Portable Media Players
I’ve been keeping an eye out for portable media players as of late, but I can’t seem to find one that matches exactly what I want. I’ve heard calls for portable WiMP (Windows Media Player) and iTunes, but neither is opensource and neither is non-restrictively licensed.
There is an interesting program in development called Songbird Media Player (http://www.songbirdnest.com) but unfortunately it hasn’t been released yet. (A 0.1 beta was promised for December last year but hasn’t been released yet.) When, if ever, it gets released, it could probably be made portable with a launcher similar to that of Portable Firefox – they both run off XUL and they are both based on the same framework.
Here’s what I want in a portable media player:
- A library comparable to WiMP’s or iTunes — with search, sort, and the like.
- Rip/Burn capabilities.
- A CDDB lookup to show me what I’m playing.
- An intuitive interface similar to WiMP or iTunes — it has to look good.
Unfortunately, semi-portable programs (like WinAmp) don’t quite do the job, and I don’t want to learn some brand-new interface like that of XMPlay… I just want something simple.
But it looks like, for now, we’ll have to wait.
There is the portable Winamp. It’s working really well
Posted 3 years, 9 months agoDoes WinAmp do all that stuff? I don’t really use it that often, but I don’t think it does… and anyway, it isn’t truly portable (unless you use a BAT script to restore registry entries).
Update: Songbird — http://www.songbirdnest.com/ — has been released! Once the bugs have been worked out (it is only a 0.1 alpha release after all) then it should be the perfect thing. It uses XULRunner, VLC, and a bit of other stuff which should be completely portable.
Posted 3 years, 9 months ago