Windows Media Player (WMP) is a digital media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices. Editions of Windows Media Player were also released for Mac OS, Mac OS X and Solaris but development of these has since been discontinued.

In addition to being a media player, Windows Media Player includes the ability to rip music from and copy music to compact discs, build Audio CDs in recordable discs and synchronize content with a digital audio player (MP3 player) or other mobile devices, and enables users to purchase or rent music from a number of online music stores.

Windows Media Player replaced an earlier piece of software simply called Media Player, adding features beyond simple video or audio playback.

The default file formats are Windows Media Video (WMV), Windows Media Audio (WMA), and Advanced Systems Format (ASF), and supports its own XML based playlist format called Windows Playlist (WPL). The first generation Zune software (but not the current second generation software) which actually is a modified version of Windows Media Player, additionally supports AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) audio, MPEG-4 and H.264 video formats out-of-the-box. The player is also able to utilize a digital rights management service in the form of Windows Media DRM.

History

ActiveMovie morphed into DirectShow and a new Media Player was created, known internally as Media Player 2. This player was an evolution from the ActiveMovie Control, providing a richer and more intuitive user interface. Media Player 2, like its predecessor, was also a wrapper—this time around DirectShow. Version 5.2 was the first version of this new Media Player, with version 6.x becoming widespread.

Version 6.4 was the final version of Media Player 2, by now known as Windows Media Player. Version 6.4 was included with Windows Me, Windows 2000 and Windows XP, but was dropped in Windows Vista.

There was another large revamp in Windows Media Player version 7, with the release of Windows Me, with a new user interface, visualizations and increased functionality. WMP7 came with the WMA and WMV codecs.

Features

• Allows the user to connect, share and sync data with portable handheld devices and game consoles. Media can be optionally transcoded to a format better suited for the target device, automatically, when synchronizing.
• Playback of audio, video and pictures, along with fast forward, reverse, seek and time compression and dilation.
• Supports local playback, streaming playback and progressive downloads.
• Support for any media codec and container format using specific DirectShow filters.
• Full media management, via the integrated media library, which offers cataloguing and searching of media. Media can be arranged according to album, artist, genre, date et al.
• Video Smoothing which upscales frame-rate by interpolating added frames, in effect giving a smoother playback on low-framerate videos.
• Includes a 10-band graphic equalizer and SRS WOW audio post-processing system. Windows Media Player can also have attached plug-ins which process the output audio or video data.