Customizing the Player

End users can customize many features of Windows Media Player to suit their mood or personality. For example, the Player includes a number of interchangeable skins that completely change the look of the Player, much like changing the face plate on a cellular phone. Additional skins are available on the Web today, and more will be added in the future. Figure 4.2 shows an example of Windows XP, which is one of the pre-installed skins.

Figure 4.2: Windows XP is a pre-installed skin.

When changing the skin, you are still able to use all of the playback controls, but you might need to do a little experimenting in order to find them.

Other kinds of customization include:

• Turning captions and subtitles on and off. Captions and subtitles are strings of information that might be added to your content during the encoding process. If caption and subtitle information is included, it will be displayed in the video playback area of the Player. This feature is available on the Play menu.

• Creating playlists. Playlists provide a means of organizing different pieces of digital media content into a single stream. They are a set of instructions that specify what to play and the order in which to play it. You can create a playlist of your favorite songs or videos and set it to play back in a specific or random sequence.

• Adding features through plug-ins. Windows Media Player 9 Series has an extensible object model that enables you to enhance the feature set through the use of plug-ins. Plug-ins enable you to add visualizations, add audio or video effects, and more. You must be a member of the administrator or power users group on your computer to add plug-ins to the Player. To download plug-ins, click Tools, click Plug-ins, and then click Download Plug-ins.