<P> Microsoft continually produced new programs to play media files . In November of the following year, Video for Windows was introduced with the ability to play digital video files in an AVI container format, with codec support for RLE and Video1, and support for playing uncompressed files . Indeo 3.2 was added in a later release . Video for Windows was first available as a free add - on to Windows 3.1, and later integrated into Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 . In 1995, Microsoft released ActiveMovie with DirectX Media SDK . ActiveMovie incorporates a new way of dealing with media files, and adds support for streaming media (which the original Media Player could not handle). In 1996, ActiveMovie was renamed DirectShow . However, Media Player continued to come with Windows until Windows XP, in which it was officially renamed Windows Media Player v5. 1 . ("v5. 1" is the version number of Windows XP .) </P> <P> In 1999, Windows Media Player's versioning broke away from that of Windows itself . Windows Media Player 6.4 came as an out - of - band update for Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 that co-existed with Media Player and became a built - in component of Windows 2000, Windows ME and Windows XP with an mplayer2. exe stub allowing to use this built - in instead of newer versions . Windows Media Player 7.0 and its successors also came in the same fashion, replacing each other but leaving Media Player and Windows Media Player 6.4 intact . Windows XP is the only operating system to have three different versions of Windows Media Player (v5. 1, v6. 4 and v8) side by side . All versions branded Windows Media Player (instead of simply Media Player) support DirectShow codecs . Windows Media Player version 7 was a large revamp, with a new user interface, visualizations and increased functionality . Windows Vista, however, dropped older versions of Windows Media Player in favor of v11 . </P> <P> Beginning with Windows Vista, Windows Media Player supports the Media Foundation framework besides DirectShow; as such it plays certain types of media using Media Foundation as well as some types of media using DirectShow . Windows Media Player 12 was released with Windows 7 . It included support for more media formats and added new features . With Windows 8, however, the player did not receive an upgrade . </P> <P> On April 16, 2012, Microsoft announced that Windows Media Player would not be included in Windows RT, the line of Windows designed to run on ARM based devices . </P>

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