Windows Mobile 6.5 Native Playlist Formats

Windows Mobile 6.5 relied on Windows Media Player Mobile 10 to handle native multimedia management and playback. This article outlines the specific playlist file formats that Windows Mobile 6.5 could parse natively without the installation of third-party media players or external codec packs, along with how these formats operated within the system.

Windows Media Player Playlist (.wpl)

The .wpl format is an XML-based playlist format proprietary to Microsoft, originally introduced with Windows Media Player 9 Series. In Windows Mobile 6.5, .wpl served as the primary native playlist structure when synchronizing media libraries from a desktop PC using the Windows Mobile Device Center (or ActiveSync on older hosts). The mobile player parsed the XML elements inside the file to map local file paths and metadata attributes directly into the device's internal media library cache.

Advanced Stream Redirector (.asx)

The .asx format is another XML-based metafile designed to store playlists of Windows Media audio and video files. While frequently utilized for directing the media player to network streams and RTSP/HTTP endpoints, Windows Mobile 6.5 also parsed .asx files stored locally on internal memory or microSD storage. It allowed the player to queue multiple sequential tracks and video files.

Windows Media Audio/Video Redirectors (.wax and .wvx)

Closely related to the .asx format, .wax (Windows Media Audio Shortcut) and .wvx (Windows Media Video Shortcut) were specialized metafiles parsed natively by Windows Media Player Mobile.

• .wax: Specifically held queues of Windows Media Audio (.wma) files.
• .wvx: Held queues targeting Windows Media Video (.wmv) files.

Both formats used the same underlying syntax as .asx files and were recognized immediately by the operating system’s media scanner.

Moving Picture Experts Group Playlist (.m3u)

Windows Mobile 6.5 natively parsed standard .m3u playlists. As a plain-text format, an .m3u file consists of a list of file paths (either relative to the playlist location or absolute file system paths like \Storage Card\Music\track.mp3). Windows Media Player Mobile could parse both standard ASCII .m3u files and basic extended directives (such as #EXTINF metadata tags), allowing users to transfer simple text-based playlists created on non-Windows platforms directly to the device.