Ultraplayer. What do you think?

[Extremecriticiser]

A week ago I just downloaded Ultraplayer, what do you people think of it?

Note: only people who have used this thing can reply.

[sgtfuzzbubble011]

Yeah. I used it... I didn't like it. That was a while back, so I can't remember it all that well. But I do know that it sucked hind tit.

[carlito_au]

i used it once... a few weeks ago

it was alright, but winamp will always be better

[AlieXai]

Using it now, and I can tell you it plays streams far better than winamp...

[Twilightseer]

Isn't Ultraplayer ad-ware ?

[AlieXai]

Originally posted by Twilightseer
Isn't Ultraplayer ad-ware ?


Nope, I haven't seen any ads... It does report usage stats and the like back to them.

[implode]

Originally posted by Twilightseer
Isn't Ultraplayer ad-ware ?

When I tried it out a couple of months ago, it had annoying 'segue' ads between visualization and other display changes. I don't know if it still does.

My first impression was that it was a decent player, but a little too bloated (something like a 3 MB download vs. Winamp's 900K or so).

[MamiyaOtaru]

Those ads sucked.. I killed them by deleting the html subdirectory in the ultraplayer directory (I think that was it). It also runs some sort of TSR while it is up, I didn't want it so I deleted it, but Ultraplayer couldn't run without it, so with Notepad, I made a blank text file, renamed it to whateverTheTSRWas.exe, Ultraplayer ran, and no TSR. whee

Oh yeah.. Mr Criticiser, you never criticesed WPlay Pro for me

[randman]

Ultraplayer is a resource sucker!!

[Rx]

I liked the idea of a single-window interface for a change. It sounded pretty good, but of course, it isn't Winamp.

[bjay125]

Being the resident UltraPlayer expert, I have the following assessment...

UltraPlayer overtook *all* mp3 playing duties on my puter for several months. I was the only one (besides UP themselves) who did any skins for it (my skins are on their website - Blue Jay). I even wrote them a skinning tutorial and it became a part of their SkinSDK. Earlier versions had an accompanying program "UPAutoBG" which downloaded new ads from time to time, and also reported usage statistics. Of course I would always end the process, and when I had Zonealarm I denied it access to the internet. Deleting the files in "x:\Program Files\UltraPlayer\html\temp" got rid of the ads. The latest version (2.112) has no such program, and thus has *no* ads and does not report anything. It is now a completely stand-alone product, without ads. Contrary to the post I saw in this thread, UltraPlayer is anything but a resource hog. Yes, it takes up a bit more than Winamp, but not too much more - and still takes up far less than Sonique/WMP7/whatever. And considering the fact that UP is free-form skinnable and retains the skin in memory, the small amount of extra memory it takes is well worth it. And unlike Sonique, UP's memory usage does not increase over time - meaning no memory leaks. I gave up Winamp a long time ago - cuz of it's shitty sound, then went on to Sonique, which was ok until they released their AE decoder, which in itself wasn't bad, but all the resulting bugs forced me to give it up. Even with the latest Sonique - 1.909, the prev track button doesn't work, scanning backwards actually results in scanning *forwards*, and you have to disable then enable the EQ every time you start it up. Anyways, I then found UP, and what I liked most about it was it's simplicity, stability, and it's rather good usage of resources. The EQ sounded *really* good, and of course if you've done any reading, it's decoder, Neutrino, is every bit as good as Fraunhofer. Of course I won't say it's better, but it is just as good. The bad thing - it's playlist is pretty sad, but not an issue for me since I create my playlists using a shareware program. The best part of my UP experience was the support - with me being their #1 user, I've gotten several usability enhancements just by my request, most recently being the addition of hot-keys for scanning. I even learned C and programmed a vis for it, though it probably will never be posted since, umm, UP's future is greatly shadowed by a lack of funds. I can't go into any more detail than that. So with the future of UP in question, I ventured out to find a replacement, and decided to give Winamp another look. I think I spewed all over the place when I found that they "fixed" the terrible-sounding EQ by adding in the "Fast Layer3 EQ" or whatever it is in the decoder settings. All of a sudden, I could get Winamp to sound just as good as UP. So the rest is history - Winamp and UP are my 2 main players, and I still keep a glimmering hope that Sonique 2 will come without bugs and memory leaks, but I highly doubt it. But UP is *so* good at decoding files - just right-click on the file in the playlist, then click "save as wave" and that's it. No annoying changing of plug-ins, etc. And you can do it while playing another song. *Very* cool. And of course I designed my ultimate skin - WSXtreme - for UP, and I'm not about to give it up. I will, however, be very happy the day Winamp 3 is released, to see if it's skinning enhancements make it more usable (I'm running at 1280x960 and winshade modes are just too small).

That's more than you really wanted to know, huh? :)