How do I submit my bug with any assurance that the reported bug will get before any decision maker in the Windows Media Player team?
Actual product support is your best option, as they would raise relevant bugs up the chain as needed according to their interpretation. Yours and my personal ideas of Important Bugs aren’t definitive. The first “decision maker” in the process is that product support person at this time: if you don’t get the feedback in before beta lockdown, then you don’t have an ability to bypass product support channels any longer. “Releasing” software generally presumes that any bugs that are there are construed to be livable and therefore Probably Not Critical: that judgement override is done via product support channels. As far as you or any external party is concerned, what you have is all there is, and there are no further versions planned. That’s a pretty standard setting of expectations: we all get spoiled in the Internet age. If you want to have an impact on product design, get involved in the beta stage if possible. I might not like Return of the Jedi, but it’s not really possible for Lucas
