Windows Media Player is a multimedia player and library app included with Microsoft Windows that has become obsolete, yet will continue to receive system updates through February 2022.
The application enables music and video playback, along with advanced features like reverse-synchronization for PlaysForSure compatible portable devices and advanced audio post-processing.
Streaming
Windows Media Player’s streaming feature can be an incredibly valuable asset to a home network, enabling you to enjoy music from another PC in another room over Wi-Fi hotspots or play back photos or videos from your home computer while away from home. Furthermore, streaming can also work well for businesses who allow employees accessing media files remotely from home computers.
To start streaming, first open Windows Media Player library and click Stream. In the next window, choose to “Allow Internet access to my home media.” Finally, on this same page click ‘Link an online ID’ so you can use WindowsLiveID account link on this page to create one and login securely to home media server; additionally you can add password protection against unauthorized access of media files.
Once finished, close this window and turn on media sharing from the general settings menu by clicking Stream > More media streaming options. Here, you can choose which computers and devices can stream your media and even restrict access based on star ratings for particular files.
Media streaming requires networks that support the Real Time Streaming Protocol, or RTSP. RTSP is a client-server system using UDP transport for greater retransmission efficiencies on congested networks, while protocol rollover utilizes TCP before switching back to RTSP; this helps mitigate network congestion if an audio/video packet arrives too late, and helps ensure seamless playback of multimedia files.
To assess whether your network can handle streaming, click on the network icon in the lower-right corner and choose Connect to a Network from the menu that appears. A list of networks are displayed along with their connection speeds – select your home or business network from this list and make sure it meets streaming requirements using the speed indicator box provided by Windows 7.
Playback
Windows Media Player (WMP) is an integral component of every Windows OS version and provides users with an experience tailored to them by offering popular audio and video formats as well as customizing playback speed settings and organizing files/playlists/recording audio/video recordings.
WMP can help you manage your music library, create and modify playlists, listen to radio broadcasts and movies/TV shows on demand. It even plays DVDs with multiple codec support to ensure all of your favorites can be accessed easily from your computer – not forgetting supporting HD audio formats such as AAC and FLAC files!
Downloading and playing podcasts are also easily achievable using this program, with advanced features like searching specific keywords or phrases within podcast titles to quickly locate what you’re after. In addition, Record Audio/Edit Tracks/Burn CDs also offers custom slideshow creation as well as access to song lyrics when playing music tracks.
Playing music and videos using Windows Media Player is straightforward. You can access this software either through its icon on the taskbar, the Start menu, or use command line launching of WMP – especially useful when dealing with large file sizes, or quickly opening and playing particular tracks.
This software boasts advanced features, such as variable playback speed and automatic rating. Additionally, it can synchronize song lyrics to video playback, as well as display them on-screen. Furthermore, you can configure this software to down-convert high bit-rate song files into lower bit rates to reduce storage requirements on portable devices; and additionally set it to automatically synchronize playback of different tracks when listening to albums.
Microsoft’s Windows 10 music app – replacing both WMP and Groove Music – features significant visual improvements over earlier versions of its software. Album art will feature prominently, along with artist images. Furthermore, there will be various settings such as brightness contrast hue manual controls as well as support for various video formats with its built-in graphical equalizer providing fine-tuning options to tailor your listening experience.
Device synchronization
Windows Media Player’s synchronization feature enables music, videos, images and other files to be copied onto portable devices such as mobile phones or MP3 players automatically or manually; media stored on such a device can be automatically or manually synced back up onto PC when connected.
To sync content on a portable device, click the Sync tab in the upper-left corner of Windows Media Player and you will be presented with a pop-out pane on the right side. Here, drag-and-drop any song(s), videos or pictures you would like added into this pane – you may be asked for folder information once this process begins; depending on their size and available storage capacity you may not be able to sync everything you wanted; in which case a progress bar will indicate how much space has been used so far and what space remains.
Once the sync process is completed, your portable device is available for playback. Windows Media Player will sync automatically each time it connects with the computer unless you opt-out of automatic sync syncing; additionally, Windows Media Player provides options to tailor which playlists and music files are synchronized between PC/Mac computers and mobile devices.
Shuffle Sync allows you to randomly rearrange the music on your device while Multi PC Sync syncs it with multiple computers. In addition, Windows Media Player lets you set your preferred media format. If a specific codec that’s not natively included can’t be found within Windows operating systems itself, third-party sources offer codec downloads; this makes playing high bit rate songs on portable devices with limited storage capacities easier than ever! Finally, Windows Media Player includes options for downconverting audio/video files for better space efficiency on devices with limited storage capacities.
File management
Microsoft’s Windows Media Player is a full-featured media player and library application designed to play audio and video file formats and provides digital rights management services. While its version included with Windows OS is included as standalone application, other operating systems have their own versions available as well.
Windows Media Player, commonly referred to as WMP, first made its debut as part of Multimedia Extensions for Windows 3.0 in 1991. Utilizing Microsoft Core Audio (MCI), WMP used this multimedia framework to access media files.
WMP can monitor folders to locate new music and video files. Once found, these items will automatically be added to a user’s media library – including those downloaded directly from CDs or purchased digitally elsewhere. WMP also imports files located on networked computers or USB flash drives, providing search options as well as album art with rich artist imagery for your viewing pleasure.
Windows Media Player not only stores audio and video, but it also provides tools for cataloguing and tagging media files. A tag editor allows users to edit media metadata such as track numbers, artist names, genres and dates; as well as create and edit playlists which will play automatically upon media loading.
Windows Media Player supports most major computer media formats, including MP3 and WMA for audio playback, AVI, and MPEG-4 videos, though certain files require special codecs in order to play correctly in Windows Media Player. Windows Media Player includes some codecs by default but more can be downloaded from the Internet if necessary.
Microsoft launched version 12 of Windows Media Player in late 2009 with an entirely redesigned interface, featuring lighter colors and cleaner layout. Furthermore, they incorporated simplified user experience for smartphones and tablets compared with prior versions released with Windows 7. Microsoft released this latest update only once later with Windows 7.
