Windows XP Gives New Push to Windows Media Format

The tight integration of Windows Media Player 8 with Windows XP is part of Microsoft’s effort to establish the Windows Media Format (WMF) as the de facto standard for digital audio and video. The links between Media Player 8 and Windows XP, along with some changes to Media Player’s default configuration, make it more convenient and desirable for Windows XP users to create, store, manipulate, and play WMF files than other multimedia formats. At the same time, Microsoft is providing incentives to convince more content providers to create and host files in the format.

Microsoft does not receive revenue from any Windows Media products—the players, encoding tools, and Media Player SDK are available as free downloads, and the ability to host and stream WMF files is included with Windows 2000 Server and requires no additional license. So why does the company need to promote its format?

There are at least three reasons:

• To spur sales of Windows servers for streaming media and respond to the