Microsoft's Windows Media Player 10 - Providing Some Pointers

Skin Development and Support

Almost all of the little and big things that we tend to pay attention to in multimedia software reviews can be mended easily by the development and support of skins for programs like SageTV 2.0, BeyondTV 3.X, Forceware Multimedia, Meedio Essentials, Multimedia Center, etc.

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And while a few of these titles already have skin support, it would be great to see a better move to backing/push for the development of skins and producing them on a wider scale than what we already have seen (e.g. SageTV 2.0 only has a few skins out there). SnapStream is considering our recommendation for skin deployment when we had last spoken to them. As for the two GPU makers, we haven't seen any skins from NVIDIA or any online developer for FWM, other than the two skins bundled with the title; and ATI still has a way to go to provide such a wide berth of skin options like Microsoft.

Simply put, these various skins help quench everyone's taste for design and features (assuming the backend is there for feature-support), and in the end, that is the real aim for both the software developer and end-user.

A lot of what we have recommended can be picked up by freeware multimedia software developers (i.e. a low profile design and skin deployment). This will go a long way in the end to provide more options for those looking around for something with a better UI than VLC player.