Windows Media Player may be the only windows application with a UI that gets progressively worse with each new version. It is my media player of choice due only to overwhelming indifference on my part; I curse every time I use it. That's why I was so encouraged by Philipp Lenssen's rant on the horrible usability of WMP 10.
I’m not a huge warez bit-torrent video d00d (so perhaps I’m not a very challenging user) but I use VLC media player (from http://www.videolan.org/). Its free (open source) and IJW. Its never barfed up weird messages on newer encodings like “unable to create factory” like WMP has (should anybody who isn’t a programmer ever see an error message like this? I don’t think so). VLC media player does (very occasionally) have issues with videos on Channel9, but otherwise performs flawlessly. A nice, simple discoverable UI…what more could one wish for?
I don’t use the newer (version 6.4+) interfaces for Windows Media Player, I stick with the simple uncluttered 6.4 interface.
But with all the power and codecs of the newer versions, how?
The layout comparison between iTunes and WMP10 is somewhat subjective. Showing extra panels and an expanded menu in WMP10 indeed look cluttered. Turning off those extra panels and collaps the menu shows more or less the iTunes layout. With a bit of skinning I can make it exactly like iTunes