14 DAY TRIAL // What's happening?
Weird things do I get to see in my job: in the morning - a mockery of a software CD player, now, as I was literally prowling around for interesting programs, I found something called the Holy Player. I guess you are at least as curios as I was when I first read its name: I really did not know what to expect; it could have very well been a simple media player, a most common MP3 player skinned as to look holy with a religion-themed skin...it definitely could have been anything.
Well, none of the above was true as I was totally surprised what I have found the moment I installed the program and it ran for the first time. Holy Player is a software which plays religious music and I am not a "religion-person" (rather a contraire) but I like nice orthodox music, especially when it is "light". And I am also sure that many of you, softpedia.com readers don't know too much about orthodox music, even if it's very likely you have met such (at least - kind of) music even in some PC games, movies and many of you have felt at least comfortable with it if not even liked it.
There are three main orthodox music types: Greek, Romanian and Russian, never mind the order given here. Holy Player plays Russian and - even if I am not a fan of the Russian language and would rather listen religious music in Greek, Romanian or even Latin (when talking about catholic music) - it sounds pretty good in Holy Player. So, let the peaceful atmosphere cover us and step deeper into the review!
The Looks and The Works
From the very start, I noticed that Holy Player is a piece of code oriented mostly on what sounds come out of it, rather than being concerned with the looks. Holy Player sports one single window, small and tidy, whose dimensions can't be altered.
Everything related to anything in Holy Player is to be found in this window since it is tabbed and inside the 4 sections accessible by the corresponding tabs one can find playlists, options, preferences and registration information; so everything is really easy to use. Practically, one does not need advanced PC knowledge to successfully operate the Holy Player, as it is also very intuitive and does not have a large amount of options.
The playlist screen displays the tracks available for playback - in my case there are 2 - after, initially, I have updated the software. In row with each track, one can see the activity indicator, a "V" for when the track is active and therefore it will be played continuously when its turn comes and the absence of the "V" for when the track will be skipped.
Then comes the next column which displays the name of the track and the third one showing the time in minutes. I don't know yet if we have a standard here or it's just a simple coincidence, but both tracks in my version of the Holy Player are 27 minutes long each. It may be a slight difference between them and some seconds might not be displayed, but I guess you have guessed I won't record the tracks to see the times nor will I watch carefully the system time... The playlist can be easily administered by means of very handy buttons for Up/Down, Activate/Deactivate and Play/Stop.
Also, in this screen you can activate the Hide To Tray option which comes in really handy, since you simply do not have things to tweak in Holy Player, so the need to further keep it on your desktop is rather inexistent. The Options tab lets you set up the playback mode which should act like some sort of self-control for the behavior of the software: it can be told to play all the time or in idle-user periods. This feature isn't yet very precise, but I am sure further versions will have it running smoothly and even fading, at times.
Finally, the preferences offer you the possibility to make Holy Player load up at Windows stratup or not. What's really cool in this issue is the fact that you also have the third option which will make the Holy Player load up at the system boot and automatically start playing at the same time. Updating can be performed automatically or manually, so it's simply up to you.
Some rather peculiar thing is that the Holy Player does not have in-track seeking capabilities, nor volume controls or an EQ, which can surely be important assets for any audio playback-related software. Of course, things are running OK without them (as it is now) but I guess you all see my point...
As for the quality of the tracks, it is definitely up to each user individually; some will argue that this kind of music is really crap, while others will fall in love with its sonorities, some will turn to the orthodox religion while others will simply refuse even the generic idea of the software.
The Good
The best things in Holy Player were (in a random order) the fact that it does only what it said it would, it won't ask for user info and so on, it can be paused with just a single click on the tray icon (and resumed as well), runs on very little resources and is extremely easy to use. As a personal consideration on the "bests" - I thank the developers for not inserting other religious elements for propaganda, proselytism and all such crap.
The Bad
The idle/active-detection engine can go for some improvement; as well, some EQ and native volume wouldn't hurt anyone.
The Truth
I am still wondering at having witnessed the existence of such software as I could not imagine such a thing. Personally, I liked a lot the main idea of the Holy Player (even if my generic appreciation for religion is rather a thing you wouldn't like to know better :) Nevertheless, at least give it a try: I have written this whole article while continuously listening to the tracks and it felt good.
Take a look at the screenshots below and find out more on the Holy Player!
