Windows Media Player in the context of Pocket PC 2000

Media player may refer to:

• Digital media player, home appliances that play digital media
• Media Player Classic, open source software that plays digital media on computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system
• Media player software, software that plays digital media
• Portable media player, portable hardware that plays digital media
• Windows Media Player, software that plays digital media included in Windows
  • Windows Media Player (2022), also referred to as Media Player, media player software included in Windows 10 and Windows 11 replacing Groove Music

Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is a set of interoperability standards for sharing home digital media among multimedia devices. It allows users to share or stream stored media files to various certified devices on the same network like PCs, smartphones, TV sets, game consoles, stereo systems, and NASs. DLNA incorporates several existing public standards, including Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) for media management and device discovery and control, wired and wireless networking standards, and widely used digital media formats. Many routers and network attached storage (NAS) devices have built-in DLNA support, as well as software applications like Windows Media Player.

DLNA was created by Sony and Intel and the consortium soon included various PC and consumer electronics companies, publishing its first set of guidelines in June 2004. The Digital Living Network Alliance developed and promoted it under the auspices of a certification standard, with a claimed membership of "more than 200 companies" before dissolving in 2017. By September 2014 over 25,000 device models had obtained "DLNA Certified" status, indicated by a logo on their packaging and confirming their interoperability with other devices.

Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression. It was developed by Dolby, AT&T, Fraunhofer and Sony, originally as part of the MPEG-2 specification but later improved under MPEG-4. AAC was designed to be the successor of the MP3 format (MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) and generally achieves higher sound quality than MP3 at the same bit rate. AAC encoded audio files are typically packaged in an MP4 container most commonly using the filename extension .m4a.

The basic profile of AAC (both MPEG-4 and MPEG-2) is called AAC-LC (Low Complexity). It is widely supported in the industry and has been adopted as the default or standard audio format on products including Apple's iTunes Store, Nintendo's Wii, DSi and 3DS and Sony's PlayStation 3. It is also further supported on various other devices and software such as iPhone, iPod, PlayStation Portable and Vita, PlayStation 5, Android and older cell phones, digital audio players like Sony Walkman and SanDisk Clip, media players such as VLC, Winamp and Windows Media Player, various in-dash car audio systems, and is used on Spotify, Google Nest, Amazon Alexa. Apple Music, YouTube and also YouTube Music streaming services. AAC has been further extended into HE-AAC (High Efficiency, or AAC+), which improves efficiency over AAC-LC. Another variant is AAC-LD (Low Delay).

Media Player Classic (MPC) and its derivatives are a family of free and open-source media players for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. Focusing on compactness and customizability, Media Player Classic mimics the simplistic look and feel of Windows Media Player 6.4, but provide most options and features available in modern media players. The original MPC stopped development in 2006 after which it was forked into two new projects: Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC) and Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE), which are now principally maintained by the community at the Doom9 forum.

The active fork Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC) is maintaned by "clsid2" (same developer known as clsid responsible for MPC 6.4.9.1), and Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE) by "aleksoid". Variations of the original MPC and its forks are standard media players in the K-Lite Codec Pack and the Combined Community Codec Pack.

Media player software is a type of application software for playing multimedia computer files like audio and video files. Media players commonly display standard media control icons known from physical devices such as tape recorders and CD players, such as play (), pause (), fastforward (⏩️), rewind (⏪), and stop () buttons. In addition, they generally have progress bars (or "playback bars"), which are sliders to locate the current position in the duration of the media file.

Mainstream operating systems have at least one default media player. For example, Windows comes with Windows Media Player and it’s 2022 successor, while macOS comes with QuickTime Player and Apple Music. Linux distributions come with different media players, such as SMPlayer, Amarok, Audacious, Banshee, MPlayer, mpv, Rhythmbox, Totem, VLC media player, and xine. Android comes with YouTube Music for audio and Google Photos for video, and smartphone vendors such as Samsung may bundle custom software.

Media Player (also known as Windows Media Player in the Microsoft Store) is a media player software for Windows, developed by Microsoft. Written in Windows App SDK, it is built upon Groove Music to add video playback and it’s a modern replacement of the original Windows Media Player. It was first released in January 2022, built for Windows 11 and later released to Windows 10 on January 2023, and it replaces several separate apps.

Pocket PC 2002, originally codenamed "Merlin", was a member of the Windows Mobile family of mobile operating systems, released on October 4, 2001. Like Pocket PC 2000, it was based on Windows CE 3.0. Although mainly targeted for Pocket PC devices, Pocket PC 2002 was also used for Pocket PC phones (Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition), which were devices that combined the PDA functionality with cellular connectivity.

Aesthetically, Pocket PC 2002 was meant to be similar in design to the then newly released Windows XP. Newly added or updated programs include Windows Media Player 8 with streaming capability, MSN Messenger, and Microsoft Reader 2, with digital rights management support. Upgrades to the bundled version of Office Mobile include a spell checker and word count tool in Pocket Word and improved Pocket Outlook. Connectivity was improved with file beaming on non-Microsoft devices such as Palm OS, the inclusion of Terminal Services and Virtual Private Networking support, and the ability to synchronize folders. Other upgrades include an enhanced UI with theme support and savable downloads and WAP in Pocket Internet Explorer.