The Basics of WMV Files

WMV files are one of the formats found in Windows Media framework, which is a video encoding solution developed by Microsoft. If you have heard of MPEG-4, you can consider WMV files as the equivalent from Microsoft. It stands for Windows Media Video, and is convertible to the format of AVI.

This is because you may be using a player which cannot play WMV files, so being able to convert the format may be handy. However, many players do play this format. Windows Media Player (version 7 and above), which is from Microsoft, play WMV files, as do WinAMP, VLC Media Player, etc.
The main competitors are DivX and RealVideo, which are other popular codecs used in the distribution of video content on the net.

WMV9 is the present version from Microsoft and you need to have a codec installed that can read this kind of file so that it can produce images and sound from it. A codec is a software program and is usually easily found and is free of charge.

All else you need is an operating system of Windows 98 or above, as well as reasonable RAM, video and sound card, and processor. If you are using an operating system from Microsoft, Windows Media Player is probably installed. The codec is included in Windows Media Player. As you can tell, you probably have all these, so usually there is nothing else you need to download and install in order to play WMV files, unless you want to ensure that you have the latest versions.

Of course, not everyone prefers Microsoft products, which is not a problem because there are many alternatives and good ones too. Best of all, these are usually at no charge as well.
If you want to know more, just click on WMV files and you will find all the information you need on the website.

Please visit WMV Files and Play WMV Files for more information.

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