Windows Media Player 9 Series Beta

The standard Windows audio and video software has just reached the 9 series. A beta is available for Microsoft Windows 98 SE, 2000, ME and XP.

Here's a snippet of the improvements:

Media Link Use Media Link to email shortcuts to highlights from streamed news, presentations, home movies and more. Accessible from View|Enhancements. (Windows XP version)
HighMAT CD Burning A new option for CD burning, HighMAT makes it easy to save personal digital music and video created on your PC to recordable discs that work seamlessly with next-generation consumer electronics devices. (Windows XP version).
Synchronized Lyrics support View or add your own synchronized lyrics to music files. Displayed as captions, synchronized lyrics are displayed in Now Playing and Full Screen modes.
Auto Playlist Enhancements Expanded support for more types of criteria when creating or editing Auto Playlists (Windows XP version)
Performance improvements Continued optimizations improve startup time and media library performance dramatically over previous versions.
Usability Improvements Based on real feedback in newsgroups, many improvements have been made to areas including Mini-Player mode, Info Center View, Album Lookup, Queue-it-Up, and more.

For more information head to microsoft.com. Here's a direct link to the download. And since it's *that* season again, a 9 series winter fun pack has been released (XP only) with a set of cool skins and visualisations. Get it here (thanks DA).

NOTE: The 9 Series Beta is a release candidate and is unsupported.