If it's included with Windows, then people definitely still use it. The people-you-know circle is just a tiny subset of the people-who-use-Windows circle, and the people-you-know circle likely skews towards the more technically inclined if you're a HN user.

It's included with Windows, but it's not the default for most (any?) of the file types it can handle any more-- the Movies & TV Store app opens video files, and Groove Music opens audio files. So it's not really in the path of most users any more; it's still there for people who know about it, but you're not likely to run into it unless you go out of your way to use it.

I use Media Player for music, it just works. I have all my music organized by folders with proper metadata, so I don't need any fancy navigation. The startup is instantaneous, which can't be said of other music software

"How very selfish of you to keep all of your listening metadata to yourself instead of sharing. What are you trying to hide? And how entitled are you to think that you should be able to play a track without getting permission each time from the publisher's server after giving it (and a few middlemen along the way) your entire demographic profile, a small DNA sample, and maybe opt-in to a monthly fee for a continued listening privilege?"

-- anonymous big music publisher

"Owned" music and offline listening seems to be dying a slow death. In some ways it represents consumer preference -- the vast majority of current music available from any device for the same price as one new album per month is too tempting for most. I do wonder if the days of being able to actually purchase music and movies for a one-time fee will come to an end. Piracy is probably the only force keeping that from already happening with music and physical movie sales in decline.

Groove's startup is also instant.

My friend uses the Windows Media Server, which was discontinued in 10. He still runs 8 for it. It's his DVR, and it spreads live TV around his house. I believe it requires Windows Media Play on all playback devices. This would make his life even harder.

This is really the only legal way to build your own DVR, isn't it?

Why wouldn't it be legal to use MythTV to build a DVR?

The broadcast flag issues? I think those have been resolved in the USA by having the rules that the FCC tried to implement removed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_flag

edited to clarify the broadcast flag legislation fixes are USA specific

If you just want broadcast ota channels there's plenty of options, however for stability and simplicity, Windows Media Center beats everything currently imo. For encrypted cable channels, WMC w/ Play Ready(MS's DRM) is really the only widely supported suitable option that most cable providers support.

Media Center and Media Player are two different things.

If you go up the comment chain you can see a user saying

> I believe it requires Windows Media Play on all playback devices.

So in order to watch all the streams in your house you'd have to use WMP.

Windows Media Player 12 of Windows 7 (and v11 of XP) are perfect. The UI is very nice, the star rating well integrated, the playlist functionality good. It plays mp3 audio, it plays avi, wmv, mpeg and mp4 videos, (and does all the advanced stuff most people don't even know about it has included)

VLC, WinAMP2, MPC, iTunes, foobar2000 are all good for one thing or the other. But for playing music files, there is no better program than Windows Media Player 11/12. The combination of XP or Win7 and Media Player is perfect. One can rate mp3 files in Explorer or in Media Player and create playlists based on that using saved searches, etc. And the cool thing all the data is stored to the metadata of the file itself, not like iTunes were all your manual edited that sits in an SQLite db and cannot be recovered or gets lost. WinAMP2 has not the best interface, and no a good rating system, but otherwise it is second best media player for mp3. Then comes iTunes, older iTunes versions had a much better UI.

Best for videos VLC or MPC

Best for music Windows Media Player or WinAMP

Unfortunately, many noobs prefer to stream music nowadays, and then they cry when they loose access to "their library" or "are stuck in airplane mode".

I use Foobar for music and VLC or MS "movies" for movies. I've dabbled with Groove which is an adequate music player, but not a patch on the old Zune app which I still fondly recall.

I never use WMP because to me it feels like the poor cousin to iTunes (just a feeling, probably not justified), and iTunes is ineptitude incarnate (justified)

Personally I use VLC for video and Winamp for music, but I still think Windows should ship with SOME sort of media player.

Yep. I tried Groove when I first upgraded to Windows 10, but at that time it didn't deal well mp3 files on my NAS. Windows Media Player has worked flawlessly and I use it every week.

IIRC some media-related libraries used by other programs are removed when Windows Media Player is uninstalled.