Windows Media Center

Windows Media Center is a digital video recorder and media player created by Microsoft. Media Center was first introduced to Windows in 2002 on a dedicated edition of Windows XP (Windows XP Media Center Edition). It was included in Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista, as well as all versions of Windows 7 except Starter and Home Basic. It was available on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 as a paid add-on, before being discontinued in Windows 10. The abbreviation MCE is often used to refer to all versions of the Windows Media Center system.

Media Center can play slideshows, videos and music from local hard drives, optical drives and network locations. Users can stream television programs and films through selected services such as Netflix. Content can be played back on computer monitors or on television sets through the use of devices called Windows Media Center Extenders. It is also possible to watch and pause live TV. Up to six TV tuners on a tuner card are supported simultaneously. Both standard- and high-definition unencrypted video are supported through DVB-T and ATSC standards. It is possible to view encrypted private network television stations that are not broadcast over the air with internal and external tuner options that support the insertion of a CableCard provided by the cable TV company.

Media center

Media center or media centre may refer to:

Audio-visual software and devices

Journalism

Librarianship

JRiver Media Center

JRiver Media Center is a multimedia application that allows the user to play and organize various types of media on a computer running Windows or Mac OS X.

JRiver Media Center is a "jukebox"-style media player, like iTunes, which usually uses most of the screen to display a potentially very large library of files.

Regular (usually daily beta) builds are posted on the Media Center Interact forum implementing requested features and fixing reported bugs. The forum has an active user community, with more than 25,000 users as of 2011.

Also available for JRiver Media Center are an Audioscrobbler plugin, and G-Force, a popular visualisation.

It can also rip and burn CDs. MediaCenter also supports static and dynamic playlists.

Library system

JRiver Media Center organizes files using Media Libraries, these are effective databases. Media Center can support multiple libraries.

Information relating to media is imported into the library including meta data for media files and the path to the media files. The media files themselves are not contained in the database, but cataloged within the libraries.

Windows Media

Windows Media is a discontinued multimedia framework for media creation and distribution for Microsoft Windows. It consists of a software development kit (SDK) with several application programming interfaces (API) and a number of prebuilt technologies, and is the replacement of NetShow technologies.

The Windows Media SDK is replaced by Media Foundation.

Software

Formats

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.