Windows 8 Loses DVD Support Discussion

[Greg]

Holy tangent, indeed . Just trying to establish a pattern of stupid moves, including removing DVD playback support. I've used W8 -- in my opinion it should be confined to tablets. It will never be on any PC I own or build for my family.

[Mr.Mischief]

Who uses Windows Media Player anyway? VLC Player FTW!

[Ichinenjuu]

Well, there goes re-watching Lost...

[Mitlov]

Well, there goes re-watching Lost...

As Mr. Mischief said, all you need to do is download VLC Media Player (which you need to do for certain formats of video files anyway) and you can watch DVDs on a Win 8 machine. It's not that the OS won't tolerate DVDs; it's that the preinstalled Microsoft apps won't play DVDs.

[Ichinenjuu]

Oh. Well, it's still a weird decision, though

Kinda like Apple's decision to "not support Flash" in Lion, but downloading it directly from Adobe will allow you to run Flash apps...

[invisible]

At this rate I see Microsoft adopting the modern games model... USB devices not functioning? No problem, that's a $4.99 upgrade for USB support. Wifi/bluetooth not working? Another $4.99. DVD playback not functioning? That's a $20 upgrade for the DVD Entertainment pack...

[Mitlov]

I wonder if we're only getting half the story right now. i.e., this functionality has been removed from Windows Media Player but Microsoft's "Woodstock" (the successor to Zune and a competitor to both iTunes and Spotify) will be able to play DVDs. That'll be an incentive for people to download and try out Woodstock.

[booboo12]

There's plenty of free programs, sure, but this is just one of a variety of bad decisions that Microsoft has made regarding Windows 8.

Did you know Windows Media Center is going to be a paid add-on now? In this day and age, when people are starting to cut cable and go with OTA HD and WMC to record, it screams of a money grab or at least an attempt to keep people paying for cable.

Not to mention the whole Metro UI thing. W8 is a tablet PC operating system, no more. There's so many inefficiencies in W8 from a desktop user's perspective it is astounding.

The amount of people "cutting the cord" is wayy smaller than you think. The (imo sad, these cable/fiber companies know they have people over a barrel...) fact is, many people arent willing to have a PC in their living room. The concept screams "complicated" and "bad idea." Same goes for OTA HD, and your still screwed out of many channels, etc.

Sure, there's CableCard, but try getting your cable/fiber company to install one. Many say its like pulling teeth and on top of it you lose some functionality that many have grown accustomed to like On-Demand.

Many are using stuff like Roku boxes and Smart TV/Blu-Ray players to "cord cut" and even then, people still keep a tv service subscription.

A puzzling omission, since it wouldn't cost MS anything to continue to support it. And a lot of people, myself included, have dozens or hundreds of DVD movies (particularly bargain-bin children's movies), and being able to have the kids watch a movie on the computer is convenient. That said, there are a ton of free downloads that can do the same thing, so it's not the end of the world.



Holy tangent Batman! Anyway, that's not remotely true. W8 is a desktop OS with a tablet-like graphical full-screen start menu.

It's not a cost-free decision. Microsoft has to pay for the licencing for the DVD decoder, ditto the PC vendor IIRC. It might be a small cost (i dunno for sure) but its a cost all the same.

People should remember that this isnt a new idea. DVD software was bundled with new PC's for years before MS built in support for DVD playback in some OEM versions of Vista and all versions of 7. Even then, PC makers continued to bundle this third-party stuff. I see no risk of that changing with Windows 8. A everyday person will pop in a DVD and it'll just work as intended.

Who uses Windows Media Player anyway? VLC Player FTW!

Windows Media Player isnt bad for DVD's. I prefer it actually especially to the bundled "Power DVD" stuff that comes on many machines.

I wonder if we're only getting half the story right now. i.e., this functionality has been removed from Windows Media Player but Microsoft's "Woodstock" (the successor to Zune and a competitor to both iTunes and Spotify) will be able to play DVDs. That'll be an incentive for people to download and try out Woodstock.

I honestly think that "DVD support" is "dead." If they dont want to pay the licencing fee here, why shift that cost to another product.

[baiii]

At this rate I see Microsoft adopting the modern games model... USB devices not functioning? No problem, that's a $4.99 upgrade for USB support. Wifi/bluetooth not working? Another $4.99. DVD playback not functioning? That's a $20 upgrade for the DVD Entertainment pack...

Any one anticipating the "MS store" or "MS play"?

defrag
chkdk
pagefile
start menu button
wireless zero

I see profit, free windows + MS store/play.

[invisible]

The only free windows I ever see happening is one that boots you up to a desktop background, no buttons, no anything.