In what way do you have to fight WMP? You can set the default player by file type (and all video players give you the option to make their program the default). Plus you can go into "Turn Windows features on or off" and remove Windows Media Player completely in standard Windows 7.
Well, I'm not the person you are replying to, but I installed the N version of Windows 7, and everything was cool and froody. I installed my favourite mp3 player, foobar2000, and all was well. Then I needed to get a Windows Performance Index for my PC, and for that I needed to install WMP. And, crazily, I lost the context menus in Explorer for "Play in foobar2000" and "Enqueue in foobar2000." After trying many registry tweaks I researched, I uninstalled WMP and got my menus back. I suspect that's the kind of fighting that the person you are replying to experienced.
I think I only got the full Aero UI experience once I'd installed WMP and calculated my WPI, but I might be wrong on that front.