Windows 7 surprise: DivX built in

[soumya]

No more trawling the web for the latest media codecs. Windows 7 comes ready to play all your favourite "downloaded" videos.



One of the new features announced at the recent Windows 7 Reviewer’s Workshop in LA is that Windows 7 will natively support a number of popular media formats, so that users don’t have to worry about finding, installing and downloading third-party codecs.

This is an evolution in media support which is similar to the inclusion of native MPEG-2 playback in Windows Vista, providing the DVD playback functionality which was missing in Windows XP.

It's an interesting change by Microsoft, which, in the past, has doggedly clung to the hope that Windows Media Video will end up as the prevailing video format for the internet. It appears to have finally conceded that the vast majority of people are watching downloaded stuff in DivX or Xvid -- possibly a realisation driven by the enormous amount of telemetry data it has collected from users of Vista that it never had access to through XP. It has stopped short of bundling Adobe Flash support into Windows, though, as it develops its own Silverlight technology.

Windows 7 will also support H.264 video and AAC audio. The support for AAC will be welcome news for people with music and video that has been encoded in Apple iTunes, as Windows 7 will be able to play all iTunes media through Windows Media Player.Unfortunately, this won't apply to media that has been purchased from Apple's iTunes store, because Windows 7 can't decode the Apple FairPlay DRM, which Apple refuses to license to anyone else.

The ability to play back these additional formats has implications for new Windows 7 services like libraries and networked media player support, as Windows 7 users can index and search across their iTunes media without needing to use iTunes as the default player, and can send a wider variety of media content to a centralized location.

A more subtle user benefit is that by not having to download third-party codec bundles (which is convenient in itself), users can minimise the inevitable build-up of unverified software running on their systems. Most major codecs are freely available, but you often need to install multiple disparate packages to get the widest possible support for digital media -- or run an 'all in one' CODEC installer which may also come bundled with hidden malware inside. Additionally, these CODEC packages can interfere with other, and the codecs are not necessarily optimised to run efficiently.

By bundling a wide variety of media formats into Windows 7, Microsoft has created an operating environment which negates the need for third-party codecs and should therefore run more stably and reliably. It also brings blanket support for the most popular online media formats, providing an environment in which users can start playing their favourite content immediately.

Source

[Charan]

Good move for end user .. bad move for microsoft.
Good because everything will work out of the box.
Bad move to microsoft because they will get lot of complaints from 3rd parties, just like Microsoft was sued in europe for bundling Media Player with windows and hence the N edition.
I hope microsoft changes this to a optional downloadable content ranther than built-in. this way both Microsoft and end user will be happy.

[Pat]

Can we please have all Windows 7 related news in one thread ?

[Dark Core]

@soumya
Gud news

[Faun]

gud news but I has internet...

[ratedrsuperstar]

^why is hancock there?????

[iNFiNiTE]

^^ too hasty to post the content ?

[iMav]

This is not a surprise anymore, its quite an old piece of information.

[axxo]

Originally Posted by ratedrsuperstar

^why is hancock there?????

bcoz its in source link :-P

[Pat]

Yaar koi iss "Dear Sir/Madam" ko futao yaha se!

[JojoTheDragon]

Not that surprising i was expecting this

[MetalheadGautham]

Not exactly what I call "spectacular" news, but definitely something to congratulate microsoft about.
Now, start adding XviD, H.264, Theora, Vorbis, Speex, FLAC, ALAC, AAC, Matroska, WavPack, VP6, VP7, MusePack support too

[iMav]

Originally Posted by MetalheadGautham

Not exactly what I call "spectacular" news, but definitely something to congratulate microsoft about.
Now, start adding XviD, H.264, Theora, Vorbis, Speex, FLAC, ALAC, AAC, Matroska, WavPack, VP6, VP7, MusePack support too

And get drawn into stupid legal law suits & crap talk from the "open source community" nothnxbai.

[chandru.in]

Originally Posted by iMav

crap talk from the "open source community".

Potential start of war.

What has open source community got to do in a Win 7 thread. Why pull them in unnecessarily and later blame them for flame wars (and go as far as getting them banned)?

[gxsaurav]

Its a good move from Microsoft. Although I will still use FFDShow codec to decode all), MS should make something like FFDShow decoder.

[Faun]

Originally Posted by iMav

And get drawn into stupid legal law suits & crap talk from the "open source community" nothnxbai.

add appletalk too

[desiibond]

yeah. it is a good news. no need to download those codecs every time i install the os

[x3060]

i use kmp, am happy with that player....anyways, good move.

[naveen_reloaded]

windows media player .. even though bloated plays video and songs in a much finer and better way than any other thing...

its codec defeicent... but with now divx support... i would love to see it....

[x3060]

not as good as kmp....its far far better.

[NucleusKore]

Good move by MS

[comp@ddict]

GIVE OFFICE 2007 integrated too, take that M$

[naveen_reloaded]

@ X3060


just a play any video in WMP 11 , u will know the real qualtiy of the video.. but at the same time the image( video ) are more crisper than my vlc or klite classic wmp or nero ....

even though u dont have many function like scaling , changing ratios etc.... the given volume change , video setting ...etc makes the it good...

may be its a p.s view....

[Faun]

^^lol if you have codec shared then quality is defined by codec and not player.

[NIGHTMARE]

there is no doubt KM player is much much better than WMP 11 the video quality is gr8 having lot of option

[NucleusKore]

Originally Posted by comp@ddict

GIVE OFFICE 2007 integrated too, take that M$

If they do that they'll be accused of abusing their monopoly.

[comp@ddict]

LOL^^^

[gxsaurav]

They should give reader of Microsoft Office with Windows 7. I gave this as a feedback to Microsoft. This will make the OOBE better & people will be tempted to buy MS office to edit files cos they r familiar with it.

[MetalheadGautham]

^^That would also be considered abuse of monopoly

[Charan]

^^ I think notepad and word pad will be enough later we can complaint that Windows doesnot come with a decent enough wordprocessor