July 31, 2001

7:32 PM

B&O goes virtual: Beoplayer 1.0 is a Windows application that sits on your desktop and, like everything Bang, works in a sleek, elegant, unintuitive manner (until you learn what the icons and doodads do, then you can show it off for all your friends). Guaranteed you've never seen a music player like this one.
posted by honkzilla (14 comments total)

Extra super-cool, but, at least on my machine, the sound quality doesn't come close to Winamp + Wowthing (thanks mostly to Wowthing I imagine). Too bad, 'cause I think I'd switch in an instant if it sounded as good.

Maybe there are sound settings buried somewhere in the UI that I haven't found yet...
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:03 PM on July 31, 2001

To bad the top frame is damn ugly with all those stupid scrollbars... otherwise, I almost liked that page :/
posted by Ptrin at 8:21 PM on July 31, 2001

I used this player for a few weeks, but the lack of interface was too much for me. When a song is playing, I wish I could see some indicator and have a simple way to skip to the next song. Also, I guess I'm too used to standard application interfaces to take the time to learn what every part of the app did, so I gave up.

I'll give it another go, it certainly was a step in a new, refreshing direction.
posted by mathowie at 8:26 PM on July 31, 2001

I used it back when Peterme wrote about it on his site. I liked the way it categorised the songs, I believe Winamp 3 and Sonique 2 will have a similar database feature. I just didn't like the interface, it took up too much room when it wasn't autohiding.
posted by riffola at 8:44 PM on July 31, 2001

I'm just so relieved that it plays Windows Media format. I was worried for a second.

</sarcasm>
posted by solistrato at 9:11 PM on July 31, 2001

That site crashed IE5 on Mac OS X. I guess they only want Windows users to use their site.
posted by gyc at 10:03 PM on July 31, 2001

Well gyc, since it's a windows only application, that's probably true
posted by alan at 10:42 PM on July 31, 2001

It's B&O down to the ground: looks great, works clunkily, sounds like Slappy Squirrel.
posted by holgate at 2:03 AM on August 1, 2001

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad? You've got it wrong; I think they're here.
posted by dfowler at 6:19 AM on August 1, 2001

It didn't crash my OSX, but it didn't work, either.

No one goes out of their way to make a site break on a certain platform/browser. It's just poor design.
posted by jragon at 7:13 AM on August 1, 2001

I was looking forward to using it until it needed my name, addess, sex, etc just to run. Just say NO to marketing-ware.
posted by internal at 8:26 AM on August 1, 2001

So what exactly does this Player do? The descriptions on the web site are all vague market-speak, and I'd rather not download first to find out..
posted by valerie at 11:20 AM on August 1, 2001

I second Valerie. It's B&O, I'm sure it's lovely, but I still want screenshots. I just want to see it, not run the thing.
posted by Su at 1:15 PM on August 1, 2001

It plays MP3s and WMAs, it keeps a database broken down by genre/artist/album/song title, it "hides" behind your screen edges when not in use, it allows you to copy CDs to MP3 automatically, it connects to CDDB - it pretty much does what most audio players do, it just does it in a less overt fashion. There's nothing to skin, no buttons, very few controls at all in fact. A screenshot would show black bands along the screen edges sliding in and out when activated.
posted by honkzilla at 5:34 PM on August 1, 2001