UUE VIVA audio enhancement packs.

Developer Description

jetAudio is a multimedia player software offers advanced playback option and multimedia file editor even burning capabilities. There are two different versions: Basic and Plus. The Plus version has additional bonus packs and unlocked video/audio conversion. It comes bundled with every player produced by Cowon.

• Supports All Major File Formats
• Video Conversion
• Audio CD burning
• Recording
• Tag Editing
• Multi-channel sound output
• Crossfade
• Skin
• Subtitles
• Internet CD Database
• Convenient album management & Playlist
• Utilities
• Remote Controller
• Media Center Window
• Audio Conversion
• Audio CD Ripping
• Internet Broadcasting
• Various sound effects
• Speed Control
• Resume
• Synchronized Lyric (Karaoke)
• Alarm & Timer
• Equalizer
• Superb Crystal-Clear Sound
• Toolbar mode

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AIMP is a audio player application you might want to check out. It somehow reminds me of Winamp (good old Winamp 2 that is) with it’s plug ins support, cool looks and high audio quality. It has all the features an audio player app should have (Media Library, Equalizer, Converter, etc) and is lightweight, customizable and free of charge. The AIMP version featured in this post is portable – you can carry it around in your removable media and run it on any computer without installation. What more could you ask? 

Developer Description

AIMP is a powerful audio player that allows you to listen to your favorite music with an outstanding sound quality. Its appearance resembles that of another classical audio player (Winamp), so you'll get used to it very quickly. It can also be customized with skins. The program includes a 18-band equalizer, a visualization window to display rhythmic visual effects and a playlist editor to organize your audio files. A nice fading effect makes your list of songs look like an endless music loop and a handy volume normalizing feature avoids drastic volume changes between tracks. Also, the player's main functions can be conveniently controlled by global hotkeys. Besides playing music, AIMP features three extra utilities which also enable you to record any sound on your computer, convert audio files from one format to another and view or edit tags. AIMP is based on the well-known audio engine BASS, so it's easy to connect new plug-ins (from the plug-in library included in the program) and expand the player's functionalities.

Main Features

• Audio formats supported: MP1, MP2, MP3, MPC, MP+, AAC, AC3, OGG, FLAC, APE, WavPack, Speex, WAV, CDA, WMA, S3M, XM, MOD, IT, MO3, MTM, UMX
• Good functionality and friendly user interface
• 18-sliders equalizer and build-in sound effects: Reverb, Flanger, Chorus, Pitch, Tempo, Echo, Speed
• 32-bit sound processing: for crystal clear sound
• Works with few playlists: Listern one, work with other
• Plug-Ins support: You can add new utils or extend already exists, and connect some winamp plugins: Input, Gen, DSP
• Autoshutdown manager
• Internet-Radio: Listern and Capture!
• Bookmarks and Queues
• Hotkeys: Customizable local and global hotkeys
• Multilingual interface
• Multiuser mode support: Few users works unders one computer? It's no problem!
• Full Unicode support
• File search: File search by all opened playlists
• Many program options
• Small distributive size
• Audio Converter: Any supported audio file can be encoded to WAV, MP3, WMA or OGG format
• Audio Grabber: Audio CD Track can be encoded to WAV, MP3, WMA or OGG format
• Sound Recorder: Capture sound from any audio device in your system to mp3, ogg, wav or wma format
• Advanced Tag Editor: Edit ID3v1, ID3v2, Vorbis, WMA tags. Grouping rename, group editing and sort files by one of templates.
• Audio Library

Download

[Click Here] to download AIMP v2.50 build 306 Portable Edition from H33T tracker

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Apple released another update for iTunes yesterday. Version 8.0.1 introduces several minor updates such as Improved syncing of spoken menus to iPod nano, improved accessibility with VoiceOVer and many others.

Developer Description

iTunes is a free application for Mac and PC. It plays all your digital music and video. It syncs content to your iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV. And it’s an entertainment superstore that stays open 24/7. Forget rifling through stacks of CDs or flipping through channels. iTunes puts your entire music and video collection a mere click away, giving you an all-access pass to thousands of hours of digital entertainment. Browse. Organize. Play. All from your Mac or PC. View your library by artist, album, episode, year, rating — any way you want. Find what you’re looking for with a quick search that reveals results as you type. Turn CDs into digital music by importing them to iTunes. Organize your entire collection with custom playlists. Shuffle songs to mix up your groove. Listen to music from other computers on your network. Play video using onscreen controls.

What’s new in iTunes 8?

• Genius Playlists
• Genius Sidebar
• Grid View
• HD TV Shows
• Enhanced Accessibility
• New Visualizer

What’s new in iTunes 8.0.1?

• Seamlessly plays the current song when creating a new Genius playlist.
• Improves syncing spoken menus to iPod nano.
• Addresses an issue of deleting HD TV episodes when downloading.
• Improves checking for updates from the App Store
• Improves accessibility with VoiceOver.
• Addresses problems syncing Genius results to iPod.

Download

[Click Here] to download iTunes 8.0.1 directly from Apple servers (58MB).

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Version 11 of ACDsee Photo Manager is here. There are several versions of ACDsee apps with similar names out there and it can be quite confusing. While ACDSee Photo Manager is at version 11, latest ACDsee Pro version is 2.5.332. Both of these apps have basically the same core functions such as viewing, organizing, finding and sharing images and other media file types but the Photo Manager has several additional features. Basically, I only use ACDsee apps for image conversion and viewing; these apps support a number of different image formats and the quick view feature loads quite fast too.

Developer Description 

ACDSee - the worlds #1 digital imaging software. ACDSee Photo Manager is a comprehensive application ideal for acquiring, organizing, viewing, enhancing and sharing your images. With the image browser, you can find, organize, and preview images and media files on your computer, and you can efficiently acquire images from digital cameras, scanners, and other devices. A full-featured image viewer and media player quickly generates high-quality displays of your images and media files. You can run slide shows, play embedded audio, and display multiple page images. ACDSee supports over 100 image and multimedia file formats. Also, ACDSee includes a wide variety of image editing tools you can use to create, edit and touch-up your digital images.

Use tools such as red-eye reduction, crop, sharpen, blur, and embos to enhance or correct your images. Image management tools, such as exposure adjustment, convert, resize, rename, and rotate, can be performed on multiple files at the same time. The new user interface is completely customizable, and provides quick access to tools and features. You can customize the screen layout, the order of images, toolbar display, and many other options to suit your preferences. ACDSee Photo Manager is a fast, powerful, and easy-to-use image management system that everyone from novices to professionals can use and enjoy.

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Ahead software released the latest version of its digital media software suite, Nero 9 a few days ago. I used to love Nero back in the days of version 6 and 6.6. But since then I feel that the software suite has only got more bloated with each new release. Version 9 is not lightweight by any means but it does introduce several new features. For starters, Nero 9 has support for Blu-Ray burning by default whereas in version 8 it was only available through an additional plug-in which you had to purchase separately. Among other new features are AutoBackup, Gracenotes support, Music Grabber (rip the soundtrack from videos), Nero Showtime with Vista Sidebar gadget and Ad spotter (will detect and remove commercials from TV shows). The regular CD/DVD functions remain almost the same with only UI enhancements over version 8.

Developer Description

Nero 9 is the next generation of the world’s most trusted integrated digital media and home entertainment software suite. It features new cutting-edge functionality that makes enjoying digital media content simple.

This easy-to-use yet powerful multimedia suite, gives you the freedom to create, rip, copy, burn, edit, share, and upload online. Whatever you want – music, video, photo, and data – enjoy and share with family and friends anytime, anywhere.

With easy-to-use Nero StartSmart command center, your digital life has never been more flexible, feasible, and fun.

Nero 9 Highlights:

• Fast and easy rip, burn, Autobackup, and copy functions
• Backup files to CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray Discs*
• Create professional-looking DVD movies with integrated 3D menus
• Copy, burn, share, upload, and create music mixes like a DJ
• Convert music, photos, and DVDs to play on your iPod® and other mobile devices
• Quick photo and video upload to My Nero, YouTube™, and MySpace
• Watch, record, pause, and customize your live TV experience
• Play AVCHD and other HD formats

For a full feature list, please look here.

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A minor update to popular Media player application Cyberlink PowerDVD has been released. Only major feature we were able to find on PowerDVD Ultra v8.0.2021a was the added supports for HDMI repeater.Speaking of the application, it’s one of the best players out there for movie (and music) playback. The Ultra version is the most featured rich version of PowerDVD and includes enhancements such as support for Dolby Digital EX (7.1 ch), DTS-ES Matrix and DTS-ES Discrete; DTS Neo:6. If you watch movies or TV Shows using your PC, this application is a must have.

High Definition Playback

• Blu-ray Discs - Enjoy the best video quality and an enriched movie experience with interactive features and next-gen movie navigation. Display advanced content such as crew commentaries, access online content and games, zoom in to details.
• High-Definition video formats - play MPEG-4 AVC (H.264), MPEG-2 HD, WMV-HD, and SMPTE VC-1 files.
• Optimized Output for widescreen displays - Get the most of your movies with up to 1920 x 1080 image resolution.
• CyberLink TrueTheater™ Stretch technology - Display 16:9 and 4:3 videos on your monitor, regardless of its size.
• CyberLink TrueTheater™ Lighting technology - Enhance image details, and naturalize colors, with adaptive adjustments to chroma and luminance. Select your preferred profile.
• Hardware acceleration - Optimization for high-definition graphics processors from Intel, NVIDIA and ATI ensure ultra-smooth playback on the PC.
• HDMI connectors - You can reduce the number of cables to only one and still take full advantage of high-definition audio and video.

High-Definition and Home Theater Audio

PowerDVD delivers uncompressed HD audio and surround sound to make the most of your home-cinema setup, bringing movies to life in your living room.

Supported Audio Formats

• Dolby TrueHD (7.1-channel)
• Dolby Digital EX (7.1-channel)
• Dolby Digital Plus (7.1-channel)
• Dolby Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP)
• DTS-HD (7.1-channel)
• DTS (5.1 channel)
• DTS 96/24 decoding
• DTS-ES (Discrete and Matrix)

Supported Audio Technologies

• CyberLink TrueTheater™ Surround
• Dolby Pro Logic IIx surround sound
• Dolby Virtual Speaker
• Dolby Headphone
• DTS Neo:6

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