TalkingSoft.com Forums: Windows Media Player 6.4 vs Media Player Classic 6.4 - TalkingSoft.com Forums

If you remember Windows 95/98 then you would've remembered Windows Media Player 2, 3 then 6. Last version was 6.4 on Windows 98SE platform. It was lightweight, fast loading and a favourate player.

Then came Windows XP with Windows Media Player 8 (yes MS likes to jump version numbers, missing v7). XP Service Pack 1a would upgrade you to WMP9. SP2 would upgrade you to WMP10. Now there is WMP11. I found WMP8,9,10,11 slower to load, consumes a lot of memory and especially WMP11 being slow to use. Many people reverted to Media Player Classic (http://sourceforge.n...ects/guliverkli) which is an open-source rewrite/reversed-engineer of Windows Media Player 6.4. MPC is not affiliated with Microsoft.

Then I found out this. I never realised WinXP still kept Windows Media Player 6.4 (hidden under \Program Files\Windows Media Player\mplayer2.exe) along side WMP8,9,10,11 (under \Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe). MS WMP 6.4 loads up much faster, consumes less memory and works good/well as version 9,10,11. This hidden file is not the open-source Media Player Classic. It's strange how Microsoft hid this away with no shortcut or mention about WMP 6.4 still kept away hidden.

Just thought you like to know.

MS doesn't missing the v7 ...
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...re/Playerv7.asp
It's available for Win98 & WinME, it's the first new-gen WMP of the post-v6 series ^^