Ubuntu will soon play Windows Media files (WMV9)

A Norwegian programmer called Jon Johansen, also knows as DVD Jon, has developed a tool for removing some encoding surrounding the Windows Media Player, in order to give open-source media players a chance to access the streams.
Therefore it will soon be possible to play Windows Media (WMV9) files with the VideoLAN Client (VLC). Here's a
instruction for compiling VLC with VC-1 (WMV9) support (especially for Ubuntu Breezy) by Jon Johansen. For further information check the ZDnet news site.