Windows Media Player is a built-in multimedia player that comes with Windows. While it is a reliable and widely used application, users may encounter errors and issues from time to time. This article aims to provide guidance on troubleshooting common Windows Media Player errors.

Poor-quality playback can be caused by dramatic changes to the default settings for SRS WOW Effects or for Equalizer. If you experience poor-quality playback, turn off both of these features.

To play the file, you must encode the file again by using the original source in a supported format, such as the .wmv format. To do this, you can use the Windows Media Encoder.

The content on DVD-Video discs is encoded in the MPEG-2 format, as is the content in DVR-MS files (Microsoft Recorded TV Shows) and some AVI files. To play these items in the Player, you need to have a compatible DVD decoder installed on your computer.

Windows Media Player supports the following file formats: Note MPEG 2 requires third-party software or hardware decoders. Note DVD playback requires third-party software or hardware decoders and is supported only in Windows XP. Note Intel Video File support requires the Intel Video 5.x codec.

Because Microsoft Windows operating systems provide only an MPEG-1 video decoder, Windows Media Player cannot play MPEG-2 program streams without an additional MPEG-2 video decoder (also known as a DVD decoder pack) installed.

Play music and video in more formats and stream it to more places with Windows Media Player 12.

Codecs allow you to play different formats of audio and video files. Media Player supports a wide variety of codecs. Most are included out of the box; some additional codecs can be installed from the Microsoft Store. Windows includes codecs that allow Media Player to play the following formats out of the box:

Learn how to fix error 0x91d70000 so you can play discs on your Xbox One console.

Learn what you can do to get the best video quality possible from your Xbox console.