The player is also able to utilize a digital rights management service in the form of Windows Media DRM.

[6] Originally called Media Player, this component was included with "Multimedia PC"-compatible machines but not available for retail sale.

Windows Media Player version 7 was a large revamp, with a new user interface, visualizations and increased functionality.

Since WMP 9 Series, the player features dynamically updated Auto Playlists based on criteria.

In Windows Media Player 11, the Quick Access Panel was removed and replaced with an Explorer-style navigation pane on the left which can be customized for each library to show the user selected media or metadata categories, with contents appearing on the right, in a graphical manner with thumbnails featuring album art or other art depicting the item.

The player activates DVD and Blu-ray playback functionality with support for menus, titles and chapters, parental controls and audio track language selection if compatible decoders are installed.

While burning Data CDs, the media can, optionally, be transcoded into WMA format and playlists can be added to the CD as well.

Since WMP 9 Series, 20 bit high-resolution CDs (HDCDs) are also supported, if capable audio hardware is present.

Information on CDs such as album name, artist and track listings can optionally be automatically downloaded from the online Windows Media database when the CD is inserted.

Version 11 added support for ripping audio CDs to WAV and WMA 10 Pro formats.

With their 2015 implementation in Windows 10, Version 12 also added lossless FLAC and ALAC formats for ripping and playback.

Windows Media Player allows the user to connect, share and sync data with portable handheld devices and game consoles since version 7.

When deleting playlists from devices, Windows Media Player can automatically remove their contents.

WMP 11 supports reverse-synchronization, by which media present on the portable device can be replicated back to the PC.

In Windows Media Player Version 11, switching off the down-conversion function is done in the Quality tab of the Advanced Options of the Sync settings for the device.

The WMA-LL protocol is selectable in Windows Media Player as an option when ripping songs from CDs.

In recent years (circa 2012), portable devices became available that could natively play these Windows Media Player produced high bit-rate WMA-LL files (and others), and that have storage capacities suitable for large collections of high bit-rate song files.

This made it much more practicable and desirable to use software programs such as Windows Media Player to synchronize previously PC-bound libraries of high bit-rate songs to these new portable devices.

Windows Media Player features universal brightness, contrast, saturation and hue adjustments and pixel aspect ratio for supported video formats.

When the player is closed and reopened, simply clicking the play button restores the last playlist even if it was not saved.

Up to version 11, it featured a taskbar-mounted Mini-mode in which the most common media control buttons are presented as a toolbar on the Windows taskbar.

Flyout windows can display media information, the active visualization or the video being played back.

[29] The user interface has been redesigned in Windows Media Player 12 such that the Now Playing view plays media in a separate minimalist window with floating playback controls, and also gives access to the current playlist, visualizations, and enhancements.

As previously mentioned, taskbar-integrated mini-mode has been replaced with controls in the taskbar's interactive thumbnail preview (called the Thumbnail Toolbar),[30] albeit minus the volume control function, track and album information shown whenever a new song is played and the progress bar.

It provides an embeddable ActiveX control for Internet Explorer so that developers can play Windows Media on web pages.

With version 11 of Windows Media Player, Media Sharing was integrated and allows content (Music, Pictures, Video) to be streamed to and from Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) AV enabled devices such as the PS3, Xbox 360, and Roku SoundBridge.

A non-exhaustive list of skins included with Windows Media Player from versions 7-10 are "9SeriesDefault,” "Atomic,” "Bluesky,” "Canvas,” "Classic,” "Compact,” "goo,” "Headspace,” "heart,” "iconic,” "Miniplayer,” "Optic,” "Pyrite,” "QuickSilver,” "Radio,” "Roundlet,” "Rusty,” "splat,” "Toothy,” "Windows Classic,” and "Windows XP.” All of these skins were removed starting with version 11, but are retained if the player is upgraded.

On release the application lacked many basic features that were found in other media players such as Apple's iTunes and QuickTime.

On January 12, 2006, Microsoft announced it had ceased development of Windows Media Player for Mac.

[36] In March 2004, the European Commission in the European Union Microsoft antitrust case fined Microsoft €497 million and ordered the company to provide a version of Windows without Windows Media Player, claiming Microsoft "broke European Union competition law by leveraging its near monopoly in the market for PC operating systems onto the markets for work group server operating systems and for media players.” The company has made available a compliant version of its flagship operating system under the negotiated name "Windows XP N,” though the product has not been very successful.