File types supported by Windows Media Center

Windows Media Center can play many different music, video, and picture file types. You can even make Media Center the default player for specific types of files so that they'll open in Media Center when you double-click them. For more information, see Change the default music or video player.

To open a file in Media Center, you might need to first tell Media Center where you store your files. To learn how to do this, see Add digital media files to Windows Media Center.

Additional file formats might be supported if you install new codecs in Windows.

 Music file types

The following table lists the music file types that are supported in Media Center.

Music file types (format)	File name extensions
Windows Media Audio file	.asx, .wm, .wma, and .wmx
Windows audio file	.wav
MP3 audio file	.mp3 and .m3u
Advanced Audio Coding	.aac

 Video file types

The following table lists the video file types that are supported in Media Center.

Video file types (format)	File name extensions
Windows Media file	.wm and .asf
Windows Media Video file	.wmv
Windows video file	.avi
Windows TV file	.wtv
Microsoft Recorded TV Show file	.dvr-ms
Movie file	.mpeg, .mpg, .mpe, .m1v, .mp2, .mpv2, and .vob

 Picture file types

The following table lists the picture file types that are supported in Media Center.

Picture file types (format)	File name extensions
JPEG	.jpg and .jpeg
JPEG XR	.hdp and .wdp
TIFF	.tif and .tiff
RAW file format	.raw
GIF	.gif
Bitmap	.bmp
Portable Network Graphics	.png

Notes

• Digital pictures taken with a digital camera and saved in RAW format aren't supported in Media Center.

• Animated GIF files aren't fully supported. For this file format, you can view the still image but not the animation.