| Product: |
UltraPlayer |
| Date: |
29/09/03 (324 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Great sound, Does audio and video, Tuvok likes it!
Disadvantages: Interface could be more user friendly, Occasional glitches in graphics
UltraPlayer
UltraPlayer is great. It's modern looking, ultra modern looking, in fact it's probably the player of choice onboard the Starship Voyager. ?Janeway to Tuvok?Janeway to Tuvok JANEWAY TO TUVOK! Boy if he's listening to MP3s on UltraPlayer again I'll, I'll? hmmm that does sound good?
Sorry I digress. UltraPlayer is one of many media players wanting your attention. It handles a variety of sound formats including MP3, WMA, RealAudio, MP2, MP1, WAV, CDA and more. However it?s more than just an audio player, more of which later. It features an easy to use interface, with the usual Play, Forward, Rewind, Pause functions etc so it wont take more than a minute or so to get up and running. It also has a Playlist, Graphic equaliser and Visual display that swirls and dances before your very eyes. If you see these effects when not watching UltraPlayer you need to lay off the Skittles and coffee! Thrown in for good measure are Shuffle, Repeat and a Mute function for when the boss arrives, (good news for Tuvok). For those heavy sleepers (myself included) it has a built in alarm, which you can set to pump out your favourite tracks at whatever time you want. Graphically, I find some of the fonts a bit small but readable and curves on the main skin seem a bit jaggy. The latter could be a limitation of my monitor and it?s only a slight ?problem.? You sometimes see little glitches when, for example, changing display settings, such as minimising one part of the interface. These are minor issues though and I haven?t had any major software problems such as freezes.
One thing I like about UltraPlayer is the fact that everything is contained in one Window. The controls surround a central screen which depending on which button you press becomes the Playlist, the Graphic equaliser, or visual display, etc. It?s neat and tidy, which is good, according to my mum. Now wouldn?t it be really neat if you could watch
movies in that same window? Well the creators of UltraPlayer thought so and have added this very feature into version 2 of the player and what a great addition it is, rounding off a nice package. Now you can watch Windows Media, AVI, Real Video and MPEG without having to load up another program, although you will need to have Windows Media Player on your PC so UltraPlayer can use the codecs.
Like Winamp you can use Skins to change the look of the player. However unlike Winamp, UltraPlayer?s skins can change the position of controls so it will sometimes take a few seconds to familiarise yourself with the new layout. Some of the skins are a bit big and messy, others are sublime. You?ll soon find a few favourites that you stick with though. My current favourites are Mojo and NxT-1 written by Kentium and available for download at http://www.ultraplayer.com/download/skins/skins.as p. Think you can do better than these? Then go for it, download the Skins Developers kit from www.ultraplayer.com and get to work on your latest masterpiece. Don?t forget to send your finished Skin to the UltraPlayer guys and gals.
All in all UltraPlayer is a well-designed MP3/multimedia player with plenty of features and very good sound quality. A lot of thought has gone into its look and feel and it would rate higher if only it wasn?t for Winamp, which I still prefer. Why? I?m not quite sure. Winamp just seems to do everything well, without too many bells and whistles. It?s like that pair of old jeans we all own...just too comfy to let go. Don?t let that dissuade you though; Ultraplayer is a great alternative to Winamp and the other media players out there and is certainly worth a second glance.
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