Windows Media Player

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Windows Media Player (WMP) is a digital media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and 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 have 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, synchronize content with a digital audio player (MP3 player) or other mobile devices, and let users 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 WMV (Windows Media Video & Audio), WMA (Windows Media Audio), and ASF (Advanced Systems Format), and supports its own XML based playlist format called WPL (Windows Playlist).

The player is also able to utilize a DRM service in the form of Windows Media DRM.

Features

• 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 as well.
• Support for any media codec and container format using specific DirectX filters.
• Full media management, via the integrated media library, which offers cataloging 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 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.
• Features a taskbar-mounted Mini mode in which the most common media control buttons are presented as a toolbar on the Windows taskbar. Flyout windows can display media information, visualization or the video being played back.
• Can use video overlays or VMR9 surfaces, if the video card supports them.
• Can offload media decompression to video card if supported by hardware.
• Features integrated CD-burning support for audio as well as data CDs. 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.
• Audio CDs can be ripped as WMA or WMA 10 Pro at 48, 64, 96, 128, 160 and 192 kbps, WMA lossless (470 to 940 kbps), WMA variable bitrate (from 40-75 kbps up to 240-355 kbps), MP3 at 128, 192, 256 and 320 kbps, or WAV lossless. 24 bit high-resolution CDs are also supported, if capable audio hardware is present.
• Features synchronization support with many hand-held devices. Media can be optionally transcoded to a format better suited for the target device, automatically, when synchronizing.
• Includes intrinsic support for Windows Media codecs which support multichannel audio at up to 24-bit 192 kHz resolution.
• Supports subtitles and closed-captioning, if present in the media.
• Features "Synchronized Lyrics", by which different lines of lyrics can be time-stamped, so that they display only at those times.
• Windows Explorer shell integration to add files and playlist to the Now Playing and other playlists can be controlled from the Windows Explorer shell itself, via right-click menu.

Windows Media Player 11

Windows Media Player 11 is the most recent version of the player, which is available for Windows XP as well as the upcoming Windows Vista operating system. This new version features many changes. The Media Library no longer presents the media items (such as albums and artists) in a tree-based listing. Rather, on selecting the category in the left panel, the contents will appear on the right, in a graphical manner with thumbnails featuring album art or other art depicting the item- a departure from textual presentation of information. The new, more graphical interface design has won praise from many reviewers. Missing album art can be added directly to the placeholders in the Library itself. Views for Music, Pictures, Video and Recorded TV are separate and can be chosen individually from the navigation bar. Entries for Pictures and Video show their thumbnails.

Other features include:

• Stacking - Stacking allows graphical representation of how many albums are there in a specific category or folder. The more items there are, the larger the pile is.
• Word Wheel - Searches and displays results as characters are being entered, without waiting for Enter key to be hit. Results are refined based on further characters that are typed.
• CD Burning - CD Burning now shows a graphical bar showing how much space will be used on the disc.
• URGE - The new music store from Microsoft and MTV networks is integrated with the player.
• Global Status - Global status shows a broad overview of what the player is doing. The information presented includes status information regarding buffering, ripping, burning and synchronization.
• Improved synchronization features for loading content onto PlaysForSure-compatible portable players. WMP 11 supports reverse-synchronization, by which media present on the portable device can be replicated back to the PC.
• Support for ripping audio CDs to WAV format.

• Media Sharing - Allows content (Music, Pictures, Video) to be streamed to Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) AV enabled devices such as the Xbox 360 and Roku SoundBridge. This includes DRM protected PlaysForSure content. WMP 11 on Windows Vista can also connect to remote media libraries using this feature; this is not available on the Windows XP version.
• Integrated web-browsing support to browse online music stores.
• Disc spanning splits a burn list onto multiple discs in case the content does not fit on one disc.

Microsoft released the first public beta of Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP (excluding Media Center editions before 2005) on May 17, 2006, and subsequently released the second public beta on August 31, 2006. Then on October 30, 2006, the final version of Windows Media Player was released to the public. Windows Media Player 11 will also be included in Microsoft's upcoming Windows Vista operating system when it is released in November 30, 2006 (for volume-licenses) and January 30, 2007 (for worldwide retail availability); the Vista version will include some features not found in the XP version. As a result of a European antitrust ruling, Microsoft will also be required to produce "Windows Vista N" editions which do not include Windows Media Player for the European Union market.^[1]

The License Management tool available in previous versions of Windows Media Player has been removed from version 11. This affects online music services such as Wal-Mart Music Downloads that do not have a system for deauthorizing and reauthorizing secure DRM protected content. This prevents users of those music download services from backing their licenses up and restoring them to another computer via Windows Media Player 11.

The Quick Access Menu, which enabled browsing the library via a pop-up menu, has been removed. As a result of this, the library cannot be browsed when the player is in toolbar mode. But files and playlist still can be dropped to play it.

 

Other versions

Microsoft has also released versions of Windows Media Player for other platforms including Pocket PC / Windows Mobile, Mac OS, Mac OS X, Palm-size PC, Handheld PC, and Solaris. Of these, only the Pocket PC / Windows Mobile edition continues to be actively developed and supported by Microsoft.

Pocket PCs and Smartphones

Windows Media Player for Pocket PC was first announced on January 6, 2000,^[2] 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 640x480 with stereo sound, and the same Energy Blue interface aesthetics also seen in recent versions of Windows XP Media Center Edition. 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.

Mac OS X

Version 9 was the final version of Windows Media Player to be released for Mac OS X before development was cancelled by Microsoft. WMP for Mac OS X received widespread criticism from Mac users due to poor performance and features. 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 and QuickTime Player. 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 encoded media (up to version 9) enclosed in the ASF format, lacking support for all other formats such as MP4, MPEG, and Microsoft's own AVI format. On the user interface front, it did not prevent screensavers 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 codec (also known as the WMV3 codec), 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.^[3] Microsoft now distributes a third-party plugin called WMV Player (produced and maintained by Flip4Mac) which allows some forms of Windows Media to be played within Apple's QuickTime player (and other QuickTime-aware applications).[1] Mac users can also use the free software media player VLC, which is also able to play some Windows Media files (though not those using WMV3 for the video).

Release history

 

1992

• Media Player for Windows 3.x version 4.x

 

1995

• Media Player for Windows 95 version 5.1.

 

1998

• June 25 Windows Media Player 6.1

 

1999

• November 22 Windows Media Player 6.4 for Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0

 

2000

• April Windows Media Player for Palm-size PC
• July Windows Media Player for Handheld PC
• July 17 Windows Media Player 6.3 for Mac OS
• July 17 Windows Media Player 6.3 for Solaris
• July 17 Windows Media Player 7 for Windows 98 and Windows 2000
• September 14 Windows Media Player 7.0 for Windows Me bundled with the OS
• December 12 Windows Media Player 7 for Pocket PC

 

2001

• July 24 Windows Media Player 7.0.1 for Mac OS
• October 25 Windows Media Player 8 for Windows XP bundled with the OS on its release

 

2002

• January 8 Windows Media Player 7.1 for Mac OS

 

2003

• January 27 Windows Media Player 9 for Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows Me, and Windows 2000 and a separate version for Windows XP
• June 23 Windows Media Player 9 for Pocket PC
• November 7 Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS X

 

2004

• August 10 Windows Media Player 9 for Windows XP Service Pack 2 bundled with the OS on its release
• October Windows Media Player 10 for Windows XP bundled with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, which is released on 10/12/2004. Windows Media Player 10 Mobile for Pocket PC and Smartphone. Included in Windows Mobile 5.0

 

2006

• May 17 Windows Media Player 11 public beta for Windows XP
• Aug 31 Windows Media Player 11 public beta 2 for Windows XP
• Oct 30 Windows Media Player 11 final release for Windows XP

 

Windows Media Player version 7.0 (and above) for Windows leave version 6.4 on the system as a separate application, which can be accessed via the mplayer2.exe executable in the player installation directory or by using the run command in the Start Menu. Version 6.4 is not included in Windows Vista nor in Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.

Version History

 

European Commission case

In March 2004, the European Commission 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 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 N", though the product has not been very successful.^[4]

See also

• List of media players
• Comparison of media players
• Media Transfer Protocol
• High Definition Compatible Digital

External links

• Microsoft Windows Media home page
• A Little Windows Media Player History
• Microsoft ports Windows Media to Linux (10 April 2003, vnunet.com)
• Error Messages in Windows Media Player 10
• Error Messages in Windows Media Player 9
• Flip4Mac- official codec provider for Mac OSX users for WMP 9

References

1. ^ "Microsoft unveils Vista editions", BBC News, 2006-02-27. Retrieved on 2006-12-21.
2. ^ Microsoft Unveils Windows Media Player for Palm-Size and Pocket PCs. Microsoft PressPass. Microsoft (January 6, 2000). Retrieved on 2006-05-14.
3. ^ Fried, Ina. "Music stops for Mac Windows Media Player", CNET, 2006-01-12. Retrieved on 2006-12-21.
4. ^ Marson, Ingrid. "Still 'no demand' for media-player-free Windows", CNET, 2005-11-18. Retrieved on 2006-12-21.