Rumor Smash: Windows 7 to support third-party codecs
Last week, an article was published on Gizmodo suggested that Windows 7 may block the use of third-party codecs in Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center. The story referenced an ffdshow developer who claimed that Microsoft had locked mpeg4 and h264 codecs into Media Foundation in build 7057, and that there was no way to override these codecs.
Rafael from WithinWindows investigated and found that this “blocking” behaviour does exist, but it seems to be functioning in a way that indicates it is there temporarily. This was Microsoft’s comment on the issue:
As we move toward the release of Windows 7, we have worked to add more codecs and file types to allow for a better user experience. We also allow Microsoft experiences to use codecs and other format technologies from third-party companies, just as we always have. Third party applications can use the Microsoft codecs or their own. Microsoft does not restrict the use of third-party codecs. – Microsoft Spokesperson
The possibility of Microsoft imposing such a strange restriction and alienating its many users seemed unlikely anyway.
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Tags: windows 7, windows 7 codecs
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8 Responses to “Rumor Smash: Windows 7 to support third-party codecs”
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I don’t understand why WMP can’t play MP4s and m4as out of the box?
It makes people download Quicktime!
It actually can on Windows 7
just use vlc.
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WMP can play MP4 content on Windows 7
[...] Rumor Smash: Windows 7 to support third-party codecs Last week, an article was published on Gizmodo suggested that Windows 7 may block the… [...]
[...] Rumor Smash: Windows 7 to support third-party codecs Last week, an article was published on Gizmodo suggested that Windows 7 may block the… [...]
Conspiracy theories aside, nothing in that quote denied that the default codecs are MS ones and that it’s impossible to override those defaults. It is *highly* possible that their definition of third party applications using their own codecs means that third party applications compile in their own codecs and *not* use the standard API for acquiring the default codec.
Applications like VLC will be completely unaffected by this because they don’t use directshow, they compile in their own codecs.