Windows 8 won't play DVD's from the Get-Go

[Adrian2040]

Users will either have to pay to upgrade to the ‘Media Center’ or download extra, third-party software if they do want to play films.

Microsoft had previously announced that, unlike Windows 7, Windows 8 will not come packaged with the Media Center software as standard.
The official Building Windows 8 blog, justifies the move by claiming that television and DVD use on computers is "in sharp decline". It claims that Microsoft would have to spend "a significant amount in royalties" to offer support for optical media in future software.

Support for online media, however, will be included in Windows 8 including industry standards such as H.264, VC-1, MP4, AAC, WMA, MP3, PCM and Dolby Digital Plus codecs.

New ‘ultrabook’ computers, which Intel and Microsoft see as increasingly driving the adoption of Windows 8, do not have DVD drives built in, and connecting external drives is becoming rare. Windows 8 will also run on tablets, which again do not have DVD drives.

The Media Center also offers TV recording and access to some video-on-demand services. Microsoft says the cost will be “marginal”.
Data indicates, however, that only 6 per cent of Windows 7 users ever used Media Center.

Bernardo Caldas wrote that “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.”

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/9246493/Windows-8-wont-play-DVDs.html

[Loken]

Sharp decline? People use their computers for that stuff all the time. Like constantly! Maybe they mean on their devices. You know the mobile revolution that microsoft has always had a hard time getting into.

[blayze16]

I've heard in some sources that Microsoft will offer DVD playback as a paid add-on (like DLC) FOR THE PRO VERSION. It doesn't make a lot of sense since Win 8 Pro is usually for businesses and the like. What I'm not clear about is what this really means, will WMP not play DVDs? I think a good alternative for this would be CyberLink PowerDVD.

As for Windows Media Center, for me, it's just a glorified WMP, since I'm on a laptop. And even then, I tend to use VAIO Media Plus, if only for the XMB interface.

[SketchMan3]

LOL, they're just trying to get back at people who download movies online, by targeting the wrong people, lol.

And taking another page out of the "Linux"/Ubuntu/Open source software book, apparently, haha. UR DOING IT WRONG, Microsoft.

[Deleted]

Now, this doesn't make sense at all. They are basically punishing PC owners that only have the PC's DVD player while those who illegally get movies, etc. simply get them via downloading from the internet.

[Mikéy]

VLC Player Download

End of problem, end of thread. :09:

[Fatman X. Jones]

Jun 8, 2012 12:42:14 GMT -5 Mikéy said:

Combined Community Codec Pack Homepage

End of problem, end of thread. :09:

Fixed that for ya, good buddy. You shouldn't use VLC if you want the best. VLC's notorious for its habit of having graphical errors like bad interlacing in the video compared to other, more advanced playback methods. It's primarily because of the shoddily-developed internal decoder in VLC. I suggest using the Combined Community Codec pack instead.

[Pitch]

What Mikey and Fatman said.

The fact that the machine doesn't ship with the right codecs— software —to play DVDs is so trivial, it baffles me that they even bother to mention it. (_{SPOILER;It baffles me only slightly less than it baffles me that someone would post a topic about this, especially with no opinion or insight whatsoever to accompany it.}) Out-of-the-box software on Windows machines sucks anyway. It costs them money to include those codecs and people barely even use their software anyway. If anything, this is a good thing for Microsoft, because they're letting the third parties handle DVD playback now.

And as they mentioned in the article, some of those machines don't even have CD/DVD drives. I'm posting from a netbook that doesn't have one, myself. What's the point of paying to have these codecs on machines that can't even play DVDs without an external hook-up? (Does anyone own an external DVD drive? I have an old external CD burner (CD, not DVD), but that's all.)

[blayze16]

Like I've said, this is the opening Cyberlink needs to profit from DVD playback, since I've learned that installing a program that windows already does "great" is just redundant (note the word "great").

How exactly do you feel about this news, adrian? Oh wait...

[Devillock]

I honestly keep forgetting that there's going to be a Windows 8 edition. Since it's aim is towards the tablets, It will fail the PC. After almost a decade of patching, XP still contains tons of issues, both visually and the core. I have the preview edition lying around, but I'm most definitely not going to bother with it. Vista was a total disaster, 7 was somewhat of an improvement over Vista, but still quite troublesome. The only thing Windows is good in (In my opinion) is just for playing video games.