Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player, often called WMP, was a popular program made by Microsoft. It played music and videos on Windows computers.

It also copied music from CDs, made new CDs, and helped organize music on portable players or phones. It supported special formats like Windows Media Video and Windows Media Audio, and had different "skins" to change its look.

Microsoft updated Windows Media Player over time. The last big update was version 11, which came with Windows Vista. Version 12 arrived with Windows 7 and was included in later Windows versions. New apps like Xbox Music and Microsoft Movies & TV started taking its place. Today, Windows 11 includes a newer version called Media Player.

For the newest version, see Windows Media Player (2022).

History

The first version of Windows Media Player came out in October 1991 with Windows 3.0 with Multimedia Extensions. It was called Media Player and could play special animation files. Over time, Microsoft made many updates to help it play music and videos better.

New versions arrived with each update of Windows. By 1999, Windows Media Player had its own version numbers, apart from Windows. It got new looks, better sounds, and more features. In 2004, it also included a music store to compete with iTunes, but that store was later replaced by Zune players. With newer Windows versions like Windows Vista and Windows 7, Windows Media Player kept improving at playing different types of media. However, starting with Windows RT in 2012, Windows Media Player was no longer included.

Windows Media Player (2022)

A new app called Media Player replaced both Groove Music and the older Windows Media Player. It started being offered to all Windows 11 users on February 15, 2022, and came to Windows 10 users in January 2023.

This new Media Player can play videos too. It changed from being just a music service to a full media player. The album cover view now fills the whole screen, and the small player got a refresh. It also got better support for people who use keyboards or other assistive technologies.

Features

Windows Media Player can play music, videos, and pictures. It has tools to skip ahead or go back, and it can sort your media in a library by album, artist, or type.

When you play music, the player shows fun moving shapes like bars and waves. It works with many music and video types and can make audio CDs. You can move media to portable devices and use a small version on the taskbar to control it. It also has online tools to find music and send media to other devices.

Security issues

Microsoft Windows Media Runtime in Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows Server had a problem. If a user opened a special media file, someone could do bad things. This might let the attacker change or delete data, or make new accounts with full access. But this could only happen if the user had special permissions. Microsoft fixed this issue with an important update on September 8, 2009.

Other versions

Microsoft made versions of Windows Media Player for different devices and operating systems like Windows Mobile, classic Mac OS, Mac OS X, Palm-size PC, Handheld PC, and Solaris. These versions are no longer supported by Microsoft. The first version of the Zune software was based on Windows Media Player, but later versions were not.

Windows Media Player for Pocket PC was first announced on January 6, 2000. The version called "Media Player 10 Mobile," released in October 2004, worked similarly to the Windows version of WMP 10. It could play music and videos, show album art, and sync with the desktop version of WMP 10.

For Mac OS X, version 9 was the last version of Windows Media Player made for this system. Development stopped in 2006, and Microsoft now uses a third-party plugin called WMV Player (made by Flip4Mac) to help play some Windows Media files in Apple's QuickTime Player.

European Commission case

In March 2004, the European Commission fined Microsoft €497 million. They said Microsoft broke rules by using its big share of the market for computer operating systems to control other areas, like media players. Because of this, Microsoft had to offer a version of Windows without Windows Media Player, called Windows XP N. Later versions like Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 also had "N" editions. People could add Windows Media Player back using Windows Update.

Release history

Before Windows Media Player came along in Windows 98 Second Edition, older versions of Microsoft Windows had separate programs like CD Player, Deluxe CD Player, DVD Player and Media Player to play media files. One version of Windows Media Player, version 11, was not made for Windows Server 2003.