Windows 8 Won't Play DVDs Unless You Pay For the Media Center Pack

An anonymous reader writes "You may already know that Microsoft plans to sell Windows Media Center as a separate, paid pack, but now the company has revealed that Windows 8 will also stop default support for DVD playback. You'll only be able to play DVDs and Blu-rays if you upgrade to the Media Center pack. 'Acquiring either the Windows 8 Media Center Pack or the Windows 8 Pro Pack gives you Media Center, including DVD playback (in Media Center, not in Media Player), broadcast TV recording and playback (DBV-T/S, ISDB-S/T, DMBH, and ATSC), and VOB file playback. Pricing for these Packs, as well as retail versions of Windows 8, will be announced closer to the release date. To give you some indication of Media Center Pack pricing, it will be in line with marginal costs.'" In a comment, Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky elaborates: "(marginal is small, honest, and we just haven't determined the final prices yet based on ongoing work but we are aiming for single digit dollars but we don't control the truly marginal costs). We wanted to include Media Player for everyone without everyone incurring the cost even if they don't even have an optical drive."

Comments

Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[crazyjj]

Now I've got to pay for every damned little thing in the OS too.

What's next, is there going to be an extra $5 charge every time I change the BIOS settings? A $2 charge by the firmware when I add RAM?

It's like government. No politician has the balls for raise taxes openly and directly, so instead you get a million nickel-and-dime fees and surtaxes to annoy the shit out of you at every turn.

Just raise the price of Windows if that's what you need to do, MS. I'd much rather a Windows license go from $100 to $120 than to have a window popping up at every turn saying I need to pay for some expansion pack if I want this-or-that little feature to work.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[Sigma 7]

How about $100 to get a C compiler, just so that you can write any program that isn't grindingly slow?

Get off my lawn.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[poet]

This is actually a very smart move. Microsoft has to pay DVD player manufacturers to allow you to play DVDs. Here is the thing.... in the next 18 months you won't see DVD players on most laptops. Heck mine doesn't even have a CDROM. Even my media center does't use DVDs, I just play an avi file or stream from netflix/amazon.

Further, you can always use VLC. This really isn't a big deal.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[_avs_007]

I don't think it's that they are trying to nickel and dime you. I think they were trying to reduce cost of the base OS, by not including the licensing fees for MPEG2.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[Anonymous Coward]

The licensing required to play DVDs or Bluray ain't free, and MS has to cover that cost per license of Windows. Including it, especially when a lot of devices lack optical drives anymore, is just a waste of money. I would expect any device sold that includes a DVD drive or Bluray drive to also include the necessary decoders to allow DVD/Bluray playback.

Note, this isn't new. Windows XP couldn't play DVDs out of the box either unless you bought a third-party decoder. Windows Vista/7 couldn't play DVDs unless you had an edition that included Media Center, such as Home Premium or Ultimate. The original XBox wouldn't play DVDs unless you bought a remote control which covered the cost of the license.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[betterunixthanunix]

Now I've got to pay for every damned little thing in the OS too.

Allow me to introduce you to some operating systems that do not have such a "feature:"

• http://www.fedoraproject.org/
• http://www.ubuntu.com/
• http://www.freebsd.org/
• http://www.debian.org/
• http://netbsd.org/
• http://www.minix3.org/
• http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html

...and there are many more. It is not as though there are no alternatives to Windows.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[Alioth]

Just download VLC already.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[xMrFishx]

Want Metro, pay for it

Oh no man, that shit so bad you get it for free...

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[surmak]

I don't think it's that they are trying to nickel and dime you. I think they were trying to reduce cost of the base OS, by not including the licensing fees for MPEG2.

If so, that may be a good thing if it exposes end users to the patent craziness that is screwing up the industry. As the best way to get rid of a bad law is to strictly enforce it, unbundling the MPEG licenses will annoy end users.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While Microsoft is certainly happy to nickle-and-dime for things over which they have control(Oh, you want us to flip the bit that allows you to bind to AD? $90 please.) DVD playback is arguably in a different category.

Thanks to the wonders of the DMCA, and possibly a raft of not-yet-expired MPEG-LA patents, it still costs money to legally ship a DVD decoder in the US, despite the fact that implementations of deCSS and MPEG2 are seriously old news.

Especially for the driveless consumer machines and the business masses, forking over a per-copy fee to the DVD cartel just doesn't make any sense for either MS or their customers...

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[Ralish]

Um, Microsoft makes its C/C++ compiler available for free, along with the Windows SDK. You're probably thinking of Visual Studio, but Microsoft makes a basic version for C/C++ free as Visual C++ Express; effectively, a basic Visual Studio edition purely for C/C++ coding without the enterprise features. If you need those features, you're probably doing more than hobbyist development/basic development.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[Opportunist]

Sadly, I'm pretty sure they reduct the cost but not the price. So why exactly should I rejoice? I don't own MS stock.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[ByOhTek]

You can get Visual Studio Express with it's C compiler, for free.
You can get GCC through either MinGW or Cygwin for free.

Why would you want to pay $100? If you really want, you can give me $100 and I'll send you any of these on a CD...

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[Zero__Kelvin]

"I don't think it's that they are trying to nickel and dime you."

Of course not. It's M$. They are trying to Ten and Twenty you.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[ByOhTek]

I suspect most manufacturers will do what they do now.

Provide you with their own player.

Really, this only affects people who install their own copies of Windows.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[cpu6502]

>>> their win media player (sigh) is still the best 'free' solution for judder and jitter free playback

Really? I've always found VLC to be better. MS-WMP won't even play mkv files.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[jonwil]

There are plenty of ways to get a C/C++ compiler for Windows that you dont need to pay for.
You can download the Visual C++ Express Edition IDE which includes the same compiler as in the paid version (including all the optimization switches and stuff)
You can download various Microsoft SDKs that include the C/C++ compiler
Or if you dont like the Microsoft compiler, there is OpenWatcom, the free version of the Borland compiler and of course various GCC ports. And there are probably others I haven't listed.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[ghostdoc]

VLC is unaffected. Buy any version of Windows you like, download VLC in 1 minute, watch all the DVD's you want.

So once again, one division of Microsoft is crippling the marketability of another department's software.

This is how vast monopolistic empires die, not from outside, but from inside.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[larry bagina]

And it's an even better move if a patent troll comes along. (Like Motorola demanding H.264 rates based on the full price of the computer, hardware and software). Revenue isn't $200 for the full copy of windows, it's $5 or $10 for the Media Center Pack.

I can't be the only one that remembers when Windows didn't have mp3 support because they didn't want to pay the royalties.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[Overly Critical Guy]

No, you won't have to pay for "every damned little thing in the OS". Windows 8 is targeted at tablets and PCs without optical drives, which are increasingly common because movies are in digital download formats today, so it makes sense to not have to include that functionality in the shipping OS. You're not going to be paying for every little feature, and there won't be a window popping up telling you that you need to pay for expansion packs--you're falling for the baiting headline hook, line, and sinker.

Slippery slope arguments are almost always bogus because you can turn practically anything into a "what's next" statement that exaggerates the original situation and makes it seem worse than it actually is.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[slew]

Noting the "get-of-my-lawn" comment, perhaps the OP was thinking about Solaris.

A long time ago (>10 years), Sun (now Oracle) unbundled the C-compiler from the standard Solaris 2.x package and they started charging extra for their Ansi C-compiler (and it might have been $100 come to think about it)... The theory was that you didn't need the compiler if you were just using Solaris for a workstation running pre-compiled apps (there was an old BSD cc around to recompile the kernel, but it was K&R only), but if you were a Wall-street Quant, you had the money to pay extra for the privilage of writing your own code so they were gonna charge you for the privlage. Of couse the pre-compiled GCC binaries worked just fine on Solaris, so it didn't bother most folks who were tinkering with their own code.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[Endo13]

Additionally, it sounds like they're cutting out the DVD functionality to save the royalty costs, AND that they plan to pass those savings on to customers. Whether that will actually be the case in reality remains to be seen. I'm not a Microsoft fan, but if that is what they end up doing, I have to give them kudos for that.

For myself, I won't miss DVD playback. My home PCs don't even have optical drives installed. I have a USB DVD drive, which I've used probably less than 5 times in the past year, and only once or twice for DVDs.

But besides all that, as you pointed out, there's plenty of free software players out there now. I prefer VLC over Media Center anyway.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[Ralish]

You can code multithreaded applications with Visual C++ Express, and you can develop 64-bit applications with Visual C++ Express. So, you're a troll, ignorant, or both. You are correct that profiling requires a (seriously expensive) Visual Studio edition, but profiling is an advanced compiler feature, not a "I need this to develop useful stuff" feature. I do think it would be nice if it weren't locked away in an expensive VS edition, but, it's hardly something you need to code your apps.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Here is the thing.... in the next 18 months you won't see DVD players on most laptops.

Correction:

In the next 18 months Microsoft will strongarm OEM's into omitting the DVD drives on most laptops.

It'll be just like in the mid 1990's when Compaq switched the CD drives in their servers from SCSI models to IDE models because Microsoft told them to. And it'll be just like in the late 2000's when Microsoft started forcing netbook manufacturers to lard up the specs on the previously cheap devices because they needed just enough horsepower to run Windows XP.

Microsoft still has feet over the necks of all major OEM's. Until this problem is corrected, they will still call the shots.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[realityimpaired]

MS-WMP won't even play mkv files.

In Windows 7 it will. It'll open the container, and if needed, it can go off to the Internet to download the codec. It has no problem at all with the h.264 MKV DVD rips I've been making.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[Sir_Sri]

Back then it didn't. Legally playing DVD's required (requires?) a licencing arrangement so they didn't do it, windows vista and 7 I think both support dvd playback, but the price for that is baked into the purchase assuming they have to pay at all.

The interesting tidbit here is the blu ray playback. Which right now requires you buy any of a slew of fairly expensive players (software), unless one comes with your drive, but the one with your drive may not play new discs etc. etc. etc. VLC I think has a blu ray player mode, but it doesn't work with all disks. If MS is able to pull this off it's not a bad plan.

Also, they may be decoupling the bundle because of anti trust concerns. The people who sell blu ray software especially would (probably rightly) accuse microsoft of using their monopoly to put them out of business (which would be good for humanity in this case).

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[ocdude]

if it takes Linux 4hrs longer to install vs. windows, its' not cost effective.

Dude, you're doing it wrong.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[GameboyRMH]

VLC has had Blu-Ray playback since v2.0

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[93 Escort Wagon]

No one really knows what a full MacOS X license costs, because Apple has never sold one.

I take it you've only been paying attention the last couple of years...

As recently as 10.5 you could buy Leopard for $129 retail, or roughly $60 if you were an education customer. The "Family Pack" install was $199. This was the model on the previous iterations as well.

Snow Leopard (10.6) was upgrade-only (and $29) IIRC; although the disk didn't seem to actually check for a previous installation.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[Barefoot Monkey]

Me too. In fact, I find it rare to come across a video that does work with WMP. Also, region locking makes WMP more-or-less useless for playing DVDs. Region-locked players actually aren't even legal here, and for good reason - a DVD player that refuses to play most DVD isn't fit for the purpose for which it was sold.

I'm not upset with this news. If Windows 8 comes with less bundled media software then I consider it an improvement.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[Anonymous Coward]

Strong arm? How many tablets will have a DVD drive? How many phones? Ultrabooks?

Windows 8 isn't just for PCs. If they can remove the cost for devices that don't need, then how is that bad for the consumer?

Or do you think that all windows 8 machines, including your cell phone and tablet, should have the included cost of DVD royalties in them?

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[KingMotley]

As recently as 10.5 you could buy an upgrade to Leopard for $129, or roughly $60 if you were an education customer. The "Family Pack" upgrade was $199. This was the model on the previous iterations as well.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[damnbunni]

$100 isn't too bad. NeXTStep 3.3 and up were $800 for the OS, and $5000 for the compiler.

And without the $5000 compiler you couldn't use GCC, because the header files came with the compiler package.

Pain in the butt.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[sdnoob]

If they can remove the cost for devices that don't need, then how is that bad for the consumer?

consumers won't ever see the "savings"

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[Penguinisto]

It takes around 25 minutes to install Ubuntu and grab libdvdcss, and w/ 12.04, one round of downloads to patch it to a current state.

It takes around 1 hour to install Windows 7 on the same hardware, and around 6-8 separate and massive downloads (one weighed in at over 500MB) and 4-6 reboots over the next couple of days to get all the updates.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[marcosdumay]

If you look at how much time it takes to install Linux compared to Windows and reinstall everytime there's an update, you are really not truly saving any money.

Are you just missinformed, right? You are repeating MS's propaganda just because it is the only thing you ever readed, right?

The point is, you don't reinstall Linux. When a new version comes out, you upgrade (that means, you log as root and type aptitude dist-upgrade, or whatever applies to your distro - I know, Windows users have a differenet meaning for the word "upgrade"), when you change your hardware, you simply put your disk on the new machine, when you replace your disk, you simply copy the contents to the new disk.

I can think about 2 exceptions. When Linux switched to 2.6 a few distros didn't upgrade clearly, and when people started to adopt 64 bit distros it was easier to reinstall than to switch everything. Compare that with Windows, that still self destructs after a few months.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[Mitsoid]

I'm no fan of MS, but if this means they shave $5 off their OEM versions cost, Great... I don't even use MS's media player so saves me money hopefully.. Can always download DVD software later

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[houghi]

I read this as "Dammed if they do. Damned if they don't.".
If they give it away for free, they strangle the competition, because they are selfish bastards..
If they are asking for money, they are selfish bastards.

If this is dying of the monopolistic part of the company, I am all for it.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[futuresheep]

It's rather incomplete though, it doesn't support Blu-Ray menus or either of the HD-Audio codecs. You're also dependent on their admittedly incomplete AACS database, or software like Anydvd to play encrypted discs.

Re:Bad enough I pay for microtransactions in MMO's

[atlasdropperofworlds]

MS is a company in the US. They have to pay MPEG-LA for licenses for things like their h.264 decoder, DVD/Blu-Ray decoder stacks. They can't avoid it. GNU/Linux can, because it's an international effort, and US organizations like MPEG-LA can't do anything outside of the USA - not for lack of trying. MS is within their reach, so MS has to comply with their pricing. Google is in the same boat with Chome.

If you run Linux, then technically YOU are on the hook to get the licenses required if you pull down the av decoders. Ubuntu, for example, isn't packaged with everything you need to play encrypted DVDs or Blu-Rays, but those things are easily added. If you live in the US, just be aware that MPEG-LA could sue you if they find out.

The way the market has gone

[Overly Critical Guy]

The headline is trying to incite a backlash, but this is a reflection of the decline of optical drives and the rise of tablets. Apple has also gone down this path by not including optical drives in the MacBook Air. I don't find myself that concerned since it's literally been years since I watched a DVD, and all my movies are digital.

Presumably, the expense that was previously included in the cost of Windows will not be in Windows 8. I say "presumably" because I'm sure Windows 8 will still inexplicably cost over $100 or whatever.

Re:The way the market has gone

[gl4ss]

it would still be nice to view dvd .iso's ;)

ah well just download vlc. media player is a piece of shit anyways.. and the marginal costs are the license costs.

Re:The way the market has gone

[swx2]

Yeah this is really true. I was just thinking about when was the last time I actually watched a DVD movie on my computer... and realized... i don't remember. Netflix/youtube/torrented stuff has basically replaced DVDs for all intents and purposes. While initially this move by MS sounded a little annoying, it's actually pretty reasonable.

Re:The way the market has gone

[tftp]

Install from USB? I've seen some Linux distros that might be able to accomplish that, but they're not for the novice.

Ability to boot from a USB mass storage device is in about 100% of modern BIOSes. It is not any different from booting from an internal DVD drive.

And I bet they'll pass those savings on!

[Ndkchk]

I'm sure that Microsoft will be generous and actually pass on these savings to the consumer, right? I mean, they wouldn't just cut out a feature to save some money and then keep that money for themselves, would they?

Three Letters

[Anonymous Coward]

VLC

Re:Three Letters

[Anonymous Coward]

2 letters: No.

VLC is a shadow of a once good product.
Media Player Classic for a not-butchered, not awful interface experience.

Re:Three Letters

[lister king of smeg]

how is it a shadow of a good product? it still plays everything. on any system or os i want. it is still portable. it is still small and it is still portable. what has changed? is it the experimental free bluray support? the interface looks the same as always to me. it is still skinable right? it still has a customisable interface right? so what is wrong with it? (other than lack of android support)

CCCP

[Deathnerd]

If I have to upgrade to Windows 8 (which I don't plan on doing), then I'll just wait until there's a suitable version of the Combined Community Codec Pack for Win8. Really, paying for media playback is just lame.

Re:CCCP

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

In Soviet Russia...

Incorrect article.

[Haxagon]

The OS won't play DVDs in Media Center-- because it's not included. MS said that they were confident that the PC DVD-playing software market was sufficiently full.
Windows 8 will still play DVDs with third-party-software. There's no reason to have such an inflammatory article.

XBMC FTW

[dmacleod808]

On top of all the VLC comments above... if you want a *Free* media center alternative... XBMC is the way to go.

bundling

[bigdavex]

If Microsoft bundles software, that's bad.
If Microsoft doesn't bundle software, that bad.

Is everything Microsoft does wrong by definition?

Who's paying for Windows anyway?

[InvisibleClergy]

I know that in general, Windows comes subsidized on computers, and you can bet your ass that manufacturers aren't going to put non-media-enabled versions on there. If the DVD drive doesn't work right, the people who sold the computer are going to get the flak, not the guys who made the mysterious "Operating-System".

The people who will pay for this are the companies who do volume licensing, as usual.

Good. Keep reducing the flow of money to MPEGLA

[westyvw]

I really dislike Microsoft, I have no need for windows anything, but I dislike MPEGLA even more. As far as I am concerned, its good news that they will no longer be recieving license fees automatically from Microsoft.

Re:What the heck, is this the 1980's again?

[dexomn]

Somewhere PowerDVD is wringing it's hands and cackling madly in it's secret lair.

Re:Not really an issue...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The one thing that was an issue, with XP's omission of DVD playback, was that so many of the 3rd party solutions shipped by OEMs were Absolutely. Fucking. Dire.

Dell, for one, had the unfortunate tendency to ship 'PowerDVD', which was abhorrently broken in virtually every way and(despite theoretically providing a supported DVD decoder for WMP) frequently managed to munge the system to the point where neither its own interface nor WMP's could handle DVD playback.

It would have been very polite of them to offer a separately licensed 'unobtrusive bundle of the directshow components you need to play DVDs', so that a little less shitware would have been shipped...

That's why the good lord invented freeware...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Or in other words, frack Windows Media Center...

Old joke. An interviewer asks a potential new programmer a question, "If you could be any piece of software, which would you be?"
"Windows Media Player, " the interviewee responds, "I like to be left alone."

I'm usually quick to criticize Microsoft...

[Benfea]

...but in this instance, they're making the right decision.

Long ago, Microsoft would drive entire markets out of business with a particular tactic. Every time some innovative software developer produced something new and useful enough to create a whole new market (or sub-market or whatever you want to call it), Microsoft would barge in, create a similar product, and offer it for free with their operating system.

Countless innovative software companies were driven out of business this way. Whole markets dried up and blew away. I and many others lambasted Microsoft for stifling innovation in the software market by doing this, and I still think those complaints against Microsoft were valid. So now people are whining at Microsoft for doing precisely the opposite? Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

So you'll have to take the extra step of installing a free piece of software to perform the same function, a function that is becoming increasingly irrelevant in this new world of digital streaming. You'll survive.

I find it highly ironic that you are whining about not getting something for free given the rightist drivel in your sig.