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Download.com ratings |
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This industry-standard, streaming-media player undergoes a face-lift and emerges with a downloadable music store and enhanced jukebox capabilities. Though not groundbreaking, the RealPlayer music store gets a thumbs-up for being easy to use and offering a flexible DRM policy. The new jukebox features let you make playlists, rip CDs, burn custom mixes, and listen to hundreds of online radio stations, The interface, though better than previous versions, still feels cluttered, sluggish, and confusing. On the bright side, audio and video quality is crisp and clear. The program still suffers from the intrusive installation, file-type hijacking, and upgrade harassment that have plagued it since its inception. Overall, though, RealPlayer has taken steps in the right direction. Users of earlier versions certainly should upgrade. |
CNET editor rating

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Nullsoft has a lot of ground to make up after the Winamp 3.0 debacle, a
dwindling user base, and stiff competition from Apple's iTunes. Winamp
5 is a huge step in the right direction, with support for AAC encoding,
CD burning, and a robust file-management system...finally.
New functionality includes a More Info feature that hunts down biographical information and options to buy the CD online. We also loved the Internet TV feature that provides some great music videos or live concert footage. Another eye-catcher is the excellent collection of visualizations. The massive catalog of Winamp 2.x and 3.x skins works with this new version.
One quibble is the lack of an efficient way to manage the player, media-library, and playlist-editor windows at the same time. The free version is feature-rich, but if you want MP3 encoding and full-speed CD burning, you have to shell out $14.95 for the Pro version. Winamp is one of our all-time favorite players, though, and version 5 renews its promise. |
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iTunes, the award-winning digital-jukebox software, is now available for Mac and Windows. The iTunes Music Store offers Windows users the same online music store as Mac users, with the same music catalog, the same personal-use rights, and the same 99-cents-per-song pricing. With music from all five major music companies and more than 600 independent labels, the iTunes Music Store catalog now offers more than 1,000,000 songs. Features include a free download with no hidden charges for extra features, MP3 and pristine-quality AAC-encoding from audio CDs, smart playlists, more than 250 free Internet radio stations, and the ability to burn custom playlists to CDs and MP3 CDs, to burn content to DVDs to back up an entire music collection, and to share music via Rendezvous over any network, cross-platform.
New version: Enjoy a streamlined look, find stuff faster with the new Search Bar, control kids access with Parental Controls and hear more of what you love with Smart Shuffle. |
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