Windows 7 Media Center is a great improvement from its previous versions (Windows Media Center Edition 2005 and Windows Vista Media Center) . One of the many new improvements is that now we have a variety of different codecs built-in, allowing us to play all kinds of video, music and picture file types in our computer. So, before going online searching for codec packs and maybe end-up installing something that we don’t really need. It would be nice to review which are the file types supported in Windows 7 Media Center first.

Here is the list of video file types that are supported in Media Center:

Video file types of file formatsFile extensions
Windows Media Files.wm .wmv .asf
AVCHD files (including Dolby Digital).m2ts .m2t
Apple QuickTime files.mov .qt
AVI files.avi
Windows Recorded TV show files.wtv .dvr-ms
MPEG-4 movie files.mp4 .mov .m4v
MPEG-2 movie files.mpeg .mgp .mpe .m1v .mp2 .mpv2 .mod .vob
MPEG-1 movie files.m1v
Motion JPEG files.avi .mov

Note: Some video file format might not be supported when you try to access them with Media Center Extender.

Here is the list of music file types that are supported in Media Center:

Music file types or file formatsFile extensions
Windows Media Audio files.asx .wm .wma .wmx
Windows audio files.wav
MP3 audio files.mp3 .m3u
AAC files.aac

Here is the list of picture file types that are supported in Media Center:

Picture file types or file formatsFile extensions
JPEG files.jpg .jpeg
JPEG XR files.hdp .wpd
TIFF files.tif .tiff
RAW files.raw
GIF.gif
Bitmap files.bmp
PNG files.png

Note: Animation on GIF files are not supported.

Which file types are supported in Windows 7 Media Center - 1