Listening to Music and Watching DVDs in Windows 7

You can play Media files in new windows 7 using Windows Media Player. On computers, the term media refers to something other than text: Audio and video are examples of media. Audio is a term that has wide variety of items for music and other sound files, such as books on CD. Music is often entirely digital nowadays. You can use Media Player to play the sample music included with Windows 7. You can play your audio CD on your computer using Media Player. If you want to make that CD playing more convenient then you can copy the audio files to your computer. You can create your own CDs with a library of music copied from your CD collection and you can also combine tracks. You can also copy audio files to an MP3 player.

Play Music with Windows Media Player

1. To start Windows Media Player, click its icon which appears as a white triangle on an orange circle on a blue square in the taskbar. The initial settings screen will appear the first time you start Media Player. Now click Recommended Settings and then click Finish.

2. Now, the Media Player Library shows music that comes with Windows 7 and any other music that you have already copied to your computer. The toolbar at the bottom of Media Player’s window provides the following controls:

• Shuffle: To turn on shuffle, click this button. This option randomly mixes the tracks you play. A second click on shuffle turns it off and the tracks play in the order in which they appear onscreen.

• Loop: Click this button to turn on loop which means repeat. This option will continuously play all the tracks again after all have played.

• Stop: Click to stop a track.

• Previous: This button jumps to the previous track.

• Play/Pause: To pause play mid-track, click the button with two vertical lines. To resume playing from the point you paused, click the same button which is now with a triangle pointing to the right.

• Next: This button jumps to the next track.

• Mute/Unmute: To silence the player, click this button. Although the track will continue to play but you won’t hear it. A red circle and slash appear next to the speaker icon when mute is on. You need to click the button again to hear the track.

• Volume: To decrease or increase the volume of track, click or drag the slider to left or right respectively. Your speakers may also have manual volume control. Windows 7 also has a separate volume control in the taskbar.

• Now Playing: It is located far to the right of the toolbar, to reduce the player to a small size, click this button.

3. You can use these controls to play the music. You can adjust the volume with the slider. Mute and unmute the music. You can also pause the music and resume playing. To stop music use Stop button.

4. To shrink Media Player to a smaller window, click the Switch to Now Playing button to the right of the toolbar. Click the Switch to Library button to return to the larger window.

You can also buy music online and download the tracks directly to your computer using this media player.