Today I noticed that there were two extra tabs in my UI -
nineMSN Music and Radio. I knew from the press that the nineMSN offering was
due, but the posts on Windowsmedia newsgroups from WMP team members never
acknowledge the existence of English-speaking countries besides the US.
To access the nineMSN Music, you have to download a plugin. The Plugin is marked
as being published by "Installshield Corporation" (the writers of the
installation wrapper, not the software) - chalk up another failure for
transparency in software publishing... I believe from further reading that the
actual publisher is "On Demand Distribution ltd [sic]". There is nothing to
clarify the relationship between Microsoft, nineMSN and OD2 but here goes...
According to the license agreement the jurisdiction is England
and Wales, NOT Australia. Interesting. While that's installing, let's check out
the Radio tab...
The Radio offering has a dreary homepage that looks like it was knocked out in
Notepad (or was that "copy con"). It indicates "5 great channels" but lists 6,
the most intriguing being "Jocelyn Pook's Best: Some stuff that might work in
test". I'm familiar with Pook's work - I have a couple of her albums, and she's
probably most familiar as the creator of the soundtrack to Kubrik's "Eyes Wide
Shut". I wonder if it *is* in fact a test channel or in-joke that got left
behind on the launch screen.
The top of the radio page has one of those wondrous WMP blue
server icons with useful labels like sib1.od2.com . Now these might be OK for
debug purposes but it *really* is UI clutter to show this stuff - particularly
when you are irresistibly drawn to click it (like Ren & Stimpy's "History
Eraser" button) so that you can get the illuminating error dialog "Certificate
Information: This type of document does not have a security certificate"). There
are other useful buttons like this in WMP10.
OK, the Music plugin is done, and now I am presented with a dialog from WMP : "A
security upgrade is required to play this file. Do you want to download this
upgrade"? What file would this be - is it a welcome fanfare for OD2?? I haven't
clicked on anything to "play" and it kind of begs the question why the necessary
software wasn't included in the plugin.
I click the "Learn More.." button which simply puts the dialog box into (Not
Responding) mode. OK, 20 minutes later, it's still stuck, so I'll have to kill
this process. That leaves OD2state.exe and OD2DLEngine.exe processes sitting
around after WMP had gone away.
Restarted WMP but the interface for nineMSN Music hangs part-way through redraw. I kill WMP again and the two OD2 processes. Now I restart WMP and get an error about WMP not being closed properly and (C00D0FD6) my plugins have been disabled. It appears that no plugins have actually been disabled however and the necessary plugin (SonicSelector Queue List PlugIn) is not available on my Plugins menu.
I try the Help option for nineMSN music: "Dr Download" checks out my system and I'm given a clean bill of health, so after reading the FAQs (which need to be re-proofed as the words you/Your are confused throughout) I'm going to email drdownload@od2.com to see what the next step might be.