Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player (WMP, officially referred to as Windows Media Player Legacy to distinguish it from the new Windows Media Player introduced with Windows 11) is the first media player and media library application that Microsoft developed to play audio and video on personal computers. It has been a component of the Microsoft Windows operating system, including Windows 9x, Windows NT, Pocket PC, and Windows Mobile. Microsoft also released editions of Windows Media Player for classic Mac OS, Mac OS X, and Solaris, but has since discontinued them. In addition to being a media player, the app can rip audio file from compact discs, burn Audio CDs or MP3 CDs, synchronize content with a digital audio player or mobile devices, and stream media over the local network. Originally, it could connect to a number of online music stores, allowing its users to purchase digital music. The default file formats are Windows Media Video (WMV), Windows Media Audio (WMA), and Advanced Systems Format (ASF), and its own XML based playlist format called Windows Playlist (WPL). The player is also able to utilize a digital rights management service in the form of Windows Media DRM. 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. Each versions of Windows may bundle several other media playback apps, namely ActiveMovie Control, CD Player, DVD Player, Windows Media Center, and Microsoft Movies & TV. Windows Media Player 11 is the last out-of-band version of Media Player. It was made available for Windows XP and is included in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Version 12 was released in 2009 along with Windows 7 and has not been made available for previous versions of Windows nor has it been updated ever since. Windows 8 bundled Windows Media Player 12 along two other media player apps, namely Xbox Video and Xbox Music. The latter was renamed Groove Music in Windows 10, and then finally Media Player in Windows 11 which has also been backported to Windows 10.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Windows Media Player", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.