I'd like to request a new feature for the next windows media player
that I know a lot of other people would also like. If another
application has a file locked (for write access for example), windows
mediaplayer should open the file in READ only mode or something
similar.

For playback it shouldnt need full write access, other programs can do
this and so could WMP.

So many times when downloading you want to preview what you have
downloaded before it is complete to make sure it is what you wanted to
download... you dont want to have to stop downloading or make a copy
of the partially downloaded file.

If the AVI file parser could also be made more robust so that it can
allow viewing of partially downloaded AVI files that would be great
too. Other programs can do it with existing codecs, if programmed
wisely so could WMP.