I'm aware there are many open source multimedia tools that will play most audio and video formats on Linux these days but many people have come to like Windows Media player over the years. And while Xine and Mplayer will play most .WMV .WMA files, both of these players use Windows codecs that are copied into your /usr/lib/win32 directory. So if your currently happy using the closed source Windows Media codecs why not use the player as well.

link: howto install Windows Media Player 9 & 10 in Wine.

Hmmm...

I wonder what Mr. Bill thinks when a copy of WMP running in Wine calls home (as it always tries to do when you run it on XP)

Why not use the player? WHY use the player?!? Just because you need to use the codecs doesn't mean you also have to subject yourself to the MS bloat'n'spyware that usually goes with it.

And in fact, between xine, mplayer, gstreamer and videolan, I've found that I can play *just about* everything I've run across without even using the win32codecs (which don't work on 64bit systems anyway). The only exception I've personally come across were some really old vivo player files. But even the vast majority of regular .wmv files will play in one player or another (vlc tends to do the best job on those).

The remaining few that don't work I'll just have to learn to live without, or convert into playable files on a machine that can handle them, like I did with the .viv videos I mentioned.