Microsoft continues to improve upon its resurrected media player in Windows 11, bringing back a music library and the ability to better control how your videos look.
Windows Media Player was first announced by the company in November 2021 that would be replacing the Groove Music app. Since then it's become available on the redesigned Microsoft Store, allowing users to manage their content in an app that's not VLC or through their YouTube playlists.
Having the ability to manage your music library will bring a big advantage to those who want to only add, delete and view their favorite albums in Windows Media Player, much like how many used to in the days of Windows 98.
But with the added feature of being able to control the brightness and contrast of your videos, it makes us wonder what plans Microsoft has for its nostalgic media player for Windows 11 users.
Analysis: Microsoft, bring back the visualizers
After years of faintly supporting its Groove Music app, it's great to see a renewed focus from Microsoft on not only bringing back the Windows Media Player name, but bringing a design that harkens back to previous versions of it from the days of Windows XP.
While you can use third-party apps such as IINA, VLC Player, and iTunes, there's something about managing your music in Windows Media Player again in 2022. But the company can go further to tug on those nostalgic heartstrings for the app.
Nostalgia applies to all types of medium – from television to games, and now apps. Users remember logging onto MSN Messenger after school and sending ‘nudges' to each other, and having some features be brought back to Media Player could be a nice touch.
The visualizations were a big drawer in previous versions, so to have these in an upcoming update would be great to see as you're playing the latest Kendrick Lamar album. As an added touch, having these work across multiple monitors, a common staple in offices and workplaces, could bring the multi-colored visualizations to a new level in how they can work on multiple devices.
In the meantime however, these new updates to Media Player, however small, will be a big help to those who just want to manage their music with no fuss, but in an app that calls back to the days of a CRT monitor, attached to a beige-colored PC, logging in to the internet through a dial-up connection.
Via Windows Latest
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