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Features That Windows 10 Will Deprecate
jones_supa writes: Microsoft announced that a Windows 10 upgrade will be free for users running Windows 7 and 8.1, but there will be a number of features that will no longer work after that upgrade. The features that will no longer work are listed on the official specifications page on Microsoft's website. Some of the deprecated features include: Media Center, out-of-the-box DVD playback and USB floppy support, desktop gadgets, deferring updates (Home edition), old versions of Windows games, and Windows Live Essentials version of OneDrive.
This is also a fairly niche issue(given that most people shoving DVDs into computers either want them to Just Play, or want to rip the to some format that means never dealing with DVDs); but I'd assume that the MS codec that is being killed is a DirectShow filter; while everything in VLC's bag of tricks is specific to VLC(though some programs do specifically use VLC for various things).
In practice, the words 'DirectShow Filter Graph' typically mean that somebody just opened an industrial sized box of incomprehensible pain; but the theory is noble: it's Microsoft's stab at a modular media handling system that allows a given application to painlessly 'inherit' codecs, effects, demuxing steps, and assorted other operations provided by other software without having to be built with them in mind. If the application uses DirectShow, and there is a set of filters that will get you from the item you are attempting to play to the format the sink requires, things are supposed to work.
There are some atrocious complications(shitty 'codec packs' registering themselves as the most preferred codec for every possible situation, even ones they are horribly broken at, seemed to be a favorite), and much of the time the theoretical elegance of the system was excessive to the actual need, while the complexity was always lurking; but there probably are a few users who will find the announcement painful for this reason. VLC, ffmpeg, etc. are very good at what they do; but just as OSX-native applications expect Quicktime to handle media, and anything that isn't a quicktime plugin will remain isolated solely in the one playback program that it came with, Windows native applications expect Directshow, and if some piece of software is demanding a set of directshow filters that can take a DVD and do something useful, all the VLC in the world will not save them. Not VLC's problem; but one of the reasons why some users are going to be unhappy.
Any recommended settings? It's not exactly intuitive for a non-audio guy.
If 10 is anything like 8.1, the upgrade will silently stop your backups and remove your ability to access any backups made in the Windows 7 backup utility. I discovered that one the fun way.
people still have optical drives on their computers?
I use my Blu-ray burner all the time. Verbatim 25 GBs for about 30 cents each. Nice backup option compared to thumb drives, plus I don't accidently leave a Blu-ray disc in my pants pocket and have it go through the wash.
That GWX is so shady, I will now never upgrade to windows 10, whereas i had no opinion on it before. Can you imagine that they thought they could get away with abusing the trust of windows update like this? Well it just got windows update turned off on all my machines.microsoft. theres no way in hell im trusting that anymore. Fucking advertising bullshit. we aren't god damn mac users who are used to having things thrust down our throats like this. I wait at least a year before upgrading to ANY os... when SP2 is released is a good rule of thumb with MS.
If they are such dicks to use windows update this way, can you imagine what kind of shit they would pull with 10? not to mention how much of a bait and switch offering a free update like this is. The wording is so fucking scammy i felt like i had been violated. They snuck in the back door!!!
Fuck you and your unremovable tray icons!!! deny security on GWX folder, suck it SYSTEM, suck it trustedinstaller!!!! they even hid a bunch of scheduled tasks just like a god damn spyware would do!!!
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