Winamp has been in something of a holding pattern since AOL's acquisition of Nullsoft in June 1999. The initial release of Winamp 5.0 added CD burning and ripping, support for major formats, and improved video playback. Version 5.0 also included a premium Winamp Pro upgrade (US$14.99) with faster ripping and burning (up to 48X) and encoding to MP3 and AAC audio.
You can download the free player in any of three versions: Lite for plain music playback (only 735K); Full with skins, library, and Internet media (4.34MB); and Bundle, which comes with a sample song (7.87MB). Winamp installs quickly and is mercifully quiet about nagging for registration and upgrades.
The Winamp interface still has dockable or detachable panes, with the main Controller, Media Library, Playlist Editor, and Video playback window. (This takes some getting used to if you're accustomed to a player such as WMP.) The main Controller provides a 10-band equaliser and tools for customising the interface look. The Media Library provides access to local content, audio and video files and playlists. The multipane interface provides convenient listings by artists and album. The bottom of the window displays album summaries accessed over the Internet, although sometimes it shows browser error messages. Links to additional information pop up in an external browser window.
Winamp supports hardware devices, including CD drives (for ripping and burning discs) and portable players (for transferring songs). However, you must download a third-party plug-in to access portable USB players as removable drives. Another feature that's found in other jukeboxes but is missing in Winamp is line-in recording.
The Library also provides free and convenient access to a variety of streaming media, after downloading lists of available content. These include Internet Radio (reporting 500 streams and 140,000 listeners) and Internet TV (160 streams, 4000 viewers) delivered over the Shoutcast distributed streaming media system as MP3 audio and Nullsoft Streaming Video (NSV). Winamp.com also serves up music (15 genres, 745 artists, 2200 streams) and music videos (3500 streams). These play snappily over a DSL connection.
Unfortunately, it's not clear what lies ahead for Winamp and how it fits into AOL's larger broadband and media plans. Yet while AOL has no news on possible future development, the Winamp community continues to create and upload new skins and plug-ins, and Winamp does respond quickly to support e-mails.
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