For years it frustrated me that folks could not tune in to a SHOUTcast station because the only media player they had was the one that came with Windows. We all knew Windows Media Player would not play .PLS files. We did have PLS in Windows, a plug in that essentially told WMP to play a SHOUTcast stream.
Nowadays SHOUTcast is heard from the site and with folks using a transcoder, people with WMP could get the stream on an .AXS file. This feature is up on the Event Horizon page. Most folks use VLC or Winamp anyway, but what of those who still use WMP? After all it is handy, it works well. It's everywhere Windows is. There is a way and without a plug-in.
SHOUTcast has notified us that soon they will no longer support SHOUTcast version 1, moving to the latest developments for the far superior version 2. But there are still alot of folks who still stream in SC v.1 and some great material is still being streamed on straight .PLS servers. I have little doubt the negation of SC v1 support will lead to people running "underground" stations all over the web. For this and general knowledge, I have discovered how Windows Media Player, all versions since XP can play a SHOUTcast/ .PLS stream.
It might be old knowledge, but for this old timer, it was quite a discovery. All you need to do is paste the SC server web address in to "Open URL" in WMP. The catch is not to inclide "listen.pls"... just the addy itself, e.g. http://xxx.xxx.xxx: port and that's all. WMP will play SCv1 and 2 this way. What's even better, is that you can save the station in WMP as a playlist, access the file by selecting the new playlist and right clicking to "open file location". This file will not only open a .PLS stream on demand, it will accept song titles as well, which adding the server address negates. And that's it.
Windows users rejoice! ;)
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