Windows 10 To Feature Native Support For MKV and FLAC

jones_supa writes Windows Media Player is going to become a more useful media player for those who want to play geeky file formats. Microsoft has earlier confirmed that Windows 10 will come with native support for Matroska Video, but the company now talks about also adding FLAC support. Microsoft's Gabriel Aul posted a teaser screenshot in Twitter showing support for this particular format. It can be expected to arrive in a future update for people running the Windows 10 Technical Preview. Not many GUI changes seem to be happening around Media Player, but work is done under the hood.

Comments

VLC

[Anonymous Coward]

has been supporting these formats for how long?

Rather late

[Peter H.S.]

Not having FLAC and mkv support for a media player is simply insane. Those who cares at all for sound quality uses FLAC, even my tiny mp3 player support FLAC.

That MS "boycotted" FLAC for years because it doesn't support DRM and isn't a MS-patent trap, just hurt their desire to control all media consumption on MS-platforms; they forgot a "boycott" works both ways, and that people just used software like VLC that actually supported what people wanted.

Re:Rather late

[Peter H.S.]

Nope, I use high quality VBR MP3 for my music because a) it sounds great, b) it's supported on everything and c) it takes a lot less storage space. FLAC is for idiots who think they have superhuman hearing.

VBR mp3's are very good, but it isn't FLAC. You don't need superhuman hearing to hear the difference, especially very dynamic music sounds better in FLAC. Hearing the difference becomes easier the better your audio equipment is.

Re:Rather late

[Lunix Nutcase]

ABX testing shows otherwise. Even when done with professional audio engineers.

Re:Rather late

[Lord Apathy]

VBR mp3's are very good, but it isn't FLAC. You don't need superhuman hearing to hear the difference, especially very dynamic music sounds better in FLAC. Hearing the difference becomes easier the better your audio equipment is.

There is another reason to keep your master music source in lossless format. Future recoding. Mp3 are excellent for every day use. I honestly can't tell the difference between high quality mp3's and the original sources.

What people don't realize is that mp3's are on the way out. That is a close to 30 year old format. AAC is the rising star but like mp3 it is a lossy format. So what happens when mp3 is no longer supported? You recode them to the new format.

Recoding mp3 to aac really isn't that big a deal. I can't tell the difference between high quality mp3 to high quality aac recode. But what happens 4 or 5 generations down the road if you keep recoding with lossy formats? Your music sounds like shit eventually.

Flac allows you to keep a master backup in perfect condition to go back to with the recodes. And if your recoding for space on your master source that is bullshit. 3 TB harddrives are around a 150 bucks. That will store a life time of music even in flac format.

FLACs omission was strategic

[mrspoonsi]

Microsoft had an agenda to push Windows Media Audio Lossless, this has pretty much been abandoned now, hence the adoption of FLAC.

Apple are now in the same position, not including support for FLAC to push Apple Lossless on people.

Re:Great, now let's talk filesystems

[Richard_at_work]

Why should it have native support for ext2 or ext3?

Re:Geeky formats?

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, so it's great for foreign language things like anime, but for the movies that most people watch, it doesn't make a difference in the slightest.