What is a Media Player?
(Back to Top) Media players are programs used to play digital music stored on the computer, accessed online, or on a CD. Windows Media Player, for example, comes with Windows 98, 2000, ME, and XP. There are other players available that can be downloaded for free such as the RealOne Player, MusicMatch Jukebox, and Winamp.
For the best viewing results we recommend the latest version from Microsoft, but you should be able to view NYVPRC video clips using Media Player version 7 or greater. However, you must have codec 9 installed. A codec (short for “compressor/decompressor”) is the set of instructions your media player needs to decompress and play the video files. If your Media Player needs the codec, it should download automatically when you attempt to view the video clips.
A media player is a software program designed to play multimedia content as it streams in from a network like the Internet, or from local storage on a hard drive or other resource. A media player might be expected to understand and translate several audio and video codecs, covering many digital music and video formats. A few media players commonly known and widely used include Apple®’s QuickTime®, Miscrosoft®’s Media Player (from which the general term followed), now known as Windows® Media Player (WMP), and RealNetworks® RealPlayer®. In earlier days one needed the QuickTime media player to watch Apple content, and Media Player to watch Windows content. RealPlayer was a program that would play both types of content and its own proprietary format. RealPlayer was an Internet favorite for a short time in the late 90s, but fell out of favor due to widely publicized privacy concerns about spyware-like behavior and bloat. Patrons of Apple products like the iPod® and iPhone® will have iTunes®
A media player is a type of software for computers that can play audio and video files by decompressing embedded information within a file. Users of these programs can then watch video clips or listen to music from the Internet or create their own files from an external device, such as a video recorder or digital camera. What are some of the most commonly used media players? • Quicktime: Produced by Apple Computers, the Quicktime media player plays many file extension including .mpeg, .qt, .mov, .aiff, and .avi. This player is available for both Windows and Macintosh computers but is most commonly associated with Macintosh. • Windows Media Player: As it’s name suggests, this media player is made by Microsoft and comes with the Windows operating system. It is also available for download for Mac formats as well. This player supports files with extensions .asf, .asx, .wma, .wmv, .avi, .au, .wav and .mpg. • Real Player: This media player is great for streaming media files from the Internet
A media player is a software program with which you can play a variety of audio or video files. You can use a media player to create a virtual jukebox on your PC or view clips from movies or streaming videos broadcast over the Internet. Some media players, such as Microsoft’s Windows Media Player, can play both audio and video files. Other programs, such as MusicMatch Jukebox from MusicMatch and Nullsoft’s WinAmp, are designed to play audio files only. RealNetworks offers both a video player (RealPlayer) and an audio player (RealJukebox).
