Software update: Winamp 5 final

At the end of August of this year, the first pre-alpha of Winamp 5 was released and the development of the media player gradually increased. Winamp could only play music files in its early years. At the time, it was one of the most well-known programs that could play MP3s in a decent way. Now, several years later, the programmers have baked the final version of Winamp 5. The 5 branch is characterized by the plugin support of 2.x and the skin engine of 3.x. This release was compiled on December 14 and declared final. The changelog only displays a summary of the most important changes:

Winamp 5.0:

• Support for classic Winamp 1.x/2.x/2.9x skins and Winamp 3 (“Modern”) skins
• Fancy new modern skin:
  • Integrated video, AVS, and Milkdrop support
  • Many built-in color themes
• Same ol’ classic skin for people who want the Winamp 2 feel
• Vastly more powerful media library:
  • Automatic background directory scanning options
  • Customizable views and columns, graphical view editor
  • Internet Radio (SHOUTcast) and TV listings
  • Context-sensitive item info viewer
• CD ripping support (AAC@2x in free version, MP3 at unlimited speeds in pro)
• CD burning support (limited to 2x in free version)
• Advanced title formatting logic for file types that support it
• Huge AVS updates:
  • New effects, bundled some popular 3rd party APEs
  • A much better selection of default presets
  • Experimental SMP support
  • Full AVS preset subdirectory support
  • Extensions and optimizations to the AVS evaluation library
• Support for playback of AAC and VP6 in NSV files/streams
• Global hot key support
• Options to disable plugin exception handling for developers
• A ton of new plug-in API calls (SDK coming)
• fixed changing-systray options while minimized bug
• new winamp icon
• added XP Manifest.xml to winamp.exe
• made agent icon use configured winamp system tray icon
• optimized winamp’s load titles on demand logic, made faster
• made winamp’s internal submenu management more reliable
• added skin font override preferences
• added spacebar shows current playlist item in playlist editor
• fixed manual playlist advance w/ repeat
• made winamp’s open directory recurse checkbox nicer looking
• big prefs overhaul to make steve happy
• huge thanks to Amir Szekely and the rest of the NSIS developers for their help

[break]The following two versions of Winamp 5 are available. The Full variant has all the bells and whistles on board, while the Lite edition is limited to playing music and movie files:

Winamp 5 Full
Winamp 5 Lite