Windows Media Player 11 leaked

Windows Media Player 11 has been leaked on Softpedia. days before a public preview beta (official release scheduled sometime in June 2006) from Microsoft. The Softpedia servers are at the moment getting hammered from all the downloads, so I’ve mirrored the .exe into a zip file here.

Features in Windows Media Player 11:
-New UI
-Support for better synchronization for portable devices
-Album “stacks” of album art
-Indexed libraries with search-as-you-type features
-User controlled downgrade of quality for DRM content to allow for smaller files
-DRM content will contain metadata that shows what the user is allowed to do with the file
-Includes Microsoft and MTV’s Urge music store

And oh yes, in typical RV2 [blog] fashion, I discovered a Windows Genuine Advantage workaround (for those illegal copies of Windows) since it does do a check prior to installation (you’ll need WinRAR for this- it’s free):

1) Extract “wmp11.zip” and you should get a folder called “wmp11.zip” with a file named “Microsoft Windows Media Player 11.exe” inside.
2) Right click “Microsoft Windows Media Player 11.exe” and select “Extract to Microsoft Windows Media Player 11\”. Double-click the newly made folder named “Microsoft Windows Media Player 11″.
3) Double-click the file named “wmfdist11.exe” to install the Windows Media Player 11 codec.
4) Double-click the file named “wmp11.exe” to install Windows Media Player 11!

With that said, the best choice, for playing media files is still VLC or iTunes.