gHacks technology news » windows 7 video http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:31:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Windows 7 Codec Package http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/20/windows-7-codec-package/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/20/windows-7-codec-package/#comments Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:41:16 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=10018 Not everyone is a friend of so called codec packages which basically consist of a collection of audio and video codecs that get batch installed on a computer system. The main point of criticism is that a lot of useless – in other words never used – codecs are installed on the system along with some that are used regularly. The user loses some hard drive space at best or will experience compatibility problems at worst.

Microsoft has changed their stance on providing additional codecs with an operating system in Windows 7. Windows 7 will ship with a few codecs preinstalled (Divx, H.264) which is great but not enough to play all multimedia files.

The Windows 7 Codec package has been created by the same author who publishes the Windows Vista Codec Package. It will automatically install a number of missing codecs in Windows 7 and uninstall several other codec packages that might be installed on the computer system to avoid compatibility issues.

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There are obviously two alternatives to installing a codec package on a computer system. The first is to install codecs only if they are needed to playback a multimedia file. The other to install a software player that comes with binary codecs that can play virtually any file without having to be installed on the computer system at all. The SMPlayer comes to mind that can play virtually any multimedia files out of the box.

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