Windows Media Player (WMP, officially referred to as Windows Media Player Legacy to
distinguish
In law, to distinguish a case means a court decides the holding or legal reasoning of a precedent case that will not apply due to materially different facts between the two cases. Two formal constraints constrain the later court: the expresse ...
it from
the new Windows Media Player introduced with
Windows 11
Windows 11 is a version of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released on October 5, 2021, as the successor to Windows 10 (2015). It is available as a free upgrade for devices running Windows 10 that meet the #System requirements, Windo ...
) is the first
media player
Media player may refer to:
*Digital media player, home appliances that play digital media
*Media player software, software that plays digital media
*Portable media player, portable hardware that plays digital media
*Windows Media Player
Windo ...
and media library application that
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
developed to play
audio
Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to:
Sound
*Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound
*Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum
*Digital audio, representation of sound ...
and video on personal computers. It has been a component of the
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
, including
Windows 9x
Windows 9x is a generic term referring to a line of discontinued Microsoft Windows operating systems released from 1995 to 2000 and supported until 2006, which were based on the kernel introduced in Windows 95 and modified in succeeding version ...
,
Windows NT
Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...
,
Pocket PC
A Pocket PC (P/PC, PPC) is a class of personal digital assistant (PDA) that runs the Windows Mobile operating system, which is based on Windows Embedded Compact, Windows CE/Windows Embedded Compact, and that has some of the abilities of modern ...
, and
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDA). Designed to be the portable equivalent of the Windows desktop OS in the emerging Mobile device, mobile/port ...
. Microsoft also released editions of Windows Media Player for
classic Mac OS
Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Mac (computer), Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and end ...
, , and
Solaris
Solaris is the Latin word for sun.
It may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film
* ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem
** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg
** ''Sol ...
, but has since discontinued them.
In addition to being a media player, the app can
rip audio file from
compact disc
The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...
s, burn
Audio CDs or
MP3 CD
A compressed audio optical disc, MP3 CD, or MP3 CD-ROM or MP3 DVD is an optical disc (usually a CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R or DVD-RW) that contains digital audio in the MP3 file format. Discs are Optical disc authoring, written in the "Rainbow_Books#Yel ...
s, synchronize content with a
digital audio player
A portable media player (PMP) or digital audio player (DAP) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. Normally they refer to small, battery-powered devices ...
or mobile devices, and stream media over the local network. Originally, it could connect to a number of
digital music stores, allowing its users to purchase digital music. The default file formats are
Windows Media Video
Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: the original video compression technolog ...
(WMV),
Windows Media Audio
Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. Audio encoded in WMA is stored in a digi ...
(WMA), and
Advanced Systems Format
Advanced Systems Format (formerly Advanced Streaming Format, Active Streaming Format) is Microsoft's proprietary digital audio/digital video container format, especially meant for streaming media
Streaming media refers to multimedia de ...
(ASF), and its own
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...
based playlist format called Windows Playlist (WPL). The player is also able to utilize a
digital rights management
Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures, such as access control technologies, can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. DRM ...
service in the form of
Windows Media DRM
Windows Media DRM or WMDRM, is a digital rights management service for the Windows Media platform. It is designed to provide delivery of audio or video content over an IP network to a PC or other playback device in such a way that the distributor ...
.
Windows Media Player is a unique component, in that since 1999, each version of Windows came with two or more versions of it side-by-side. For example, Media Player versions 5.1, 6.4, and 8 were all included in
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
. Each versions of Windows may bundle several other media playback apps, namely
ActiveMovie Control,
CD Player
A CD player is an electronic device that plays audio compact discs, which are a digital audio, digital optical disc data storage format. CD players were first sold to consumers in 1982. CDs typically contain recordings of audio material such a ...
,
DVD Player
A DVD player is a machine that plays DVDs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. Some DVD players will also play audio CDs. DVD players are connected to a television to ...
,
Windows Media Center
Windows Media Center (WMC) is a discontinued digital video recorder and media player created by Microsoft. Media Center was first introduced to Windows in 2002 on Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE). It was included in Home Premium and U ...
, and
Microsoft Movies & TV
Microsoft Movies & TV (US only), or Microsoft Films & TV (Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand), previously Xbox Video and Zune Video, is a digital video service developed by Microsoft that offers full HD movies and TV shows available ...
.
Windows Media Player 11 is the last out-of-band version of Media Player. It was made available for
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
and is included in
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...
and
Windows Server 2008
Windows Server 2008, codenamed "Longhorn Server" (alternatives: "Windows Vista Server" or "Windows Server Vista"), is the seventh major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft to be released under the Windows Server b ...
. Version 12 was released in 2009 along with
Windows 7
Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...
and has not been made available for previous versions of Windows nor has it been updated ever since.
Windows 8
Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...
bundled Windows Media Player 12 along two other media player apps, namely
Xbox Video
Microsoft Movies & TV (US only), or Microsoft Films & TV (Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand), previously Xbox Video and Zune Video, is a digital video service developed by Microsoft that offers full HD movies and TV shows availabl ...
and
Xbox Music
Groove Music (formerly Xbox Music and Zune Marketplace) is a discontinued Audio player (software), audio player software application included with Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and Windows 11.
The app is also associated with a now-disco ...
. The latter was renamed
Groove Music
Groove Music (formerly Xbox Music and Zune Marketplace) is a discontinued audio player software application included with Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and Windows 11.
The app is also associated with a now-discontinued music streaming ...
in
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...
, and then finally
Media Player
Media player may refer to:
*Digital media player, home appliances that play digital media
*Media player software, software that plays digital media
*Portable media player, portable hardware that plays digital media
*Windows Media Player
Windo ...
in
Windows 11
Windows 11 is a version of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released on October 5, 2021, as the successor to Windows 10 (2015). It is available as a free upgrade for devices running Windows 10 that meet the #System requirements, Windo ...
which has also been backported to Windows 10.
History
The first version of Windows Media Player appeared in October 1991, when
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.0 is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, launched on May 22, 1990. It introduces a new graphical user interface (GUI) that represents applications as clickable icons, instead of the list of file names in its predecessors. ...
with
Multimedia Extensions
Windows 3.0 is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, launched on May 22, 1990. It introduces a new graphical user interface (GUI) that represents applications as clickable icons, instead of the list of file names in its predecessors. ...
was released. Originally called Media Player, this component was included with "Multimedia PC"-compatible machines but not available for retail sale. It was capable of playing
.mmm
animation files, and could be extended to support other formats. It used
MCI to handle media files. Being a component of Windows, Media Player shows the same version number as that of the version Windows with which it was included.
Microsoft continually produced new programs to play media files. In November of the following year,
Video for Windows
Video for Windows was a suite of video-playing and editing software introduced by Microsoft in 1992. A runtime version for viewing videos only was made available as a free add-on to Windows 3.1, which then became an integral component of Windows ...
was introduced with the ability to play
digital video
Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...
files in an
AVI
Avi is a given name, usually masculine, often a diminutive of Avram (given name), Avram, Avraham, etc. It is sometimes feminine and a diminutive of the Hebrew spelling of Abigail (name), Abigail.
People with the given name include:
* Avi (author ...
container format
A container format (informally, sometimes called a wrapper) or metafile is a file format that allows multiple data streams to be embedded into a single file, usually along with metadata for identifying and further detailing those streams. Nota ...
, with codec support for
RLE and
Video1, and support for playing uncompressed files.
Indeo
Indeo Video (commonly known now simply as "Indeo") is a family of audio and video formats and codecs first released in 1992, and designed for real-time video playback on desktop CPUs. While its original version was related to Intel's DVI video st ...
3.2 was added in a later release. Video for Windows was first available as a free add-on to
Windows 3.1
Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series run as a shell on top of MS-DOS; it was the last Windows 1 ...
, and later integrated into
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...
and
Windows NT 4.0
Windows NT 4.0 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the data server and personal workstation markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 3.51, and was released to manufacturing on July 3 ...
. In 1995, Microsoft released
ActiveMovie
ActiveMovie was the immediate ancestor of Windows Media Player 6.x, and was a streaming media technology now known as DirectShow, developed by Microsoft to replace Video for Windows. ActiveMovie allows users to view media streams, whether distribu ...
with DirectX Media SDK. ActiveMovie incorporates a new way of dealing with media files, and adds support for streaming media (which the original Media Player could not handle). In 1996, ActiveMovie was renamed
DirectShow
DirectShow (sometimes abbreviated as DS or DShow), codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft's ea ...
. However, Media Player continued to come with Windows until Windows XP, in which it was officially renamed Windows Media Player v5.1. ("v5.1" is the version number of Windows XP).
In 1999, Windows Media Player's versioning broke away from that of Windows itself. Windows Media Player 6.x came as an out-of-band update for
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...
-
98 and
Windows NT 4.0
Windows NT 4.0 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the data server and personal workstation markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 3.51, and was released to manufacturing on July 3 ...
that co-existed with Media Player and became a built-in component of
Windows 98 SE
Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was the second operating system in the 9x line, as the successor to Windows 95. It was released ...
and
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...
with an ''mplayer2.exe'' stub allowing to use this built-in instead of newer versions. Windows Media Player 7.0 and its successors also came with an ''wmplayer.exe'' stub, replacing each other but leaving Media Player and Windows Media Player 6.4 intact.
Windows Me
Windows Me (Millennium Edition) is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was the successor to Windows 98, and was released to manufacturing on June 19, 2000, and t ...
and
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
is the operating systems to have three different versions of Windows Media Player side by side. All versions branded Windows Media Player (instead of simply Media Player) support DirectShow codecs. Version 7 of Windows Media Player was a large revamp, with a new user interface, visualizations and increased functionality.
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...
, however, dropped older versions of Windows Media Player in favor of v11, which included the removal of the Windows Media Source Filter (DirectShow codec).
In 2004, Microsoft launched digital music store
MSN Music
''MSN Music'' was a part of MSN's web services. It delivered music news, music videos, spotlights on new music, artist information, and live performances of artists. The website also served as a digital music store from 2004 to 2008.
History
...
which came bundled with Windows Media Player 10 to compete with Apple’s iTunes.
However, MSN Music was discontinued already in 2006 with the launch of
Zune
Zune was a brand of digital media products and services that was marketed by Microsoft from November 2006 until it was discontinued in June 2012. Zune consisted of a line of portable media players, a music subscription service known as Zune Music ...
music players.
Beginning with
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...
, Windows Media Player supports the
Media Foundation
Media Foundation (MF) is a COM-based multimedia framework pipeline and infrastructure platform for digital media in Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows 11. It is the intended replacement for Microsoft Direc ...
framework besides DirectShow; as such it plays certain types of media using Media Foundation as well as some types of media using DirectShow. Windows Media Player 12 was released with
Windows 7
Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...
. It included support for more media formats and added new features. With
Windows 8
Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...
, however, the player did not receive an upgrade.
On April 16, 2012, Microsoft announced that Windows Media Player would not be included in
Windows RT
Windows RT is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft and released alongside Windows 8 on October 26, 2012. It is a version of Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 built for the 32-bit ARM architecture (ARMv7), designed to take advantage of th ...
, the line of Windows designed to run on ARM-based devices.
Windows Media Player (2022)
A different app called Media Player is the successor to
Groove Music
Groove Music (formerly Xbox Music and Zune Marketplace) is a discontinued audio player software application included with Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and Windows 11.
The app is also associated with a now-discontinued music streaming ...
(previously Xbox Music) and Windows Media Player. Media Player started to be offered to all
Windows 11
Windows 11 is a version of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released on October 5, 2021, as the successor to Windows 10 (2015). It is available as a free upgrade for devices running Windows 10 that meet the #System requirements, Windo ...
users on February 15, 2022, with
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...
users following in January 2023.
The new Windows Media Player can also play video, as part of
Groove
Groove or Grooves may refer to:
Music
* Groove (music)
* Groove (drumming)
* The Groove (band), an Australian rock/pop band of the 1960s
* The Groove (Sirius XM), a US radio station
* Groove 101.7FM, a former Perth, Australia, radio station
...
's rebranding from a
music streaming service
A music streaming service is a type of online streaming media service that focuses primarily on music, and sometimes other forms of digital audio content such as podcasts. These services are usually subscription-based services allowing users to s ...
to a
media player
Media player may refer to:
*Digital media player, home appliances that play digital media
*Media player software, software that plays digital media
*Portable media player, portable hardware that plays digital media
*Windows Media Player
Windo ...
. Other changes include the album cover view being in fullscreen, and a refresh to the mini player.
Accessibility has also been optimized, with some improved
keyboard shortcut
In computing, a keyboard shortcut (also hotkey/hot key or key binding) is a software-based assignment of an action to one or more keys on a computer keyboard. Most Operating system, operating systems and Application software, applications come ...
s and
hotkey
In computing, a keyboard shortcut (also hotkey/hot key or key binding) is a software-based assignment of an action to one or more keys on a computer keyboard. Most operating systems and applications come with a default set of keyboard shortcu ...
support for keyboard users and with other assistive technologies.
Features
Core playback and library functions
Windows Media Player supports playback of audio, video and pictures, along with fast forward, reverse, file markers (if present) and variable playback speed (seek & time compression/dilation introduced in WMP 9 Series). It supports local playback, streaming playback with multicast streams and progressive downloads. Items in a playlist can be skipped over temporarily at playback time without removing them from the playlist. Full keyboard-based operation is possible in the player.
Windows Media Player supports full media management, via the integrated media library introduced first in version 7, which offers cataloguing and searching of media and viewing media metadata. Media can be arranged according to album, artist, genre, date ''et al.'' Windows Media Player 9 Series introduced Quick Access Panel to browse and navigate the entire library through a menu. The Quick Access Panel was also added to the mini-mode in version 10 but was entirely removed in version 11. WMP 9 Series also introduced ratings and Auto Ratings. Windows Media Player 10 introduced support for aggregating pictures, Recorded TV shows, and other media into the library. A fully featured tag editor was featured in versions 9-11 of WMP, called the Advanced Tag Editor. However, the feature was removed in Windows Media Player 12. Since WMP 9 Series, the player features dynamically updated ''Auto Playlists'' based on criteria. Auto Playlists are updated every time users open them. WMP 9 Series and later also supports ''Auto Ratings'' which automatically assigns ratings based on the number of times a song is played. Pre-populated auto playlists are included in Windows Media Player 9 Series. Custom Auto Playlists can be created only on
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
and later.
In Windows Media Player 11, the ''Quick Access Panel'' was removed and replaced with an Explorer-style navigation pane on the left which can be customized for each library to show the user selected media or metadata categories, with contents appearing on the right, in a graphical manner with thumbnails featuring album art or other art depicting the item. Missing album art can be added directly to the placeholders in the Library itself (though the program re-renders all album art imported this way into 1x1 pixel ratio, 200x200 resolution
JPEG
JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...
s). There are separate ''Tiles'', ''Icons'', ''Details'' or ''Extended Tiles'' views for ''Music'', ''Pictures'', ''Video'' and ''Recorded TV'' which can be set individually from the navigation bar. Entries for ''Pictures'' and ''Video'' show their thumbnails. Version 11 also introduced the ability to search and display results on-the-fly as characters are being entered, without waiting for ''Enter'' key to be hit.
Incremental search
In computing, incremental search, also known as hot search, incremental find or real-time suggestions, is a user interface interaction method to progressively search for and filter through text. As the user types text, one or more possible match ...
results are refined based on further characters that are typed. ''Stacking'' allows graphical representations of how many albums there are in a specific category or folder. The pile appears larger as the category contains more albums. The List pane includes an option to prompt the user to remove items skipped in a playlist upon save or skip them only during playback.
Visualizations
While playing music, Windows Media Player can show
visualizations. The current three visualizations are Alchemy, which was first introduced in version 9, Bars and Waves, which has been used since version 7, and Battery, introduced version 8. Versions 7 and 8 included with
Me and
XP respectively includes an additional visualization called "Musical Colors", which is not present in out-of-band releases of version 7 as well as version 9 onwards, but is retained if Windows Media Player was upgraded from version 7 or 8. Version 11 and above refrains from having the former "Ambience," "Particle," "Plenoptic," and "Spikes" visualizations from versions 7 to 10. The reason for their removal was that the visualizations do not support full screen controls (either the visualization gets shifted to the left while there is a thick black bar to the right side of the screen, or that there are no full screen controls). More visualizations can be downloaded from Microsoft's official website, however the downloads have since been taken down. These include "BlazingColors," "ColorCubes," "PulsingColors," "Softie the Snowman," and "Yule Log", which were originally offered as optional extras in version 7. As of today, these visualizations, among others, can still be found on some websites such as the WMP Goodies site.
Format support
The player includes intrinsic support for
Windows Media
Windows Media is a discontinued multimedia framework for media creation and distribution for Microsoft Windows. It consists of a software development kit (SDK) with several application programming interfaces (API) and a number of prebuilt technol ...
codecs and also WAV and MP3 media formats. On
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
and above with WMP 9 Series and later, the
Windows Media Audio Professional codec is included which supports multichannel audio at up to 24-bit 192 kHz resolution. Windows Media Player 11 includes the Windows Media Format 11 runtime which adds low bitrate support (below 128 kbit/s for
WMA Pro), support for ripping music to ''WMA Pro 10'' and updates the original WMA to version 9.2.
Support for any media codec and container format can be added using specific
DirectShow
DirectShow (sometimes abbreviated as DS or DShow), codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft's ea ...
filters or
Media Foundation
Media Foundation (MF) is a COM-based multimedia framework pipeline and infrastructure platform for digital media in Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows 11. It is the intended replacement for Microsoft Direc ...
codecs (Media Foundation codecs only in Windows Vista and later). The player will not play MP3 files that contain compressed
ID3
ID3 is a metadata container most often used in conjunction with the MP3 audio file format. It allows information such as the title, artist, album, track number, and other information about the file to be stored in the file itself.
ID3 is a '' ...
headers ("tags"); trying to do so results in a "The input media file is invalid" error message. MP3 playback support was built-in beginning with version 6.1 and audio CD playback was natively supported with version 7.
DVD playback features minus the necessary decoders were integrated into Windows Media Player 8 for
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
. The player activates DVD and Blu-ray playback functionality with support for menus, titles and chapters, parental controls and audio track language selection if compatible decoders are installed. MPEG-2 and Dolby Digital (AC-3) decoders were included beginning with Windows Media Player 11 on Windows Vista (Home Premium and Ultimate editions only) and Windows 7 (Home Premium, Ultimate, or Enterprise editions) to allow DVD playback without additional software. However, the decoders were subsequently removed in Windows 8 and Windows 10 due to licensing costs.
Windows Media Player 12 adds native support for
H.264
Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and d ...
and
MPEG-4 Part 2
MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 Visual (formally International Organization for Standardization, ISO/International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC 14496-2) is a video encoding specification designed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It belongs to ...
video formats,
ALAC,
AAC
AAC may refer to:
Aviation
* Advanced Aircraft, a company from Carlsbad, California
* Airborne aircraft carrier, a type of aircraft
* Alaskan Air Command, a radar network
* American Aeronautical Corporation, a company from Port Washington, New ...
audio
and
3GP
3GP (3GPP file format) is a digital multimedia container format defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for 3G UMTS multimedia services, largely based on MPEG-4 Part 12. A 3GP container may consist of H.263 or H.264 video ...
,
MP4 and
MOV container formats. Windows Media Player 12 is also able to play
AVCHD
AVCHD (Advanced Video Coding High Definition) is a file-based format for the digital recording and playback of high-definition video. It is H.264 and Dolby AC-3 packaged into the MPEG transport stream, with a set of constraints designed around cam ...
formats (''.
M2TS
.m2ts is a filename extension used for the Blu-ray disc Audio-Video (BDAV) MPEG-2 Transport Stream (M2TS) container file format. It is used for multiplexing audio, video and other streams, such as subtitles. It is based on the MPEG-2 transport st ...
'' and ''
.mts'').
As of
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...
, Windows Media Player 12 can play
FLAC
FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software ...
,
HEVC
High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, is a video compression standard designed as part of the MPEG-H project as a successor to the widely used Advanced Video Coding (AVC, H.264, or MPEG-4 Part 10). In co ...
, and
SubRip
SubRip is a free software program for Microsoft Windows which extracts subtitles and their timings from various video formats to a text file. It is released under the GNU GPL. Its subtitle format's file extension is .srt and is widely supported ...
subtitle, and
Matroska
Matroska (styled Matroška) is a project to create a container format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture, or subtitle tracks in one file. The Matroska Multimedia Container is similar in concept to other containers like ...
container formats. Although the
WebM
WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML video and the HTML audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponsored by ...
file type is not officially associated with Windows Media Player 12 (the default player is
Microsoft Movies & TV
Microsoft Movies & TV (US only), or Microsoft Films & TV (Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand), previously Xbox Video and Zune Video, is a digital video service developed by Microsoft that offers full HD movies and TV shows available ...
), playback of
VP9 video in
WebM
WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML video and the HTML audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponsored by ...
container is possible on Windows 10 version 1809 and later.
Windows Media Player Mobile
Windows Media Player Mobile 10 on
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDA). Designed to be the portable equivalent of the Windows desktop OS in the emerging Mobile device, mobile/port ...
6.5 supports
MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...
,
ASF,
WMA, and
WMV
Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: the original video compression technolog ...
using WMV or
MPEG-4
MPEG-4 is a group of international standards for the compression of digital audio and visual data, multimedia systems, and file storage formats. It was originally introduced in late 1998 as a group of audio and video coding formats and related ...
codecs.
Disc burning, ripping, and playback
Windows Media Player features integrated
Audio CD
Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA or CD-DA), also known as Digital Audio Compact Disc or simply as Audio CD, is the standard format for audio compact discs. The standard is defined in the '' Red Book'' technical specifications, which is why t ...
-burning support since version 7 as well as data CD burning support since Windows Media Player 9 Series on
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
and later. Data CDs can have any of the media formats supported by the player. While burning Data CDs, the media can, optionally, be transcoded into WMA format and playlists can be added to the CD as well. Starting with WMP 9 Series, audio CDs can be burnt with volume leveling.
Audio CDs can be ripped as WMA or WMA 10 Pro (WMA 10 Pro in WMP 11 and later) at 48, 64, 96, 128, 160, and 192
kbit/s
In telecommunications, data transfer rate is the average number of bits ( bitrate), characters or symbols ( baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are mu ...
,
WMA lossless
Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. Audio encoded in WMA is stored in a digi ...
(470 to 940 kbit/s) (9 Series on XP and later), WMA
variable bitrate
Variable bitrate (VBR) is a term used in telecommunications and computing that relates to the bitrate used in sound or video encoding. As opposed to constant bitrate (CBR), VBR files vary the amount of output data per time segment. VBR allows ...
(from 40 to 75 kbit/s up to 240-355 kbit/s), MP3 at 128, 192, 256, and 320 kbit/s, or uncompressed
WAV
Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced or ) is an audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on personal computers. The format was developed and published for the first time in 1991 ...
(WAV ripping in WMP 11 and later). Since WMP 9 Series, 20 bit high-resolution CDs (
HDCDs) are also supported, if capable audio hardware is present. Audio can be ripped using error correction and ripped audio can be protected with
Windows Media DRM
Windows Media DRM or WMDRM, is a digital rights management service for the Windows Media platform. It is designed to provide delivery of audio or video content over an IP network to a PC or other playback device in such a way that the distributor ...
. Ripping to MP3 is supported only in Windows Media Player 8 for
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
and later if a compatible MP3 encoder is installed. Windows Media Player 10 included the Fraunhofer MP3 Professional encoder. Information on CDs such as album name, artist and track listings can optionally be automatically downloaded from the online Windows Media database when the CD is inserted. Version 11 added support for ripping audio CDs to
WAV
Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced or ) is an audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on personal computers. The format was developed and published for the first time in 1991 ...
and
WMA 10 Pro formats. With their 2015 implementation in Windows 10, Version 12 also added lossless
FLAC
FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software ...
and
ALAC formats for ripping and playback. For burning, version 11 shows a graphical bar indicating how much space will be used on the disc and introduced ''Disc spanning'' which splits a burn list onto multiple discs in case the content does not fit on one disc.
Portable device sync
Windows Media Player allows the user to connect, share and sync data with portable handheld devices and
game console
A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can typically be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location conne ...
s since version 7. Media can be optionally transcoded to a format better suited for the target device, automatically, when synchronizing. When deleting playlists from devices, Windows Media Player can automatically remove their contents. Devices can be formatted using Windows Media Player 9 Series and later. Version 10 and later support the
Media Transfer Protocol
The Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) is an extension to the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) communications protocol that allows media files to be transferred automatically to and from portable devices. While technically "available" on Windows 10, ...
and Auto Sync. Auto Sync allows users to specify criteria such as recently added music or highest rated songs, by which media will be automatically synchronized with the portable device and other advanced features like setting the clock on the portable device automatically, communicating with the device to retrieve the user's preferences. Windows Media Player 10 also introduced the
UMDF-based ''Windows Portable Devices'' API.
Version 11 has improved synchronization features for loading content onto
PlaysForSure
Microsoft PlaysForSure was a certification given by Microsoft to portable devices and content services that had been tested against several hundred compatibility and performance requirements. These requirements include codec support, digital rig ...
-compatible portable players. WMP 11 supports reverse-synchronization, by which media present on the portable device can be replicated back to the PC. ''Shuffle Sync'' can be used to randomize content synced with the portable device, ''Multi PC Sync'' to synchronize portable device content across multiple PCs and ''Guest Sync'' to synchronize different content from multiple PCs with the portable device. Portable devices appear in the navigation pane of the library where their content can be browsed and searched.
Windows Media Player's 'Sync' function has options that allow it to be set to automatically down-convert (transcode) high bit-rate song files to a lower bit-rate. This down-conversion function is switched on by default. This is useful for providing low bit-rate files to those portable devices that need them, and to save space on portable devices with smaller storage capacities. For high bit-rate capable devices with sufficient storage capabilities, the down conversion process can be omitted.
In versions 11 (2006) and 12 (2009), the Quality settings that the user has selected in the Windows Media Player settings for Sync, for that specific portable device, are used to control the quality (bit-rate) of files that are copied to the portable device. Leaving the Quality settings to Automatic will often result in 192kbs files being copied to the portable device. Manual settings can also be made. 192kbs is the highest quality down-conversion bit-rate that can be manually selected when the Sync function's down-conversion function is turned on. Lower bit-rates can also be selected.
For portable devices that can handle high bit-rate files, the best quality files are obtained by leaving the down-conversion process switched off (unchecked) for that specific device. In Windows Media Player Version 11, switching off the down-conversion function is done in the Quality tab of the Advanced Options of the Sync settings for the device. In Windows Media Player Version 12, switching off the down-conversion function is done in the Quality tab of the Properties for the device in the Select Settings for the device in the Sync Options menu.
When set up in such a way, Windows Media Player's 'Sync' function can be used to sync unchanged high bit-rate song files to suitable portable devices (i.e. those capable of using file formats such as WMA Lossless, mp3-360kbs, etc.). For example, some users have created large song libraries on their PCs containing .wma formatted song files using the high bit-rate WMA Lossless (WMA-LL) protocol, or using other high bit-rate song file formats. The WMA-LL protocol is selectable in Windows Media Player as an option when ripping songs from CDs. The resulting bit-rates seen on ripped WMA-LL files are often 3 to 6 times higher than 192kbs, and can typically fall anywhere in the range of 600kbs to 1200kbs, depending on the quality of the source file that was present on the CD in the first place. The sound quality is much improved over the default rate, although the file size is larger.
At the time that Versions 11 and 12 were released, the capabilities and capacities of portable devices typically required down-conversion of the bit-rates of the files placed on the portable devices. Thus, Sync down-conversion was turned on by default. This was to ensure playability of the files and to ensure that the file sizes were small enough to efficiently fit a reasonably large selection of songs on the portable device.
In recent years (circa 2012), portable devices became available that could natively play these Windows Media Player produced high bit-rate WMA-LL files (and others), and that have storage capacities suitable for large collections of high bit-rate song files. This made it much more practicable and desirable to use software programs such as Windows Media Player to synchronize previously PC-bound libraries of high bit-rate songs to these new portable devices.
Enhanced playback features
Windows Media Player features universal brightness, contrast, saturation and hue adjustments and
pixel aspect ratio
A pixel aspect ratio (PAR) is a mathematical ratio that describes how the width of a pixel in a digital image compares to the height of that pixel.
Most digital imaging systems display an image as a grid of tiny, square pixels. However, som ...
for supported video formats. It also includes a 10-band graphic equalizer with presets and
SRS WOW
Sound Retrieval System (SRS) is a patented psychoacoustic 3D audio processing technology originally invented by Arnold Klayman in the early 1980s. The SRS technology applies head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) to create an immersive 3D soundf ...
audio post-processing system. Windows Media Player can also have attached audio and video
DSP
DSP may refer to:
Computing
* Digital signal processing, the mathematical manipulation of an information signal
* Digital signal processor, a microprocessor designed for digital signal processing
* Dynamic Reconfiguration port
* Yamaha DSP-1 ...
plug-ins which process the output audio or video data. ''Video Smoothing'' was introduced in WMP 9 Series (
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
and later only) which upscales frame-rate by interpolating added frames, in effect giving a smoother playback on low-framerate videos. The player supports subtitles and closed-captioning for local media, video on demand streaming or live streaming scenarios. Typically Windows Media captions support the
SAMI
Acronyms
* SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft
* Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company
* South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ne ...
file format but can also carry embedded closed caption data.
The player can use video
overlays or
VMR (Video Mixing Renderer) surfaces, if the video card supports them. In
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
, it uses VMR7 by default, but can also be made to use the more advanced
YUV mixing mode by enabling the "Use high quality mode" option in Advanced Performance settings. This turns on deinterlacing, scaling and improved color accuracy. WMP 9 Series introduced native playback for deinterlacing for TV output. Version 9 introduced DXVA accelerated playback. Version 11 introduced improved support for DirectX accelerated decoding of WMV video (
DXVA
DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) is a Microsoft API specification for the Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms that allows video decoding to be hardware-accelerated. The pipeline allows certain CPU-intensive operations such as iDCT, motion ...
decoding). Up to version 11, it supported static lyrics and "Synchronized Lyrics", by which different lines of lyrics can be time-stamped, so that they display only at those times. Synchronized Lyrics also were accessible through the Advanced Tag Editor which was removed in version 12.
Since Windows Media Player 9 Series, the player supports crossfading, audio dynamic range (Quiet Mode) for WMA Pro and WMA Lossless, and auto volume leveling for certain media which includes volume level/gain information such as MP3 or Windows Media. The player also supports extensive configurable privacy and security settings.
Shell integration
The player has
Windows Explorer
File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application and default desktop environment that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user i ...
shell integration to add files and playlist to the ''Now Playing'' pane and other playlists can be controlled from the Windows Explorer shell itself, via right-click menu. The My Music folder also includes a separate ''My Playlists'' folder where playlists are maintained. When the player is closed and reopened, simply clicking the play button restores the last playlist even if it was not saved. Starting with Windows Media Player 10, the playlist pane is also visible from the Library view.
AutoPlay
AutoPlay, a feature introduced in Windows 98, examines newly discovered removable media and devices and, based on content such as pictures, music or video files, launches an appropriate application to play or display the content. It is closely r ...
handlers in Windows expose various Windows Media Player tasks.
Up to version 11, it featured a taskbar-mounted ''Mini-mode'' in which the most common media control buttons are presented as a toolbar on the Windows
taskbar
The taskbar is a graphical user interface element that has been part of Microsoft Windows since Windows 95, displaying and facilitating switching between running computer program, programs. The taskbar and the associated Start menu, Start Menu were ...
. Flyout windows can display media information, the active visualization or the video being played back. Mini-mode was introduced as a shell player powertoy for Windows Media Player 8 in
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
and integrated later into WMP 9 Series. Mini-mode has been removed as an option in Windows Media Player 12 in favor of controls in the taskbar's interactive thumbnail preview which lacks volume control, a progress bar and information displayed whenever a new song is played, however it can be restored by grabbing the wmpband.dll file from Windows Media Player 11 and registering it, where it will continue to function as intended.
The user interface has been redesigned in Windows Media Player 12 such that the ''Now Playing'' view plays media in a separate minimalist window with floating playback controls, and also gives access to the current playlist, visualizations, and enhancements.
Enhancements are housed in individual undocked windows. The library view includes the rest of the media management functions. It also can preview songs from the library when users hover over the media file and click the Preview button.
Windows Media Player 12 can play unprotected songs from the
iTunes
iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...
library. As previously mentioned, taskbar-integrated mini-mode has been replaced with controls in the taskbar's interactive thumbnail preview (called the ''Thumbnail Toolbar''), albeit minus the volume control function, track and album information shown whenever a new song is played and the progress bar. The taskbar icon also supports jump lists introduced in
Windows 7
Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...
.
Extensibility
The player has had
skinning
Skinning is the act of skin removal. The process is done by humans to animals, mainly as a means to prepare the meat beneath for cooking and consumption, or to harvest the skin for making fur clothing or tanning it to make leather. The sk ...
support since Windows Media Player (WMP) 7 and includes a color chooser since the WMP 9 Series. Not all functions are usually exposed in skin mode. Windows Media Player 10 allows setting the video border color. Color chooser has been removed in WMP 12. It supports visualizations and ''Info Center View'' (Info Center View in WMP 9 Series and later) which displays media metadata fetched from the internet. Full screen visualizations are supported in WMP 9 Series and later. It supports Background plug-ins, window plug-ins and ''Now Playing'' plug-ins to control media playback besides DSP and renderer plug-ins. Plug-in support was introduced in WMP 9 Series.
Online features
The player integrates web-browsing support to browse digital music stores, shop for music and tune to internet radio stations since version 7. It provides an embeddable
ActiveX control
ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide Web. ...
for
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...
so that developers can play
Windows Media
Windows Media is a discontinued multimedia framework for media creation and distribution for Microsoft Windows. It consists of a software development kit (SDK) with several application programming interfaces (API) and a number of prebuilt technol ...
on web pages. Windows Media Player 10 and later feature integration with a large number of digital music stores and selecting a music store switches the Info Center view, radio and other online features to use services from that store. Purchased music from a particular store appears in a separate library node under the respective category.
Media streaming
Previously, Microsoft had released
Windows Media Connect for
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
to stream media content with its built-in UPnP media server. With version 11 of Windows Media Player,
Media Sharing
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Means of communication, tools and channels used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Interactive media, media that is int ...
was integrated and allows content (Music, Pictures, Video) to be streamed to and from
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) AV enabled devices such as the
PS3
The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). It is the successor to the PlayStation 2, and both are part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. The PS3 was first released on ...
,
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the Xbox (console), original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox#Consoles, Xbox series. It was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detail ...
, and Roku
SoundBridge
SoundBridge is a hardware device from Roku, Inc. designed to play internet radio or digital audio streamed across a home network, over either Wi-Fi or ethernet. SoundBridge devices directly browsed the Radio Roku guide. As of 2008, all Roku S ...
. This includes DRM protected
PlaysForSure
Microsoft PlaysForSure was a certification given by Microsoft to portable devices and content services that had been tested against several hundred compatibility and performance requirements. These requirements include codec support, digital rig ...
content. WMP 11 on Windows Vista can also act as a client to connect to remote media libraries using this feature; this is not available on the
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
version.
With version 12, media streaming was further improved. While previous versions streamed media to
UPnP
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of networking protocols on the Internet Protocol (IP) that permits networked devices, such as personal computers, printers, Gateway (telecommunications), Internet gateways, Wi-Fi access points and mobile de ...
compliant devices (Digital Media Server role) and could play media by fetching it from a network share (Digital Media Player role),
Windows Media Player 12 can access media from the shared media libraries on the network or HomeGroup, stream media to
DLNA 1.5 compliant devices and allows itself (once the remote control option is turned on) to be remotely controlled by Digital Media Controller devices which stream media (Digital Media Renderer role).
Similarly, the ''Play To'' feature once enabled for remote PCs, by turning on remote control of the player, allows compliant devices and computers to be discovered and controlled remotely from a computer running Windows Media Player 12 (Digital Media Controller role).
If the devices do not support the streamed format, Windows Media Player 12 transcodes the format on-the-fly. Media from a home network can also be streamed over the internet using an ''Online ID Provider'' service, which handles discovery of the computer's IP address, authorization, security, connectivity and Quality of Service issues.
Skin Mode
Windows Media Player also features skins, which changes the appearance of the program. Currently, Windows Media Player has two default skins: "Corporate", which was first introduced in version 8, and "Revert", which first shipped with version 9. In previous versions of Windows Media Player starting with version 7, there were many usual skins offered, some of which were included in various versions of Windows. This includes skins such as (but not limited to) "9SeriesDefault", "Atomic", "Bluesky", "Canvas", "Classic", "Compact", "goo", "Headspace", "heart", "iconic", "Miniplayer", "Optic", "Pyrite", "QuickSilver", "Radio", "Roundlet", "Rusty", "splat", "Toothy", "Windows Classic", and "Windows XP". All of these skins were removed starting with version 11, but are retained if the player is upgraded from a previous version. Some skins such as the ones included in previous versions can be downloaded from the Microsoft website, however they have since been removed. Despite this, the page has been archived in 2016. Other skins have also appeared in other products such as the two
Microsoft Plus!
Microsoft Plus! is a discontinued commercial operating system enhancement product by Microsoft. The last edition is the Plus! SuperPack, which includes an assortment of screensavers, themes, and games, as well as multimedia applications. The Mic ...
add-ons for Windows XP, which includes four skins in the first pack and another set of skins in the second pack. The Corporate skin is not deletable.
Security issues
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
Windows Media
Windows Media is a discontinued multimedia framework for media creation and distribution for Microsoft Windows. It consists of a software development kit (SDK) with several application programming interfaces (API) and a number of prebuilt technol ...
Runtime in
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...
,
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
,
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...
and
Windows Server
Windows Server (formerly Windows NT Server) is a brand name for Server (computing), server-oriented releases of the Windows NT operating system (OS) that have been developed by Microsoft since 1993. The first release under this brand name i ...
contained a bug that permitted "remote code execution if a user opened a specially crafted media file". Such a file would allow the attacker to "then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights", if the account on which the file was played had administrator privileges. The problem was addressed in a critical update issued on September 8, 2009.
Other versions
Microsoft has also released versions of Windows Media Player for other platforms including
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDA). Designed to be the portable equivalent of the Windows desktop OS in the emerging Mobile device, mobile/port ...
,
classic Mac OS
Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Mac (computer), Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and end ...
,
Mac OS X
macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
,
Palm-size PC
A Pocket PC (P/PC, PPC) is a class of personal digital assistant (PDA) that runs the Windows Mobile operating system, which is based on Windows CE/Windows Embedded Compact, and that has some of the abilities of modern desktop PCs. The name wa ...
,
Handheld PC
A handheld computer, also called a palmtop computer, is a term that has variously been used to describe a small-sized personal computer (PC) typically built around a clamshell form factor and a laptop-like keyboard, including: Palmtop PCs, pers ...
, and
Solaris
Solaris is the Latin word for sun.
It may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film
* ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem
** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg
** ''Sol ...
. These versions are no longer supported by Microsoft. Version 1 of the
Zune
Zune was a brand of digital media products and services that was marketed by Microsoft from November 2006 until it was discontinued in June 2012. Zune consisted of a line of portable media players, a music subscription service known as Zune Music ...
software was also based on Windows Media Player; later versions are not.
Windows Mobile
Windows Media Player for Pocket PC was first announced on January 6, 2000, and has been revised on a schedule roughly similar to that of the Windows version.
Currently known as "Media Player 10 Mobile", this edition (released in October 2004) closely resembles the capabilities of the Windows version of WMP 10, including playlist capabilities, a media library, album art, WMA Lossless playback, support for DRM-protected media, video playback at 640×480 with stereo sound, and the same
Energy Blue
Windows XP visual styles are a set of Skin (computing), visual customizations of the graphical user interface for Windows XP. They are designed by Microsoft and are compatible with all Windows XP editions except for the Starter edition. Since Wind ...
interface aesthetics also seen in
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
Media Center Edition 2005. It also supports synchronization with the desktop version of WMP 10, and additionally supports synchronizing and transcoding of recorded television shows from Media Center. Media Player 10 Mobile is not available as a download from Microsoft, distribution is done solely through OEM partners, and is typically included on devices based on Windows Mobile.
Windows Mobile 6 includes a copy of Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, but with a similar (but not quite identical) theme as Windows Media Player 11.
Mac OS X
Version 9 was the final version of Windows Media Player to be released for
Mac OS X
macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
before development was canceled by Microsoft. It was developed by the Windows Media team at Microsoft instead of the
Macintosh Business Unit and released in 2003. On release the application lacked many basic features that were found in other media players such as Apple's
iTunes
iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...
and
QuickTime
QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Pla ...
. It also lacked support for many media formats that version 9 of the Windows counterpart supported on release 10 months earlier.
The Mac version supported only
Windows Media
Windows Media is a discontinued multimedia framework for media creation and distribution for Microsoft Windows. It consists of a software development kit (SDK) with several application programming interfaces (API) and a number of prebuilt technol ...
encoded media (up to version 9) enclosed in the
ASF format, lacking support for all other formats such as
MP4,
MPEG
The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...
, and Microsoft's own
AVI
Avi is a given name, usually masculine, often a diminutive of Avram (given name), Avram, Avraham, etc. It is sometimes feminine and a diminutive of the Hebrew spelling of Abigail (name), Abigail.
People with the given name include:
* Avi (author ...
format. On the user interface front, it did not prevent
screensaver
A screensaver (or screen saver) is a computer program that blanks the display screen or fills it with moving images or patterns when the computer has been idle for a designated time. The original purpose of screensavers was to prevent phosphor s ...
s from running during playback, it did not support file drag-and-drop, nor did it support playlists. While Windows Media Player 9 had added support for some files that use the
WMV9
Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: the original video compression technology ...
codec (also known as the WMV3 codec by the
FourCC
A FourCC ("four-character code") is a sequence of four bytes (typically ASCII) used to uniquely identify data formats. It originated from the OSType or ResType metadata system used in classic Mac OS and was adopted for the Amiga/Electronic Arts ...
), in other aspects it was seen as having degraded in features from previous versions.
On January 12, 2006, Microsoft announced it had ceased development of Windows Media Player for Mac. Microsoft now distributes a third-party
plugin called WMV Player (produced and maintained by
Flip4Mac
Flip4Mac from Telestream, Inc. was a digital media software for the macOS operating system. It was known for being the only QuickTime component for macOS to support Windows Media Video, and was distributed by Microsoft as a substitute after they ...
) which allows some forms of
Windows Media
Windows Media is a discontinued multimedia framework for media creation and distribution for Microsoft Windows. It consists of a software development kit (SDK) with several application programming interfaces (API) and a number of prebuilt technol ...
to be played within
Apple's QuickTime
QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Pla ...
Player and other QuickTime-aware applications.
European Commission case
In March 2004, the
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...
in the
European Union Microsoft antitrust case fined Microsoft €497 million and ordered the company to provide a version of Windows without Windows Media Player, claiming Microsoft "broke European Union competition law by leveraging its near monopoly in the market for PC operating systems onto the markets for work group
server
Server may refer to:
Computing
*Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides requested information for other programs or devices, called clients.
Role
* Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending custome ...
operating systems and for media players". The company has made available a compliant version of its flagship operating system under the negotiated name "
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
N", though the product has not been very successful.
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...
,
Windows 7
Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...
and
Windows 8
Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...
are also available in "N" editions. However, it is possible to either install Windows Media Player (XP/Vista)
[Microsoft]
Download Center
. "be used to restore Windows Media Player and related technologies to N and KN editions of Windows Vista." Retrieved July 26, 2008 or the Media Restore Pack through
Windows Update
Windows Update is a Microsoft service for the Windows 9x and Windows NT families of the Microsoft Windows operating system, which automates downloading and installing Microsoft Windows software updates over the Internet. The service delivers sof ...
(Vista) to add the media player.
Release history
Prior to the release of Windows Media Player in Windows 98 Second Edition, separate programs,
CD Player
A CD player is an electronic device that plays audio compact discs, which are a digital audio, digital optical disc data storage format. CD players were first sold to consumers in 1982. CDs typically contain recordings of audio material such a ...
, Deluxe CD Player,
DVD Player
A DVD player is a machine that plays DVDs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. Some DVD players will also play audio CDs. DVD players are connected to a television to ...
and
Media Player
Media player may refer to:
*Digital media player, home appliances that play digital media
*Media player software, software that plays digital media
*Portable media player, portable hardware that plays digital media
*Windows Media Player
Windo ...
, were included in old versions of Microsoft Windows for playback of media files. Only Windows Media Player 11 is not available for
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003, codenamed "Whistler Server", is the sixth major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft and the first server version to be released under the Windows Server brand name. It is part of the Windows NT ...
.
See also
*
Comparison of media players
Comparison or comparing is the act of evaluating two or more things by determining the relevant, comparable characteristics of each thing, and then determining which characteristics of each are similar to the other, which are different, and t ...
*
Comparison of video player software
The following comparison of video players compares general and technical information for notable software media player programs.
For the purpose of this comparison, ''video players'' are defined as any media player which can play video, even i ...
*
Groove Music
Groove Music (formerly Xbox Music and Zune Marketplace) is a discontinued audio player software application included with Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and Windows 11.
The app is also associated with a now-discontinued music streaming ...
*
Media Player Classic
Media Player Classic (MPC), Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC), and Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE) are a family of free and open-source, compact, lightweight, and customizable media players for 32- and 64-bit Microsoft Wi ...
, a media player that mimics the appearance of Windows Media Player 6.4
*
Media Transfer Protocol
The Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) is an extension to the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) communications protocol that allows media files to be transferred automatically to and from portable devices. While technically "available" on Windows 10, ...
*
Windows Media Encoder
Windows Media Encoder (WME) is a discontinued, freeware Multimedia, media codec, encoder developed by Microsoft which enables content developers to convert or capture both live and prerecorded audio, video, and computer screen images to Windows Me ...
*
Windows Media Services
__NOTOC__
Windows Media Services (WMS) is streaming media server software that allows a Windows Server administrator to generate streaming media (audio/video). Only Windows Media, JPEG, and MP3 formats are supported. WMS is the successor of NetS ...
Footnotes
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
*
The Vintage Windows Media Playerwmplugins.com – The place to find and share plug-ins, skins and visualizations.
{{Media player (application software)
1991 software
Macintosh media players
MacOS media players
Microsoft software
Microsoft Windows multimedia technology
Pocket PC software
Tag editors
Windows CD ripping software
Media Player
Media player may refer to:
*Digital media player, home appliances that play digital media
*Media player software, software that plays digital media
*Portable media player, portable hardware that plays digital media
*Windows Media Player
Windo ...
Windows media players
Windows Mobile Standard software