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...

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

and then you recieve the latest update from windows store.

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...

Dropping AC3 does seem unnecessary.

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

Running MS Windows these days is like having a "kick me, hard" sign on your back. Or, you're treated like a money and data piñata.

even 103MB sound like a lot for doing nothing

As a part of the user-mode half of the GPU driver, GPU vendors ship media foundation transform DLLs to use HEVC hardware codecs. Don’t AMD, Intel and nVidia already pay patent royalties? I expect them to include into price of the GPUs with hardware support i.e. all of them made in the last decade.

Don't get me wrong, I totally understand the barrier of friction that native presents compared to html/js, but that barrier has lowered so much with the advent of agentic development. It just feels like things weren't thought out.