MinimServer and Windows Media Player

[simoncn]

(18-12-2013 22:51)DavidHB Wrote:  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.

Thanks for the reminder. I have updated this list to show WMP as "functional".

Quote: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.

I don't think it's correct to say that WMP recognises the MinimServer browse tree. WMP uses its own Artist/Album/Genre browse tree instead. WMP does recognise the metadata that MinimServer sends to the control point.

Quote: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.

I think this is because Windows 8.1 includes UPnP search support at the OS level. Unlike WMP, this support does recognise the MinimServer browse tree. You can see this by finding a MinimServer library in Network and opening it.

Quote: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

I agree that this is a useful step forward, though I find it disappointing that WMP is lagging Windows 8.1 in its level of support for the MinimServer browse tree. This browse tree is (from my perspective) the main reason to use MinimServer.