Digital media player

Digital media players (DMP) are home entertainment consumer electronics devices that can connect to a home network to stream digital media (such as music, pictures, or video), and are not to be confused with portable media players (also known as mobile media player). Digital media players as devices can stream files from a personal computer and network-attached storage or other networked media server to playback the media outputted to a television or video projector display for home cinema. Most digital media players utilize a 10-foot user interface, and many are navigated via a remote control.

Some digital media players also have Smart TV features, like allowing users to stream media from the internet or streaming services and online media sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, and Amazon.com. Some other digital media players also allow users to playback locally stored content from a direct attached USB hard disk or even direct connect a Hard disk drive externally, or even internally in the digital media player via a Serial ATA (SATA) port, therefore these types of digital media player are sometimes referred to as HD Media Player or HDD Media Player if they can support to have a Hard Disk Drive installed inside.

Media player

A media player could refer to:

Media player (software)

A media player is a computer program for playing multimedia files. Media players display standard media control icons known from physical devices such as tape recorders and CD players, such as Play (  ), Pause (  ), and Stop (  ) buttons.

Mainstream operating systems have at least one built-in media player. For example, Windows comes with Windows Media Player while OS X comes with QuickTime Player. Linux distributions may also come with a media players, such as SMPlayer, Amarok, Audacious, Banshee, MPlayer, Rhythmbox, Totem, VLC, and xine.

Functionality focus

Different media players may have different goals and feature sets. Video players are a group of media players that have their features geared more towards playing digital video. For example, Windows DVD Player exclusively plays DVD-Video discs and nothing else. Media Player Classic can play individual audio and video files but many of its features such as color correction, picture sharpening, zooming, set of hotkeys, DVB support and subtitle support are only useful for video material such as films and cartoons. Audio players, on the other hand, specialize in digital audio. For example, AIMP exclusively plays audio formats. MediaMonkey can play both audio and video format but many of its features including media library, lyric discovery, music visualization, online radio, audiobook indexing and tag editing are geared toward consumption of audio material. In addition, watching video files on it can be a trying feat. General-purpose media players also do exist. For example, Windows Media Player has exclusive features for both audio and video material, although it cannot match the feature set of Media Player Classic and MediaMonkey combined.

Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player (abbreviated WMP) is a media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile–based devices. Editions of Windows Media Player were also released for Mac OS, Mac OS X and Solaris but development of these has since been discontinued.

In addition to being a media player, Windows Media Player includes the ability to rip music from and copy music to compact discs, burn recordable discs in Audio CD format or as data discs with playlists such as an MP3 CD, synchronize content with a digital audio player (MP3 player) or other mobile devices, and enable users to purchase or rent music from a number of online music stores.

Windows Media Player replaced an earlier application called Media Player, adding features beyond simple video or audio playback.

Windows Media Player 11 is available for Windows XP and included in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. The default file formats are Windows Media Video (WMV), Windows Media Audio (WMA), and Advanced Systems Format (ASF), and its own XML based playlist format called Windows Playlist (WPL). The player is also able to utilize a digital rights management service in the form of Windows Media DRM.