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Microsoft Windows

Windows Media Player Set To Lose a Feature on Windows 7 (onmsft.com) 91

Posted by msmash from the for-what-it-is-worth dept.
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.
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Windows Media Player Set To Lose a Feature on Windows 7 More

Windows Media Player Set To Lose a Feature on Windows 7

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  • When has that ever worked? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Seriously, when has that ever worked, I've never seen it.
    Plus, why would you enable a spy feature on your own?

  • Will this affect VLC player? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If not... don't care.

  • Who even uses this (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kalpol ( 714519 ) on Monday January 28, 2019 @12:42PM (#58035018)
    It's one of the first thing I reset file associations for. So I don't care about their metadata.

    • Re:Who even uses this (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NicknameUnavailable ( 4134147 ) on Monday January 28, 2019 @02:09PM (#58035600)
      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."
      • What sort of "malicious updates" broke critical features in XP?
        • There were updates at the end of life for XP that would make files disappear from explorer (they were still there most of the time, as they would be visible via another machine browsing that machine over the network - but the opposite happened as well,) there were also instances of search functionality stopping outright, computers with all the patches going at about 25-50% of the speed vs a fresh install (with search indexer and such shut off on each,) different nomenclatures required for logins (e.g. DOMAI

    • "Who even uses this"

      Interesting question. This is Slashdot where you are asking so are you aware of the concept of "observer bias"? The answer you will get here: no one.

      The real answer: The 100s of millions of people who just use their computer and don't actually mess with any settings at all. I.e. all those Internet Explorer users from the past.

  • Oh my... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I bet those who use that feature will be miffed. Both of them.

  • Everybody On Windows Uses MPC-HC Anyways (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dryriver ( 1010635 ) on Monday January 28, 2019 @12:44PM (#58035040)
    Seriously, who watches media with Windows Media Player when free players like MPC offer a much superior experience? MPC can even run custom HLSL pixel shaders on GPU, allowing videos to be enhanced in realtime on GPU (e.g. realtime sharpening, upconversion). You can even write your own .hlsl GPU pixel shader, hit CTRL+S, and MPC applies the custom pixel shader to video immediately. Windows Media Player is not capable of any such feats.

    • You appear to spell VLC in a funny way.

    • Re:Everybody On Windows Uses MPC-HC Anyways (Score:5, Informative)

      by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Monday January 28, 2019 @01:26PM (#58035302) Homepage Journal

      MPC? They dropped it too..

      From the MPC-HC web site...

      "
      v1.7.13 is released and farewell
        July 16, 2017 XhmikosR
      v1.7.13, the latest, and probably the last release of our project

      For quite a few months now, or even years, the number of active developers has been decreasing and has inevitably reached zero. This, unfortunately, means that the project is officially dead and this release would be the last one.

      Unless some people step up that is.

      So, if someone’s willing to really contribute and has C/C++ experience, let me know on IRC or via e-mail.

      Otherwise, all things come to an end and life goes on. It’s been a nice journey and I’m personally pretty overwhelmed having to write this post.

      Thanks to everyone who has contributed in any way all these years; Remember, MPC-HC is an 11-year old project.

      Don’t forget, that our official builds, both the stable and the beta builds, are digitally signed. Be aware of scams and only get the files from our site!

      Also, to report bugs, suggestions and generally provide feedback, use our Trac; reporting anything on social media or in any other place is just pointless, as the developers only follow Trac.

      You can download the new version here. For the complete changes see the changelog.
      "

    • VLC > MPC
      MPC and CCCP were better than VLC at one point, but that time it long past.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        CCCP in was always MPC and ffdshow and later on LAV.

        Ffdshow and LAV are still maintained. MPC-HC is basically feature complete. It will work with updates LAV and ffdshow.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by aybiss ( 876862 )

        VLC might be OK if they knew how to work vsync and a playlist (yes just the playlist, I'm not holding my breath for any sort of media library).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      And the official MPC-HC isn't updated anymore. :(

    • Seriously, who watches media with Windows Media Player when free players like MPC offer a much superior experience?

      You know that the vast majority of computer users couldn't give a crap about the "experience" right? The vast majority will happily use WMP until they find something they can't play. Then they'll use that alternative software until they find something it can't do.

  • Why use something with an acronym of "WiMP" when VLC and other good options exist?
  • Am I the only one that thinks there is not a good reason for this? MS is shutting down a service that supplies metadata to Windows Media Player that affects all players on OS older than Windows 10. Why isn't Win10 affected? Surely there isn't anything that should break in metadata that would break the OS. This isn't like when MS turned off the PlaysForSure servers as they deprecated everything with those old systems. This seems to be a forced push to people using older Windows.

  • Hey look! (Score:5, Funny)

    by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Monday January 28, 2019 @12:56PM (#58035122) Journal

    It's probably the last time Microsoft will officially recognize Windows Media Center as existing.

    But that's ok, because Cable companies will continue to encrypt every channel they legally can while renting you a CableCard, and the only software that you can get to decrypt it? Windows Media Center.

    Legal lock-in for DVR rentals. And the cable companies wonder why we hate them.

    • Which seems just as good of a reason for Microsoft to do its final update. There were probably a bunch of fixes in the work, just waiting for a release, and now that the product is at end of live, just push them all out. Giving the people who still use it, a little extra life out of it. Especially as Microsoft really isn't pushing a replacement for it.

    • I still run a Windows 7 box since I have WMC on it. WMC can record an OTA or cable channel (those that aren't restricted) with my CableCard and then I (or most likely my kids) can watch it anywhere, cell service or not. A partial end run around the cable's DVR monopoly. I'm going to miss it; my Tivo is good but it can't do that. :-(

      • Me too! It's annoying that my cable company insists on using the CopyOnce flag on most of their channels; MythTV has major issues with that and PlexDVR is still very much a 1.0 product.

        I haven't tried it yet, but this looks like the next step for me:
        http://epg123.garyan2.net/ [garyan2.net]
        It costs $25/year for the SchedulesDirect subscription, but that costs far less than renting a DVR from the cable company. If you're like me and intend to keep WMC going for as long as the hardware holds out, it might be worth the look.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msk ( 6205 )

      https://www.silicondust.com/pr... [silicondust.com]

  • This is like a car manufacturer saying "since your car is 10 years old we're going to retire the taillights."

  • Missing the point (Score:3)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday January 28, 2019 @03:44PM (#58036138) Journal

    Most of the comments here are really missing the point. The moral of the story is If it needs external services to function YOU DON'T OWN IT. You can never OWN it.

    Even if its OSS you might not be able to own it. At least there you'd have shot anyway at being able to implement some kind of patch to get whatever data it needs from some other source, or be able to obtain enough information to implement your own replacement service and or change where it points replace whatever certificate it requires etc.

    Still we need some consume protections that require disclosing of external service dependencies and/or some rules requiring companies to support/maintain the services their products depend on for some minimum period of time as long as they are going concern.

    • I don't think anyone was under the delusion that the metadata from the internet was anything they owned. ... Or even cared to own. ... Or would even work if they owned it themselves.

      and/or some rules requiring companies to support/maintain the services their products depend on for some minimum period of time as long as they are going concern.

      Unworkable. Right now you're talking about a completely secondary feature to the primary function of unpopular software which is well outdated and for which a company offered a free update path. Any legislation you pass that offers protection against such an edge case would have dramatic consequences.

      You'll also get no support f

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