Media player (application software) Information & Media player (application software) Links at HealthHaven.com

This article is about software media players in general. For other uses, see Media player.

MPlayer is an example of a cross-platform media player

Media player is a term typically used to describe computer software for playing back multimedia files. Most software media players support an array of media formats, including both audio and video files.

[edit] Media players

To find related topics in a list, see Comparison of media players.

Some media players focus only on audio or video and are known as audio players and video players respectively. The producers of these players usually focus on providing a better user experience as they are specifically tailored toward the media type.

Microsoft Windows comes with pre-loaded Windows Media Player. The latest is Windows Media Player 12, which is bundled with Windows 7. Mac OS X comes pre-loaded with Quicktime Player for playing Quicktime movies and iTunes for playing a variety of media formats. Winamp supports Apple iPods and other portables like Creative's Zen while also supporting audio and video playback. Linux distributions come pre-loaded with various media players including Amarok, VLC, MPlayer, xine, and Totem.

Many media players use libraries. The library is designed to help you organize, or catalog, your music into categories such as genre, year, rating or other. Good examples of media players that include media libraries are Winamp, Windows Media Player, iTunes, RealPlayer, Amarok and ALLPlayer.