Your application identifies an MCI device by specifying an MCI device type. A device type indicates the physical type of device. The following table lists the MCI device types you can use.
| Device Type | Description |
| cdaudio | CD audio player |
| dat | Digital audio tape player |
| digitalvideo | Digital video in a window (not GDI based) |
| mmmovie | Multimedia Movie Player |
| other | Undefined MCI device |
| overlay | Overlay device (analog video in a window) |
| scanner | Image scanner |
| sequencer | MIDI sequencer |
| vcr | Videotape recorder or player |
| videodisc | Videodisc player |
| waveaudio | Audio device that plays digitized waveform files |
The system software includes device drivers for the device types that are fundamental to many multimedia presentations. The system software includes the following MCI device drivers:
| Device Type | Device Driver | Description |
| cdaudio | MCICDA.DRV | An MCI device driver for playing compact disc audio. |
| mmmovie | MCIMMP.DRV | An MCI device driver for playing Multimedia Movie files. |
| sequencer | MCISEQ.DRV | An MCI device driver for playing MIDI audio. |
| videodisc | MCIPIONR.DRV | An MCI device driver for playing the Pioneer LD-V4200 videodisc player. |
| waveaudio | MCIWAVE.DRV | An MCI device driver for playing and recording waveform audio. |
The [mci] section of the SYSTEM.INI file contains a list of the installed device types. If you have a particular device type installed more than once, the device-type names used in the SYSTEM.INI file will have integers appended to them. These integers create unique names for each MCI device-type entry. For example, if you installed two occurrences of the “cdaudio” device-type, their unique names would be “cdaudio” and “cdaudio1”.
MCI classifies device drivers as compound and simple. Compound device
drivers use a device element—a media element associated with a device—
during operation. For most compound drivers, the device element is the source
or destination data file. For file elements, the element name refers to a file and
its path.
Simple device drivers don't require a device element for playback. Compact disc audio is an example of a simple device driver.