Family album: Microsoft's CD players

mplayer.exe
Distributions	Windows 95, Windows 98
Features	Plays audio, video and more. Allows setting of start/stop markers e.g. for repetitive or selective listening.
Databases	none
cdplayer.exe
Distributions	Windows 95, Windows 98
Download	Goto that Microsoft site.
Features	Plays CDs only. CD recognition. Track and artist data can be manually entered and are redisplayed on next load.
Databases	cdplayer.ini, limited to 64 KByte
Web Infos	The cdplayer.ini page.
Windows Media Player Version 6
Features	Plays lots of audio and video formats from disk and the web - inclusive live radio. New decoder modules are downloaded from the web when needed.
Note	Does not play audio cds. However listed here for as predecessor of new WMP version(s) noted below.
Deluxe CD Player
Distributions	Plus! 98, Windows 2000
Features	Plays CDs only. CD recognition. Track and artist data can be down-/uploaded to the WWW.
Databases	DeluxeCD.mdb (more ...) cdplayer.ini (imported on first run; more ...)
Note	In prior distributions, this application was named "deluxecd.exe". On Windows 2000, the application is named "cdplayer.exe". To avoid confusions with the application mentioned above, this one is called "Deluxe CD player" or sometimes just "DeluxeCD" on this site (unless otherwise noted).
Windows Media Player Version 7.x and greater
Distributions	Version 8 is shipped with Windows XP.
Download	Goto that Microsoft site.
Note	The acronym is WMP.
Features	Plays audio, video, DVD and more. Various (downloadable) skins (see right image).
Databases	New format. Unknown to the author, yet. For the data scheme, see wmpscheme.xml in your Windows System directory (after installation).
Web Infos	Microsoft's WMP site. WMP Bonus Pack.