Some interesting new details were announced on the “Building Windows 8 Blog. Starting with
As we blogged in our previous post “Windows 8 Name Official – and version details”, Microsoft announced that they will be selling Windows Media Center as a separate feature pack for Windows 8. The Media Center pack will include the ability to play DVD’s and Blu-ray movies.
On the surface this may seem like an extreme move till you consider the numbers form Microsoft’s point of view. This is actually a very smart move. Microsoft has to pay DVD player manufacturers to allow you to play DVDs. Here is the thing…. in the next 18 months you won’t see DVD players on most laptops.
Microsoft reasons that if it is included in the base Windows 8 operating system, Microsoft will have to pay that royalty on literally millions of Windows 8 installations that will never play a DVD because there is no physical DVD drive in the computer in which it is installed. The if you factor in all the tablets that are to be running Windows 8 RT and the number can quickly just to tens of millions of Royalties that Microsoft is paying out for nothing.
Microsoft says that Windows 8 will focus primarily on online and downloadable media, and it will support a variety of codecs right out of the box: H.264, VC-1, WMA, MP4, AVI, MPEG-2 TS, ASF, AAC, WAV, M4A, MP3, PCM and Dolby Digital Plus. “These decoders are optimized for system reliability, battery life, and performance, and cover all key playback scenarios for mainstream content” — the company says
So the bottom line is, if you want to play DVD’s or Blu-ray movies on Windows 8 you will have a choice to make:
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