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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.
has been supporting these formats for how long?
I could see why FLAC would be considered a geeky format, but MKV? It's pretty common, is it not?
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Oh wait....
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.
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.
Has anyone else noticed how much nicer Microsoft has been getting (with respect to supporting open standards) now that their market share is dropping? Smells like hypocrisy to me (I say that, but of course I want native support for these formats).
MKV and FLAC are not "geeky". MKV is simply a superior container format for video. Xvid has been on the way out for awhile now, and FLAC is necessary for people that truly care about audio quality, so it's more of an audiophile format. It could be said those people are "audio geeks", I suppose.
f u cn rd ths, u r prbbly a lsy spllr.
Why should it have native support for ext2 or ext3?
Consumers want a program that will play any media you throw at it, without it whining about codecs or DRM or any other unneeded pains in the ass; I know this is a stretch... but has anyone at MS considered that?
Guess not.
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I stopped using Media Player back when you had to sign your life away in a bunch of EULAs and dialog boxes when it started up and had to use WGA just to download the latest version (required for something or other I forget now). VLC & WinAmp all the way.
What I'd like to know is whether or not this means we don't have a install a codec park (like Shark007) just so we can get support for all the common video formats in Windows Media Center.
Nope. It only means that you won't have to install a codec pack with support for MKV containers. You'll still need to install codecs if you want to play the files with the latest, greatest encoding. The container support will still have to be maintained until the sun sets on current versions of windows, but if this signals a change in Microsoft's attitude towards container formats, it might help them remain relevant. I know I used to use WIMP a lot because it was the only thing which was very good at identifying albums by their signatures when the filenames were mangled, but now there are other things which do that and the other shortcomings have driven me to other players.
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Am I stupid? Download k-lite codec pack and you have all the codecs you can imagine, which idiot is going to pay microsoft an other tax for a few codecs... I stay with windows 7, works fine... I have been having those codecs for years, for free... even under windows xp... Same is with iso file as drive DEAMON Tools lite, also for free. It's nice they have it, but not a reason to buy a new version of there shit...
I'm still going to uninstall Media Player as soon as I buy a new Windows box or upgrade to 10. I haven't used Media Player in probably 10 years now. Shit, even Winamp is outdated and no longer being developed but it still handles everything better than Media Player -- including FLAC.
MKV is only common for pirated non-streaming contents
"The WebM container is based on a profile of Matroska." Are you now claiming that WebM itself is uncommon?
isn't disk space really cheap these days?
Spinning disks at home yes, Internet-connected disks no. A free Dropbox provides only 2 GB, for instance. And cellular ISPs tend to charge about $10 per GB uploaded or downloaded.
They are not supported at all. You can kill your Media Player in the attempt. Your can need a clean Windows install to fix. Half of the things are laden with adware.
As mentioned, most are more willing to just stop using Media Player entirely, and instead use VLC, which requires none of that crap. How is it that VLC can do it and yet MS cannot. A: They can, but choose not to, so screw you users, we refuse to give you want you want.
That is what this is all about.
I see MS allowing MKV into the fold as a small concession on their part to actually bow to user demand for a change rather than just ignoring it altogether.
Uhhh...and the benefit to MSFT would be....what exactly? they have NTFS which works extremely well for their OS and for portables there is ExFAT which again works extremely well, so why would they care to open NTFS when there is no need?
Its not like the FOSSies would ever use anything made by MSFT anyway, hell many Linux advocates like Robert Pogson are so batshit against MSFT they have Voldemort when it comes to the company, they sure as hell isn't gonna use anything made by Redmond, they'd treat it like plague blankets.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Uhhh...why would you do that? I've been using 320k MP3s for years and I can honestly say I've never run into a situation where you'd need to do that. in fact the only time I've ever done an MP3 recode was for a little 4GB Sandisk MP3 player I got uber cheap that I decided to use when I was walking and in that case I just went 64k as I knew the street noise would make fidelity pointless and in that case? 64k worked just fine, in fact I got one of those little cassette adapters to use in my SUV and it still sounds better than the local radio stations.
But if you are keeping the 320k MP3s the most you are doing is a single recode (320K-whatever) so I really don't see how it would be an issue. After al its not like you are gonna take the 320k, recode to 192k, then recode the 192k to 128k are you? But just for shits and giggles I took a 320k MP3 and recoded to 128k and compared it to the CD where I ripped it as 128k and honestly? I can't tell a difference between the two.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
But just for shits and giggles I took a 320k MP3 and recoded to 128k and compared it to the CD where I ripped it as 128k and honestly? I can't tell a difference between the two.
If you can't ABX a difference between CD to 128K mp3/aac/ogg and CD to 256-320K mp3 to 128K mp3/aac/ogg, then I guess that problem is solved. Thanks for testing this for us.
Microsoft has decided to start using the wheel. I remember sometime before switching permanently to Linux when I noticed IE couldn't display PNG transparency. It was probably the last Windows-related facepalm I ever made as a Windows user.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
I'd like to know what the point of DivX is... in 2014. There was a war between the patent encumbered DivX and its OSS rival, XviD... XviD won, but manufacturers didn't notice. Now we have the mp4v and h.264 (x264) codecies... DivX/XviD is inferior, as is its 20 year old favorite wrapper, avi. I have been noticing, finally, that XviD is ever so slowly being replaced with mp4/mp4 and mp4/mkv. There is some rivalry now between mp4/mkv/mp4 and wmv9/wmv... but 264/mp4 has been adopted by the Internet, so I can only assume the momentum in wmv9 is purely a Microsoft fiction, that no one really uses it by choice. Anyway, my crappy point is no one cares about a DivX logo on anything anymore... SRLY.
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Apple, Amazon, google are never going to natively support it on thier devices.
Except that WebM, the format that Google has pushed, IS USING MKV as a container.
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