Windows Media Player is available for Windows-based devices. Use this table lớn find the right version of the Player for your system. (If you"ve got a Mac, you can tải về Windows Media Components for Quick
Time lớn play Windows Media files.)
Which version of Windows am I running?
| Windows 10 | Windows Media Player 12 Learn more | Included in clean installs of Windows 10 as well as upgrades khổng lồ Windows 10 from Windows 8.1 or Windows 7. In some editions of Windows 10, it"s included as an optional feature that you can enable. To vì chưng that, select the Start button, then select Settings > Apps > Apps & features > Manage optional features > Add a feature > Windows media Player, and select Install. Bạn đang xem: Các windows media player Enable Windows media Player DVD playback isn"t included. Go lớn the DVD playback for Windows page to find out how to add DVD playback to Windows 10. |
| Windows 8.1 | Windows Media Player 12 Learn more | Included in Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Pro, but doesn"t include DVD playback. Go lớn the DVD playback for Windows page to lớn find out how to địa chỉ DVD playback khổng lồ Windows 8.1. For Windows truyền thông Player 12 for Windows 8.1 N and KN editions, get the truyền thông Feature Pack. |
| Windows RT 8.1 | N/A | Windows Media Player isn"t available for Windows RT 8.1. |
| Windows 7 | Windows Media Player 12Learn more | Included in Windows 7 Starter, home Premium, Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions. For Windows 7 N or KN editions, get the truyền thông Feature Pack. |
| Mac OS X | Windows Media Components for Quick | Get it now |
If you want lớn reinstall Windows truyền thông Player, try the following:
Click the Start button, type features, & select Turn Windows features on or off.
Scroll down and expand Media Features, clear the Windows truyền thông Player kiểm tra box, & click OK.
Restart your device. Windows media Player should be uninstalled.
Repeat step 1.
Scroll down và expand Media Features, select the Windows media Player check box, & click OK.
Restart your device. Windows truyền thông media player should now be reinstalled.
Note: To troubleshoot issues like playback và codec problems, see the "Get help" section in Windows truyền thông Player.
Microsoft has had a strange relationship with local clip playback for the past several years. It’s one of those features that was caught in the purgatory that was created with the start of Windows 10, as Microsoft hung onto legacy apps lượt thích Windows truyền thông Player while trying khổng lồ push into a new, modern era. We’ve come a long way since that point, & Windows 11 is the closest to offering a full-featured video player that Microsoft has been in years.
Media Player, the tiện ích built into Windows 11 for video clip and audio playback, has come a long way in the two years since it was introduced. It’s surprisingly feature-rich for such a simple application. Even with updates & new additions to media Player, though, it still falls short of free, open-source options because of two key issues.
The history
There’s some history here that’s important to address. Don’t confuse truyền thông media Player with Windows media Player. They’re different apps. The latter is now known as Windows truyền thông Player Legacy, and it’s the phầm mềm you’re familiar with if you’ve ever interacted with Microsoft’s media player prior to lớn Windows 11. It can make playlists, show videos, and rip your CDs. It hasn’t quite grown out of the Vista-era trimmings, but at this point, it really doesn’t need to.
Xem thêm: Đánh Giá Cám Thắng Mẹo Đà Nẵng, Cám Chim Thắng Mẹo Đà Nẵng
The app truyền thông media Player we have today was built out of the leftovers of Groove Music. This was Microsoft’s music app, which Microsoft discontinued and rebranded under truyền thông media Player. Instead of just audio, truyền thông Player supports video, as well. Some features, such as ripping CDs, weren’t available when the app launched a couple of years ago. Since then, Microsoft has rolled out the features of the legacy Windows truyền thông media Player, making truyền thông media Player your one-stop shop for audio and video.
I’d forgive you for thinking media Player isn’t any good, though. Groove Music was infamous in Windows 10 and the early days of Windows 11, & I imagine most people ditched the built-in player and found a video/music phầm mềm of their own. I certainly did with VLC Player. I was shocked how far truyền thông Player has come since it was introduced two years ago, though.
It has a lot of features, and for most people, it has everything you need in a simple-to-understand format. It also looks great, which is a lot more than I can say for other video players. There are two critical issues that still hold it back, though.
What’s right
The biggest thing truyền thông media Player has going for it is that it’s easy lớn use. That usually means sacrificing features — we all know an phầm mềm that looks lượt thích it was designed for Windows XP has more features, right? — but media Player is surprisingly robust for playing videos. Out of the gate, you have support for just about every codec you could need, minus one critical omission that I’ll get to lớn in the next section.
Compared lớn something lượt thích VLC, you have the main controls you’d want for playing đoạn clip within easy reach. You can adjust the playback speed, tweak the audio with an equalizer, and crop in to lớn avoid black bars. There are even some image settings, allowing you lớn change the brightness, contrast, và saturation. VLC certainly goes deeper with sharpening, an audio compressor, custom overlays, and so much more. But for the vast majority of videos you’ll play, truyền thông media Player has what you need.
There are two things that go beyond the basics with truyền thông media Player, though: subtitles và audio tracks, & casting. In the old Windows media Player, you could địa chỉ subtitles to lớn videos that didn’t have them included, but it was a manual process that happened in the file Explorer. With the new truyền thông media Player, you can just add a tệp tin directly by pressing the Captionbutton within the app. It’s a small change, but it makes media Player a lot easier to use.
Subtitles & audio tracks are very important for my local videos, too. I watch a lot of anime, and I’ll have khổng lồ often resort khổng lồ archived copies of older shows and movies due khổng lồ some unfortunate stream of licensing disputes. It’s critical that I can easily adjust the subtitle & audio track that a tệp tin is using while playing a video, and media Player makes that simple. That assumes you have the audio and subtitle tracks you need, & that they’re high quality, however. VLC still takes the cake if you need to sync things up.
Casting is a big addition, too. Truyền thông media Player hooks into the casting features built into Windows 11, and it can stream your screen to any device that supports casting. The only downside here is that it streams your entire screen, so you’ll need to stop the casting after your đoạn clip is done playing.
Two major problems
For most people, media Player gets the job done for video. But there are two major issues with the ứng dụng that invalidate its upsides.
First, HEVC. If you have a đoạn clip that encoded with HEVC, or H.265, you have khổng lồ buy a $1 add-on in the Microsoft Store to lớn watch that đoạn clip in truyền thông media Player. It’s not the cost of the add-on — I think most of us could spare $1 — but it’s a slap in the face khổng lồ charge for such a widely-used codec in the first place. You’ll commonly find HEVC in video editing và capture applications, so you could easily record or edit a video and not be able khổng lồ watch it in truyền thông Player.
What’s more frustrating is that Microsoft offered HEVC tư vấn for không lấy phí previously. In Windows 11 22H2, you could find a không tính tiền download for HEVC codec from the Microsoft Store. That listing is now gone, and if you somehow manage to lớn find it with a more recent version of Windows, the Microsoft Store will block you from installing it. There are ways khổng lồ still get the miễn phí version — I’ll links this Reddit thread and let you take it from there — but you shouldn’t have to lớn go through the hassle.
The charge, apparently, is due lớn licensing fees. I’m honestly not sure one way or the other, & I’m certainly no expert when it comes to patent licensing agreements. I vày know that HEVC is supported in every major browser, including Edge, Chrome, and Safari, & that it’s been supported in hardware between CPUs and GPUs since 2015, however. That’s on vị trí cao nhất of that fact that Microsoft previously offered it for free.
The other major issue comes down to media Player’s history. It was built out of an phầm mềm created for music, & there are far more features focused there. For instance, you can grab metadata for your music online automatically through the tiện ích — you can’t vì the same for video. You also have no way to find subtitles for videos through media Player, unlike VLC và its VLSub extension that hooks into Opensubtitles.org directly from the app.
In both cases, the reason behind these lack of features comes down to lớn money. Microsoft is one of the largest companies in the world, & there’s no doubt that external databases like Open Subtitles & licensing agencies would salivate at a cut of Microsoft’s pie considering the massive install base of Windows. That’s the cost of doing business, though, & clearly Microsoft thinks that cost isn’t justified.
Regardless of the reason, the fact remains that the media Player app in Windows 11 falls short of a multitude of không tính phí options that have been available for decades. I use VLC for my purposes, but there are a ton of other options including truyền thông media Player Classic (MPC) và its variants, FFmpeg, và Pot Player.
