The various components of DirectX are in the form of COM-compliant objects.
The components comprising DirectX are
* DirectX Graphics, comprising two APIs (DirectX 8.0 onwards):
o DirectDraw: for drawing 2D Graphics (raster graphics) (now mostly deprecated, although still in use by many)
o Direct3D (D3D): for drawing 3D graphics
* DirectInput: used to process data from a keyboard, mouse, joystick, or other game controllers
* DirectPlay: for networked communication of games
* DirectSound: for the playback and recording of waveform sound
o DirectSound3D (DS3D): for the playback of 3D sounds.
* DirectMusic: for playback of soundtracks authored in DirectMusic Producer
* DirectSetup: for the installation of DirectX components, not really an API
* DirectX Media: comprising DirectAnimation, DirectShow, DirectX Video Acceleration, Direct3D Retained Mode and DirectX Transform for animation, multimedia playback & streaming applications, 3D, and interactivity respectively
* DirectX Media Objects: support for streaming objects such as encoders, decoder and effects
For Windows Vista and DirectX 10, DirectInput will be deprecated in favor of XInput, from the Xbox team. Likewise, DirectSound will also be deprecated in favor of XACT. As of DirectX 9.0c, however, neither XInput nor XACT have all of the capabilities of DirectInput or DirectSound, and according to MS documentation on XInput, XInput is specifically designed for the Xbox 360 controllers. DirectPlay is deprecated in favor of Xbox Live whereas DirectShow will be deprecated in favor of Media Foundation, a different set of APIs debuting with Windows Vista to handle audio and video playback. DirectMusic will probably remain the only component intact.