Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/windows-11s-new-media-player-uses-35x-more-ram-charges-for-popular-video

72•tcp_handshaker•3h ago

Comments

megamike•2h ago

Is vlc still popular and widely used or is there a new 'kid' in town?

functionmouse•2h ago

mpv is really good but a little light on the GUI; I recommend VLC for most people

magicalhippo•1h ago

Well there's an old kid in town, MPC-HC is still being maintained[1] to the great joy for us who dislike the VLC UX.

[1]: https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc/

applfanboysbgon•1h ago

MPC is better if you're on Windows.

Mindless2112•1h ago

For media using common codecs, you could just drop it into Firefox.

AlienRobot•50m ago

PotPlayer is the new kid, I guess? Personally I don't like VLC because of the UI, so I've always used MPC.

herf•1h ago

HEVC used to be a capped license per organization, so not providing it in the OS seems really harmful and expensive. Has the cap changed recently?

t1234s•1h ago

M$ knows the laws will change in their favor requiring a gov ID to boot a computer. This is how they will get away with crap like this.

shaokind•1h ago

What? I can find at least one article from 2018 about HEVC being pay-walled? [0]

EDIT: Also, what do they mean by "new" Media Player? It shipped in 2022 [1]. This article is garbage. The source article [2] is fine.

[0]: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-now-charging-hevc-v...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Player_(2022)

[2]: https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/06/16/microsoft-reveals-w...

ftchd•1h ago

So it started sucking almost a decade ago, checks out in my experience

fuzzfactor•46m ago

The article mentions W11 24H2 but that might have been the only update the article had if it was first published much earlier. Might have even been an advance warning about AC-3 even before 24H2 was released.

Otherwise looks a bit deceptively like new findings just because the date at the top of the page says June 18, 2026 :\

somat•30m ago

Windows media player always sort of sucked. I remember when I discovered mplayer. What a breath of fresh air by comparison. ostensibly worse, with it's barely there user interface. But... all it did was play video, it would play anything, no more faffing about with installing codecs or different programs for different formats. No annoying ui that tried too hard to look like a piece of hi-fi gear.

I am not sure exactly what happened to it, it's maintainer moved on to other projects I imagine, it's current equivalent is probably mpv

XzetaU8•1h ago

A solution for AC-3 is to get Dolby Digital Plus decoder for PC OEMs from here:

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/dolby_ac_3ac_4_inst...

and then you recieve the latest update from windows store.

est31•1h ago

Removing HEVC support wasn't their choice but probably stems from the licensing pools increasing their prices [1].

Windows media player probably sees very little usage nowadays and probably even less for HEVC, when most content playback happens via streaming and browsers today.

As for the RAM increase, well that's probably a consequence of the general trend of doing frontend engineering via JS/TS instead of using OS native frontend APIs. The advantages are more on the development side of those apps, i.e. you can hire JS UI devs way more easily, and probably LLMs know way better how to deal with a react app than an UML one.

[1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/04/lawsuits-licensing-a...

cf100clunk•50m ago

HEVC is provided by the official, licensed h265 standard. The open source ~HEVC-compliant codec library is x265 created by VideoLAN but was apparently not an option for Microsoft.

cornstalks•44m ago

x265 is an encoder, not a decoder. Also, being open source doesn't matter here: an open source library, even with a patent grant, doesn't give you a license to someone else's patents.

pixelpoet•33m ago

> The advantages are more on the development side of those apps, i.e. you can hire JS UI devs way more easily

Ah yes, we don't want Microsoft to run out of JavaScript developers to keep improving their desktop operating system in this manner. More webdevs, that's what's going to fix what ails Windows!

queenkjuul•58m ago

HEVC has been a paid add-on for as long as windows 10 has been around, iirc.

Dropping AC3 does seem unnecessary.

IronWolve•52m ago

Do people still use the K-Lite Codec Pack so their players have all the codecs installed? Or just use vlc?

accrual•18m ago

I loved the K-Lite Codec Pack and CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack) back in the XP days, especially while exploring MKVs and anime, but I virtually never run into a media file that VLC or MPC-HC can't play by default these days. Just drop it in and it plays.

y-c-o-m-b•30m ago

I don't think I've ever voluntarily used their shitty media player since the classic version. MPC-BE (some folks use MPC-HC) is my goto with VLC as a backup if certain codecs don't play nice with it. I'm able to use nVidia super resolution with them as well.

orthoxerox•25m ago

I kinda have to hand it to Microsoft for dogfooding vibecoding with Copilot to such an extent. You can't say they encourage their customers to use a bad solution while doing something different in-house.

LollipopYakuza•1m ago

Didn't they just publicly make an apology for enshitting Windows over the last years, and committed to go back to building native app?

I understand that project might have started way before the public statement but it really doesn't look good from a PR standpoint.

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