Patch in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update Removes Windows Media Player

There are tons and tons of (typically better) 3rd party apps, but some of these things are heading back to the Windows 3.1 era. Back when someone downloaded a JPG and their system had nothing to open it with. It has become a little bit of an expectation to have apps that can handle most major file formats. They might not be the best option, they generally worked. Apple and Google (kinda) do that as well.
If they're going to yank them out of the OS, they need to do a better job of directing users to a good/trustworthy 3rd party option. Casual users are wary of random notifications sending them to a 3rd party site to download something they supposedly need.
 
theBrownLlama said:
imo, wmp still plays audio acoustically better than vlc, mpc, gom, groove. sad
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It also is awesome for cd playback. seamless cd/HDCD playback. prob mixed w/ a descent sound card it's one of, if not your best, option for HDCD/cd playback on PC...

ps. and I agree, every player has it's own acoustic signature. I'm pretty sure MS worked long and (H)ard on this one... long live Windows 7 !!!!!!!!!!!
 
"If you like your Windows Media Player, you can keep your Windows Media Player."
 
DejaWiz said:
About the only real use I get out of WMP is quick-ripping my audio CD's to 320kbps MP3s so I can load them on a USB flash drive to play in my car...
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Yea didn't think about that right away, but it's definitely going to affect me. It was easy enough to teach someone to push a disc into the player, and WMP could be setup to automatically rip the cd. Then they just needed to be taught to copy / paste from "music" to their thumb drive. It is a pretty simple process so that you can have music from cds in cars that no longer have cd players in them.

I'm not 100% sure yet how much this will affect me, as I do use WMP for MP3 playback. The other big issue is that WMP handles color profiles correctly, but I'm not so sure most of the other apps do which makes things off when a color profile is applied.
 
Advil said:
Media Player Classic. And K-Lite. It has never let me down.
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As I already mentioned, MPC-HC development has been dead for months. Once it breaks (or Microsoft breaks something it relies on) it may well be gone.
 
If/once MPC-HC dies, the alternatives are pretty clumsy. VLC's probably the best of them for ease of use, but after VLC there's a pretty big dropoff. Programs like PotPlayer, GOM, KMPlayer, etc. are clumsy and complicated even if they have tons of features. Is MPC-BE tied to HC at all? That's probably my back-up plan.
 
I don't do any critical viewing or listening on my PC. All I would need (and many others I reckon) is a simple lightweight media player that plays as many files types of video and audio just in a simple window when you click on them. No need for any advanced features other than volume, Play/Stop/Pause/FFW/REV.

Even VLC is too heavy to fit that.
 
prime2515102 said:
I'm still upset about keyboard shortcuts being removed (ctrl+alt+X, x being whatever key you assign). The way I used my computer was completely upended when they did that. Dicks...
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Those are definitely still there. Just check the properties of any shortcut icon.
 
daglesj said:
I don't do any critical viewing or listening on my PC. All I would need (and many others I reckon) is a simple lightweight media player that plays as many files types of video and audio just in a simple window when you click on them. No need for any advanced features other than volume, Play/Stop/Pause/FFW/REV.

Even VLC is too heavy to fit that.
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MPC-HC essentially works that way. It has a cavernous menu of options, but the average user would never need to see or use any of it. Just install it, set it as your default media player, and that's that. It'll play every media format under the sun (with basic/obvious controls) sans any configuring at all. Things only get tricky if you want bitstreaming surround sound or to use another renderer like madVR.
 
Avalanche said:
Push a key other than Ctrl or Alt. Pressing A will automatically fill it with Ctrl + Alt + A
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Well blow me, I'm an old hat Windows user and somehow didnt notice the shortcut key feature.
Perhaps it was so normal to see it that it became invisible.
Haha, cheers!
I might actually use it.

Grollocks.
My first attempt using it for Project Cars 2 was met with a 3.6GB download.
But hey, it works.
 
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Avalanche said:
Push a key other than Ctrl or Alt. Pressing A will automatically fill it with Ctrl + Alt + A
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Very strange... It just doesn't function for me. It puts the shortcut there, but it just doesn't work, and never has since the first time I installed 10 at release. I've done several clean installs since (with the latest install files) and on different machines, and it just never worked.
 
Nenu said:
Well blow me, I'm an old hat Windows user and somehow didnt notice the shortcut key feature.
Perhaps it was so normal to see it that it became invisible.
Haha, cheers!
I might actually use it.
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It makes opening your most commonly used apps way faster once you remember the shortcuts you assigned to them. It's especially handy when using a bunch of benchmarks and stress tests when I have to reboot a lot and re-open them all over and over (of course a batch file is even quicker, but ya know lol).
 
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