Media Control Interface (MCI) is the traditional multimedia technology developed by MicroSoft and IBM (I think) and it's available for all Windows platforms. MCI is normally used for playback of wav, mid and avi files, but there are a dozen or so extensions for virtualy all media file formats and devices. Such extensions are for instances XingMPEG Driver (MPEG audio and video), SoftPEG (MPEG video) and AutoDesk Animation Player (fli video). Even DirectShow (or ActiveMovie) can be used as MCI driver.
On the ?/About/Devices page you can see which MCI device drivers are currently installed.
Some devices (for instance Video for Windows) have a configuration dialog, which shows up when you double-click on the driver name.