View any video format in Windows Media Player
August 28th, 2008I used to use the Combined Community Codec Pack to get a support for a host of codecs on my Windows XP and Windows Vista (32-bit) machines. It seems that development of the pack has fallen behind, and I have noticed that it does not work as well in Vista x64. After some research I cam across the Vista Codec Pack, which supports just about every codec, including MOV (QuickTime). VLC is a good alternative, if you don’t mind (or prefer) a bare-bones media player, but I’m glad to have support for everything that I would want to view right in Windows Media Player.
Lyrics Plugin for Windows Media Player and Winamp
February 3rd, 2008
The Lyrics Plugin main page really says it all. It lets you see the lyrics for the music that is playing. I use it for Windows Media Player 11, and the install process is easy. Click download, run the installer, which will close Windows Media Player, and after the install Windows Media Player reopens with the plugin enabled. It takes the place of the visualizer, and it is simple enough to switch between the lyrics plugin and the visualizer.
It downloads the lyrics dynamically when each song is played, so if you’re offline you’re out of luck, but with an internet connection the lyrics load more or less instantly. Over all the actual lyrics seem to be pretty accurate as well.
Oh, and did I mention that it’s free?