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Windows Media Player Set To Lose a Feature on Windows 7 (onmsft.com)
With Windows 7 reaching its end of life in less than a year, developers are likely to begin retiring features for the operating system. Kicking off the process of retiring features is Microsoft, which is retiring a feature in Windows Media Player, according to updated support documentation on its website. From a report: New metadata for music, TV shows and movies, will not be added to Windows Media Player. This means that additional information such as cover art, directors, actors, and more, will not display on Windows Media Player. This change also affects Windows Media Center on Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1.
The issue isn't an update that removed features. The issue is Microsoft turning off a cloud server that provides this data to Windows 7/8/8.1 versions of WiMP. You'd need to patch WiMP to get the data from somewhere else if you need it.
It's not about using it, it's about getting people used to the concept of "retiring features" such that they accept it instead of talking about how Microsoft is conspiring to cripple the OS like they did with XP and the associated malicious updates that broke critical features at the end. They start with stupid things nobody uses so that when they get to the real stuff they can go "retiring features has been going on publicly for awhile and nobody cared." Call it what it is: "crippling things you don't own which customers paid for in order to force them to pay you again."