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The Windows Media Player control acts as a universal player for rendering most standard multimedia formats. This includes stored and live content in network streaming formats, as well as non-streaming formats. Network streaming formats supported by Windows Media Player include the following:

  • Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Windows Media Audio metafiles (with a .wax file name extensions)
  • Windows Media Video (WMV) and Windows Media Video metafiles (with a .wvx file name extension)
  • Windows Media files (ASF) and Windows Media metafiles (with a .asx file name extension).
  • Video On Demand (VOD)
  • Moving Picture Experts Group standard 1 and 2 (MPEG-1, MPEG-2), including MPEG Layer-3 audio (MP3).
  • Closed captioning (SMI, SAMI)

Non-streaming (local playback) formats supported by the Windows Media Player control include all of the network streaming formats previously listed, plus the following:

  • Compact Disc Audio (CD)
  • Digital Video Disc (DVD)
  • Audio-Video Interleaved (AVI)
  • Apple QuickTime (QT, MOV), version 2 and lower.
  • Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI)
  • Indeo Video 5
  • Waveform Audio (WAV)
  • Sound File (SND)
  • UNIX audio (AU)
  • Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF)