When first loaded, Media Player displays your music library, appropriately enough. But Media Player actually holds several libraries, designed to showcase not only your music but also photographs, video, and recorded TV shows.
To toggle among your different libraries, click the Library button on Media Player's taskbar, as shown in Figure 1, and choose either Music, Pictures, Video, Recorded TV, or Other. Media Player immediately begins showing items in that particular category:
- Music: All your digital music appears here. Media Player recognizes most major music formats, including MP3, WMA, and WAV. (It doesn't recognize AAC files, sold by iTunes.)
- Pictures: Media Player can play back photos in a slide show, but your Pictures folder handles that task much better.
- Video: Look here for video you've saved from a camcorder or digital camera or downloaded from the Internet. Media Library recognizes AVI, MPG, WMV, ASF, and a few other formats.
- Recorded TV: Owners of Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate will see recorded TV shows listed here - if your PC has the equipment needed to record them.
- Other: Your playlists, as well as automatically created playlists for your recently added files, appear here.
Media Player's left pane lets you display your files in different ways. Click Artist, for example, to see the music arranged alphabetically by artists' first names.
Similarly, clicking Genre separates items into different types of music. Instead of just showing a name to click - blues, for example - Media Player arranges your music into piles of covers, just as if you'd sorted your albums or CDs on your living room floor.
To play anything in Media Player, right-click it and choose Play. Or, to play all your music from one artist or genre, right-click the pile and choose Play All.
