Learn Vista - Introduction to Windows Media Player 11

Windows Media Player (WMP) is a digital media player which is developed by Microsoft. You can use this software to play video and audio files on Windows operating system. Besides its capabilities on playing digital media, Microsoft also adds other power on it such as burning CDs and DVDs, ripping music from a CD, enabling you to find and subscribe to music, video, radio services, and other types of content from online stores, etc.

Here are some matters you can do and get by using WMP:
- Playing audio, video, even picture files.
- Organizing digital media items through WMP library.
- Burning CDs and DVDs.
- Ripping music from CD.
- Supporting local playback, streaming playback, and progressive playback.
- Better video smoothing.
- Supporting graphic equalizer.
- Skinnable visual layout.
- etc.

By using WMP, you can play files with following extensions:
- Windows video files (*.avi, *.wmv)
- Windows media files (*.asf, *.wm, *.wmv, *.wma, *.wmd)
- Windows audio files (*.wav, *.snd, *.au, *.aif, *.aifc, *.aiff, *.wma, *.mp3)
- Movie files (*.mpg, *.mpeg, *.m1v, *.m2v, *.mod, *.mp2, *.mpa, *.mpe, *.ifo, *.vob)
- MIDI files (*.mid, *.midi, *.rmi)
- MP4 video file (*.mp4)
- Microsoft recorded tv show files (*.dvr-ms)
- Media playlist files (*.asx, *.wax, *.m3u, *.wpl, *.wvx, *.wmx, *.search-ms)
- WavPack audio files (*.wv)
- Matroska file (*.mkv)

Run Windows Media Player 11

To run it, click Start > All Programs > Windows Media Player from the desktop start menu.


Parts of Windows Media Player 11

Here is what Windows Media Player 11 looks like:

In the Player Taskbar, you'll find the Back and Next button which you can use to retrace your steps.

You may still remember the layout of WMP predecessor which has menubar contains menus. In WMP 11, it's not visible by default. To show it, right-click empty area on Player Taskbar, then click Show Classic Menus. Then it appears.

On the Player taskbar, you'll find tabs which are the important parts to use WMP 11.

To switch to a tab, just click the tab. Whereas, to access the options for every tab, click the down-arrow below the tab.