Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player is a classic application for playing music and movies stored in a variety of formats. Most notably, it works with the proprietary Windows media audio and video file formats that were designed specifically for this platform. It can play a wide selection of other types of media files provided that you have the prerequisite codecs for them installed.

In recent years, Microsoft has been redesigning most of the apps that come with Windows and Media Player hasn't been an exception to this rule. Nevertheless, this is the original standalone version as opposed to the newer Metro-style app. Users who prefer to have programs floating in actual frames will really appreciate the more basic interface that this edition offers. You can even minimize it and it will still keep playing whatever music was on.

Since it's based around the original software, classic Windows Media Player offers a lower memory footprint than most of the editions that actually ship with the operating system today. It still works with classic mms links, which should please those who listen to streaming news headlines on the Internet from major international broadcasting services. Those who prefer to listen to music online will find that it should work with basic URLs that point toward music streams as well.

Older media servers have gone down, which means that Windows Media Player might not be able to fetch metadata from the Internet. This is only ever really useful if you want to play a compact disc without knowing what's on it, however, so few users will probably even notice. You can simply disable this feature and never have to worry about whether or not remote metadata servers are active.

Other more useful features include the option to burn CDs directly from the app after ripping songs from another ISO structure. This makes it easy to reproduce CDs with a burner even if you don't have any other special software for it. Every CD it makes out of compliant files should be playable in a regular stereo without any additional hardware.

Due to the fact that classic Windows Media Player supports all of the original keyboard shortcuts that long-time users got accustomed to, it's easy to get up and running with the app. You can use the arrow keys to skip forward and back through tracks. A single tap of the space bar will let you pause and restart a track if you're so inclined. These could even be mapped to a small USB remote for those who plan on turning their computer into a television set or a stereo.

While it might have been updated with new codecs and features over the years, Windows Media Player still retains all of the charm that the original program had to offer.

Pros

• Low memory footprint
• Works with mms links
• Plays WMA and WMV files
• Offers convenient keyboard shortcuts

Cons

• Only plays media files you have codecs for
• Doesn't always read metadata properly