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Tech news reports I saw this weekend drop this bombshell on Hollywood as well as PC consumers: the next-generation Windows 8 operating system won’t automatically play DVDs and Blu-ray – even if your laptop has a DVD or Blu-ray drive. Instead Windows 8 will require you to fork over cash. Expect from greedy Microsoft an extra-cost option to install a Windows Media Center software upgrade to allow DVD and Blu-ray playback. Let’s hope a 3rd party freebie bitchslaps this abomination.
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Disgusting.
Well. Not as bad as iTunes. Which won’t play competing file types no matter how much you pay.
I call bull***. It plays songs bought from Amazon just fine.
Not like Windows 7, Linux, or OSX play Bluray anyway. In fact, your only options for Bluray support are to play $100 to Arcsoft or Cyberlink for their shitty software that only supports playback for 6 months.
From the way I read it, it has nothing to do with the drives, they just took the playback function out of WMP so you have to upgrade to Media Center. There are free players you can install though. You don’t have to give Microsoft any more money for their bloatware.
I guess millions will skip upgrading to windows 8. This will not go over well at all. When will the crazy stop!
Let’s just calm down here. While it’s true that Windows 8 is going to require the purchase of an add-on pack to install Windows Media Player and – along with it – DVD playback, there’s a litany of other programs you can install for free that will provide you with the same functionality. Windows XP didn’t come with native DVD playback either, but after a thirty second visit to http://www.videolan.org, crisis was – and will continue to be – averted.
Ugh. Thankfully, I watch via the actual bluray or DVD player.
Yes, this is preferable, as your TV is probably bigger than your computer screen, but if you’re on the road, that’s not possible. Many people have laptop DVD/Blu-Ray players, and will not be happy having to pay extra for the privilege of using the drive for its intended purpose.
Thank God for VLC media player. It’s free and plays everything!
Exactly, including blurays.
Will VLC (I Love it!) work with Window 8 though?
This is one of the times I’m glad I have a Mac and I haven’t upgraded my OSX for a while. This is just so stupid! Frankly I have a DVD player and a BluRay, but honestly this is greedy and ridiculous of Microsoft. Jerks!
I have a friend who just went through a week of frusteration trying to get her itunes library on her iphone. Turns out that yup, she had to pay itunes an extra $30 to store her songs on Cloud and thus be given the priviledge of accessing them from more than one device. When it comes to greedy and ridiculous, Apple practices the anything you can do, I can do better approach.
I think the difference here is that iCloud is a new service and there are costs associated with storage…it’s not something that has always been included and is now being taken away. Playback in Windows is a current feature that is being disabled unless you pay extra.
It is not a new service. They don’t provide music storage for everyone. They keep ONE copy of each song on a server (which they already do to sell them on iTunes). You can then access the songs you paid for from any device. You’re just redownloading it.
Apple’s also an awful company, but I feel bad for your friend because she didn’t need to spend any money. All she had to do was copy the iTunes library folder and she would have been in good shape.
This is untrue. iCloud is free up to a certain amount of storage. And you don’t have to do iCloud to share music and movies on up to FIVE devices. Apple’s profit margin is ridiculous, but you get quality and fairness up to a point, more so than any product I’ve ever owned, bar none.
I too love my Mac, but you can’t play Blu-Rays at all on Apple products…
This is not true. While APPLE doesn’t provide any blu-ray drives, they are available as an add-on from third party retailers like macsales.com.
The argument isn’t over a few bucks, it’s over a remarkable mindset. Folks like Blair Westlake bust their balls creating bridges into town and Ballmer and his short-sited henchmen blow them up.
What’s disturbing is the trend; Windows7 introduced a new update to Windows Media Center – an extensible product that could be used for anything – including many vendors shipping Cable Card controllers, etc.
Now, with Windows8, those inbuilt tools are ripped out of all versions, and the only version eligible to get them is Windows8 PRO. Yes, that means no matter what, if you want the tools to playback MPG/DVD native CODECs, “Home Premium” and other versions will not be eligible, and will never, without a 3rd party application, provide this support.
This is effectively taking away from customers something that has been a significant price value for them, and it undercuts their vendors and third party partners (like Ceton, SiliconDust, and others) who find themselves suddenly on the outside as the installed base that is eligible for their product drops significantly.
In the end, it’s a cash grab – but a damn poor one. What’s sad is that Apple gives away the DVD decoding tools in MacOS – available everywhere for $50 as an upgrade; but Microsoft with a significantly higher installed base, and therefore a lower negotiated cost per license, is refusing to offer something it did in the past, and requiring customers to foot the bill twice – by buying a version many would not have considered in the past (pro is a $30 cost over home premium) and by then tacking on additional costs through this add on method.
This is in the end, a TERRIBLE marketing decision on their end; man consumers had expected Microsoft to provide BluRay or options to integrate BluRay; this completely goes the opposite direction and costs customers as a result.
This is a non-issue as others have noted. There are plenty of free players and if anything, this will be a motivator for a 3rd party to offer an even better application to fill the gap. If you are keeping score on greedy tech companies, Apple has to be at the top of anyone’s list. Microsoft, on the other hand, has just released their cloud system, Skydrive, that has more features and more storage for less money than anyone. Last on that list? Apple.
Just buy a Mac for goddsake.s
By all means, everyone please stop buying macs.
Sincerely,
An Old Mac User who doesn’t want tons of people using macs inviting more viruses
PS Get off my lawn.
Mac’s can’t play bluray video at all, for god’s sake.
I play blu ray on my mac all the time. It just doesn’t come with blu ray player built in. I had to buy and external drive. 100 bucks. Apple believes all disc based movie playback will be gone within a few years.
Frankly, they are right. So all this fuss is much ado about nothing.
I still wish we could go back in time when no one but us smart people used macs. I hate what the mouthbreathers and all their money has done to Apple.
the macs with or without any optical media drives? lol
That’s why everyone should switch to Ubuntu (Linux) OS. It runs much better than windows, is safer, and helps your computer last longer. And all kinds of free programs that work on there for almost everything…
I just don’t get watching a movie on a PC, I paid a fortune for very good equipment to watch on a large screen and I love that experience, have not been to a movie house in years now, just wait for the movie on DVD.
A movie house? Wow… you really haven’t been in years have you?
I guess this is part of Microsoft’s ongoing “Dig Our Own Grave” initiative.
Again, this is a non-issue. Microsoft’s rationale behind this decision is actually quite reasonable – their target for most Win8 distributions isn’t desktops nor laptops but rather tablets, which you might notice don’t have an optical drive, and as such they didn’t want to have to pay Dolby licensing fees for every copy they sell. The higher-end versions of Windows 8 will have Windows Media Center included and therefore be able to playback DVDs. Makes sense for them, but annoying for us, right?
Actually, no. If you buy a laptop or desktop that doesn’t have Windows Media Center and DVD playback, not only is there a plethora of free playback software out there (VLC for one), but almost every manufacturer out there includes what’s called “bloatware” – software outside the standard Windows installation that’s installed by the PC maker. This bloatware is almost certain to have one of several 3rd-party DVD playback applications, such as Nero or PowerDVD. Having such software will install the necessary codecs and licenses onto your system that’ll let you play back DVDs. As such, the whole furor over this issue is really much ado about nothing.
Makes sense. There are tens of millions of PCs that will never play an optical video disc — such as almost any in a work place or server farm — and there’s no reason the entire world’s computing infrastructure should be burdened with an extra cost that has no relevance for many computing applications.
Meanwhile, any consumer who wants this functionality can get it for free from VLC or other 3rd party software suites. As a bonus, many would argue these 3rd party programs are better than the Microsoft ones anyway.
All these dumb fucks criticizing
windows 8 and they know nothing of the technology industry. Windows 8 is going to be a massive hit.
Hey idiots – DVD playback was already a 3rd-party function under both WinXP and Win7. No version of either of those operating systems offers DVD playback – both require a 3rd-party application/codecs. Only the Media Center edition of Win7 offered it, and it was basically just the CyberLink codecs bundled with the OS. Nothing has been “ripped out” of Win8. Want the codecs? Buy Media Center. Or XMBC. Or download MCP, or any one of the hundreds to thousands of applications, both free and paid, that include the functionality.
Seriously, facepalm.
You’re a moron. Windows7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Pro & Win7 Ultimate all include Media Center, which has a fully functional DVD Playback system. It’s been there since the beginning *facepalm*
I agree, spend 2 – 3 times as much and get a Mac instead, that way you don’t have to worry about nickel and diming.
…did Windows 7 come with built-in Blu-ray support? I’ve been using VLC and WMP Classic.
Oh well, I’m planning to switch over to Mac anyway when the time comes for a new computer. This just validates my decision even more, if that were needed, which it ain’t.
I bet the vast majority of people complaining about this haven’t even upgraded from XP yet and will never have Windows 8.
Right on cue come the XP grave diggers… I have a Windows 7 laptop, but also an old XP desktop that still works fine and does everything I require. Should I spend money for nothing?
It seems each iteration of Microsoft OS since the great XP comes with less and less functionality. More secure maybe, but with fewer user features why bother?
It seems each iteration of Microsoft OS since the great
XPDOS 6.22 (fixed it for ya) comes with less and less functionality. More secure maybe, but with fewer user features why bother?I hope that bullet wound in Microsoft’s foot gets infected.
Who cares about windows media player/center anyway. There are many far better, less bulky and error prone 3rd party products to take its place – i for one havent used MS meadiaplayer for years and have no intention of changing that.
Actually had it mean Win 8 would get a little cheaper it would have been great news
Only the basic windows 8 release comes without DVD support
Windows 7 did not play blu-ray discs.
Who uses discs anymore? and if you do are you really watching them on a PC
Everything is streaming now, get use to it
I’ll tether my movie-watching interest to the moronic hassle of streaming subscriptions when hell freezes over. I want my access to a movie to be determined by *me* via ownership not by temporary access via a monthly subscription that I might not even use often enough in a given month to be worth it to me, especially when studios often sign exclusives with particular subscription companies, which then require multiple subscriptions. It’s why I stopped subscribing to premium cable two decades ago. And *then* add the hassle of passwords and other layers of security to protect identity and financial information and other whatnot specific to non-cable, non-satellite, computer-based subscription models — hell, it’s practically the original DivX fiasco all over again.
exactly. physical media is dead. if apple did this they would be hailed as forward thinking. they kinda already have not building optical drives in some macs.