Windows Media Lite

An installation of Windows can be customized so you can only deploy those components that you use the most. However, you might later on realize some features are required for specific operations, and this is where specialized applications like Windows Media Lite come in handy, to quickly bring back a few multimedia components you could have ignored.

Little effort required on your behalf

Although the name might trick you into believing it’s a feature pack specially dedicated to Windows Media Player, it’s not. However, the package does include various components that enhance the playback functionality of the media player bundled in Windows.
The good thing is your effort only consists of pressing a few Next buttons, in case you don’t want to spend some time looking through what is deployed. There’s no activity you’re required to perform after setup is finished, since components inside the installer are merely missing pieces of Windows.
Windows Media Lite was specifically designed to help you quickly install some components that might have been left out in an unattended Windows installation process. There’s a high chance that this can happen, since this specific type of operating system deployment lets you specify components and other options that prompt you during setup, which are easy to overlook.

Custom selection of components to install

At some point during the wizard-guided setup of the application, you’re facing a list of components, as well as a drop-down menu. This last element is merely a faster way of group-selection, with options for codecs only, codecs and WMF Runtimes, or manual selection.
The choices at your disposal let you install DirectShow, DMO, and VCM filters for Windows Media codecs, WMFP ActiveX control, WMP core components and IE plugin, Windows Media Format runtimes, Audio codecs, as well as Windows Media plugin for Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape/Opera.
Disk space or resource consumption aren’t normally a concern, because no additional services or processes are started after setup. However, the package hasn’t been updated in quite some time, and recent Windows iterations can automatically deploy these components, but no harm is done to the computer if installed anyway.

To sum it up

All in all, Windows Media Lite wants to help you out by quickly deploying a set of multimedia utilities you might have overlooked in an unattended setup of Windows. Bundled components are sure to bring a bit more comfort to multimedia experience, but with the lack of recent updates, practicality slowly loses ground.