Media support in WPF without Windows Media Player 10+ ?

Question

I'm wondering if it is possible to deploy Windows Media Foundation without Windows media player 10 or 11?

Here's the context. I have a WPF application running in a corporate enterprise setting. WPF requires Windows Media Foundation for rich media support. Windows Media Foundation is distributed via 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 because I don't need the entire player infrastructure, just media foundation I'm wondering if there is a way to deploy just that component.

Answer 1

Media Foundation is a Vista only technology and from what I understand, is supposed to replace DirectShow in the future. The reason WPF needs WMP v10+ is because the milcore uses the WMP OCX internally. The WMP v10+ OCX features allow the milcore to use the Enhanced Video Renderer (EVR), which in turn uses a custom presenter to render directly to a D3D surface and ultimatly in WPF. In Vista, WMP will use the Media Foundation path over DirectShow if the media is supported (ie, WMV files).

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