Multimedia support in WPF without Windows Media Player 10+?

Question

I am wondering if it is possible to deploy Windows Media Foundation without Windows Media Player 10 or 11?

Here is the context. I have a WPF application running in a corporate environment. WPF requires the Windows Media Foundation to support multimedia media. The Windows Media Foundation is distributed through Windows Media Player 10 and 11. The corporate release schedule for WMP 10/11 is too far in the future for me to wait. But since I don’t need the entire infrastructure of the player, only the media basis, I wonder if there is a way to deploy only this component.

Answer 1

Media Foundation is a technology only for Vista, and as I understand it, it is supposed to replace DirectShow in the future. The reason WPF needs WMP v10 + is because milcore uses WMP OCX internally. The WMP v10 + OCX functions allow the mikor to use the Enhanced Video Renderer (EVR), which, in turn, uses its own presenter to render directly to the D3D surface and ultimately in WPF. In Vista, WMP will use the Media Foundation path through DirectShow if the media is supported (i.e. WMV files).

I have an alternative. My project is "WPF MediaKit" . I have a WPF control called MediaUriElement similar to MediaElement. It does not require WMP. The downside is that it uses the D3DImage class, available only in .NET 3.5 SP1.