No DVD Playback Support in Windows 8's Windows Media Player
Microsoft has just announced their plans for Windows Media Center, the company's full screen media interface. Windows Media Center includes tool to watch and record TV broadcasts, and options to watch videos, view photos and listen to music using the software. And thanks to plug-in support, Media Center users get also access to third party services like Netflix.
Media Center was included in many versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7, but things do not look this bright when it comes to Media Center support for Microsoft's upcoming operating system Windows 8.
According to a recent blog post at the official Building Windows 8 website, Windows Media Center will not be integrated into any version of Windows 8. Users do however have the option to purchase an upgrade, to add the functionality to their system.
Given the changing landscape, the cost of decoder licensing, and the importance of a straight forward edition plan, we’ve decided to make Windows Media Center available to Windows 8 customers via the Add Features to Windows 8 control panel (formerly known as Windows Anytime Upgrade). This ensures that customers who are interested in Media Center have a convenient way to get it. Windows Media Player will continue to be available in all editions, but without DVD playback support. For optical discs playback on new Windows 8 devices, we are going to rely on the many quality solutions on the market, which provide great experiences for both DVD and Blu-ray.
As you can see, Windows 8 Pro users need to acquire and install the Windows 8 Media Center Pack via the Add Features to Windows 8 dialog to add Media Center to their version of the operating system. Windows 8 (regular) users need to acquire the Windows 8 Pro Pack to do the same.
Microsoft did not comment yet on the pricing of the upgrade - which could be quite high especially for users who are running the standard version of Windows 8, as they would end up with Windows 8 Pro with Media Center included.
You may have noticed that Microsoft mentioned that Windows Media Player won't support DVD playback under Windows 8. It is also interesting to note that Media Player won't support DVD playback even if the system is upgraded to Windows 8 Pro with Media Center.
Reason
The core reason for this change in strategy are licensing fees that Microsoft has to pay to support features such as DVD playback in the operating system.
Closing Words
Making Windows Media Center a paid upgrade complicates matters significantly. Users who want the functionality first need to upgrade the operating system to do so. It will also be interesting to see if Microsoft will make the upgrade available to customers from all over the world, or limit the option to customers from select countries. If you look at the supported countries for the Anytime Upgrade under Windows 7, you will notice that only a handful of countries are supported by it.
Windows 7 users who upgrade to Windows 8 may lose functionality. They first may notice that Media Center is not included in the new operating system anymore, and second that Media Player can't play back DVDs anymore.
What's your take on the decision?
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Are these articles AI generated?
Now the duplicates are more obvious.
This is below AI generated crap. It is copy of Microsoft Help website article without any relevant supporting text. Anyway you can find this information on many pages.
Yes, but why post the exact same article under a different title twice on the same day (19 march 2023), by two different writers?
1.) Excel Keyboard Shortcuts by Trevor Monteiro.
2.) 70+ Excel Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows by Priyanka Monteiro
Why oh why?
Yeah. Tell me more about “Priyanka Monteiro”. I’m dying to know. Indian-Portuguese bot ?
Probably they will announce that the taskbar will be placed at top, right or left, at your will.
Special event by they is a special crap for us.
If it’s Microsoft, don’t buy it.
Better brands at better prices elsewhere.
All new articles have zero count comments. :S
WTF? So, If I add one photo to 5 albums, will it count 5x on my storage?
It does not make any sense… on google photos, we can add photo to multiple albums, and it does not generate any additional space usage
I have O365 until end of this year, mostly for onedrive and probably will jump into google one
Photo storage must be kept free because customers chose gadgets just for photos and photos only.
What a nonsense. Does it mean that albums are de facto folders with copies of our pictures?
Sounds exactly like the poor coding Microsoft is known for in non-critical areas i.e. non Windows Core/Office Core.
I imagine a manager gave an employee the task to create the album feature with hardly any time so they just copied the folder feature with some cosmetic changes.
And now that they discovered what poor management results in do they go back and do the album feature properly?
Nope, just charge the customer twice.
Sounds like a go-getter that needs to be promoted for increasing sales and managing underlings “efficiently”, said the next layer of middle management.
When will those comments get fixed? Was every editor here replaced by AI and no one even works on this site?
Instead of a software company, Microsoft is now a fraud company.
For me this is proof that Microsoft has a back-door option into all accounts in their cloud.
quote “…… as the MSA key allowed the hacker group access to virtually any cloud account at Microsoft…..”
unquote
so this MSA key which is available to MS officers can give access to all accounts in MS cloud.This is the backdoor that MS has into the cloud accounts. Lucky I never got any relevant files of mine in their (MS) cloud.
>”Now You: what is your theory?”
That someone handed an employee a briefcase full of cash and the employee allowed them access to all their accounts and systems.
Anything that requires 5-10 different coincidences to happen is highly unlikely. Occam’s razor.
Good reason to never login to your precious machine with a Microsoft a/c a.k.a. as the cloud.
The GAFAM are always very careless about our software automatically sending to them telemetry and crash dumps in our backs. It’s a reminder not to send them anything when it’s possible to opt out, and not to opt in, considering what they may contain. And there is irony in this carelessness biting them back, even if in that case they show that they are much more cautious when it’s their own data that is at stake.