MinimServer and Windows Media Player

[DavidHB]

The 'Browsing your Library' page of the MinimServer User Guide still states that Windows Media Player is not compatible with MinimServer. However, Simon indicated in earlier posts that WMP compatibility at a basic level would be provided in the next version, and this seems to have happened in MinimServer 0.81.

On my desktop machines (Windows 7 and Windows 8.1), WMP sees MinimServer, and can access its library. There are, of course, only the usual Album, Artist and Genre views of the library, which makes WMP of limited use for classical music enthusiasts. But it at least recognises the MinimServer browse tree; I have MinimServer prefix track titles with the composer's name, and the track titles show up in this form in the WMP view.

There was an interesting difference between my Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 machines (both OSs are running on SSDs, and are therefore quite fast). The Windows 7 machine took a noticeable time to read the MinimServer library on first access, as if it were adding it to its own index; later access was immediate. On Windows 8.1, the access to the library was from the outset as nearly instantaneous as I have come to expect from other control points.

Personally, I am not that fond of WMP (foobar2000 is my default player), but I think it is very good news that MinimServer can now work with WMP, and with a greater degree of functionality than I was expecting. The millions of WMP users out there now have a means of trying out the only network music streamer I want to use. Broadening the MinimServer user base is good for us all.

David