Windows Media Player Is the Next App with a Target on Its Back

Megalith

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Some are beginning to believe that Microsoft may be retiring Windows Media Player, as users are getting a prompt to switch to the Movies & TV app when they launch WMP. The Movies & TV app supports more formats and claims better battery life but is still missing some basic functionality, such as queueing videos.

The UWP app boasts several advantages over the aging Windows Media Player, such as better compatibility with more video formats (including 4K), better battery life, a mini view and even the ability to watch videos in 360 degrees. The Redmond giant is citing these as a reason for users to move on.
 
Not surprised by that, but I can right click play with WMP and the video works. Half the videos I launch with Movies and TV don't have video. I don't mind switching if it's more or less the same, but I'm not switching if there is a huge regression. Unfortunately that seems to be the problem with a lot of the apps. At least the new calculator is pretty sweet!
 
I didn't know that this was an impending issue. I, like a lot of people here, use VLC or some other alternative to WMP. But I guess I have to agree that MS removing things is quite dickish. It wouldn't surprise me if MS at some point removes Start from Win10, just to offer a SuckerPlus! Pack for users to get it back, along with a shittier, ad-infested, version of their classic Pinball. Gotta monetize that shit, right?
 
I didn't know anyone used WMP, as there are far better alternatives such as VLC and MPC.

I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I've never found MPC to be even remotely as good as WMP. VLC is on par but I wouldn't say it has an advantage either. Well I'm disagreeing with everyone I may as well throw out that foobar is worse than WMP as well. The only 3rd party application that I really like was the one that really whips the llama's ass!
 
bman212121, please un-confuse me about foobar, or whatever.
 
ya wmp is awesome. imo mpc with madVR isn't even as good. vlc ui is a mega turd and after you install it your whole computer looks like it dropped little traffic cone turds all over it.
 
Unless windows now has nothing that opens when you try to open a video on a fresh copy of windows, this is basically a non-story.

As long as something takes it's place for people who don't know any better, who cares?

MPC-BE is far better.
 
First ICQ...then Winamp...and now this?!

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I never used wmp. I felt that it was to intrusive and that big brother MS was watching me. Yes I know I could shut processes down. I have used VLC from its inception days. Than VLC was having some problems with some extensions and was slow to react and I became a convert to Potplayer, never looked back.
 
IMHO, Neither VLC nor MPC-BE are better than Media Player.

MPC-BE's UI is terrible. Finding the shuffle option is not intuitive at all.

Browsing your media library is far easier in Media Player than either MPC-BE or VLC. Media Player plays 4K video noticeably smoother than VLC.

Microsoft has been just itching to tear down the past. The problem is, things like Media Player have been refined for decades and work really well and they try to replace them with apps that aren't nearly as functional.

At work, we use Media Player for some digital signage machines. We have a Quantum Azulle stick PC plugged into TV's and a batch file that runs a playlist of videos full screen at startup. I doubt I can use batch files with the Videos & TV app to do the same. I can with VLC, but 4K videos are not that smooth with it. I've seen that on several PC's. Heck, Microsoft's new video player doesn't even play the h.265 videos I create from Drone Footage.
 
Media Player has good library feature but MPC-HC with a properly tuned MadVR with a good video card has far superior picture quality.
 
bman212121, please un-confuse me about foobar, or whatever.
The UI was always incredible bad on that program, and afaik it doesn't have simple features like 1 click CD ripping. I don't use playlists so right click "add to WMP queue" is always the way I play files. I can't say as I've tried foobar in about a decade, so maybe it sucks less now. I really couldn't tell you anymore but if I had to guess foobar also didn't have an automatic download of cd information at the time, so you had to go through a few hoops to get it to display info. WMP has always just worked with almost no configuration needed.
 
WMP would literally be the last media player I'd use. For Movies I'd use Kodi. For random videos, MPC/VLC or whatever the default media player in Windows 10 is (which works remarkably well and handles Dolby Digital without any futzing around, which isn't always the case with VLC/MPC).
 
What all the "I never used WMP anyway cuz XYZ third party player was better" posts are missing is that this isn't about the old built in Win32 programs being the best around. It's that Windows 8 and 10 have been a slow, creeping erosion of replacing the old, basic but reliable programs (WMP, Paint, Photo Viewer etc) with crappy, cellphone UWP apps that are buggy and don't even have half the features.

It's just very hard to imagine any product manager at MS pointing to any UWP app that ships with 10 and declaring "We're really proud of that, it really is our best work".

Alas, shoehorning cellphone apps onto the desktop was only ever supposed to be a means to an end - a shortcut to mobile relevance. But now that wmobile is dead, there's no more reason for UWP to exist, since all it does is disrespects desktop users.
 
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Fuck. Having to rely on Groove Music in a corporate environment is embarrassing. We default everyone to WMP for when they need to listen to their voicemails and what have you...

No reason to remove it.
 
What all the "I never used WMP anyway cuz XYZ third party player was better" posts are missing is that this isn't about the old built in Win32 programs being the best around. It's that Windows 8 and 10 have been a slow, creeping erosion of replacing the old, basic but reliable programs (WMP, Paint, Photo Viewer etc) with crappy, cellphone UWP apps that are buggy and don't even have half the features.

It's just very hard to imagine any product manager at MS pointing to any UWP app that ships with 10 and declaring "We're really proud of that, it really is our best work".

Alas, shoehorning cellphone apps onto the desktop was only ever supposed to be a means to an end - a shortcut to mobile relevance. But now that wmobile is dead, there's no more reason for UWP to exist, since all it does is disrespects desktop users.

I was thinking the same. I hate, HATE all those metro, modern, uwp or whatever they are called apps. They have ugly UI, lack functionality and just feel wrong. I guess that's because they are no proper desktop programs, but as you say, cellphone apps.

The first thing I do on any Win10 installation is remove all those crappy apps with a script, then restore classic paint and windows photo viewer, and install a proper browser and media player, and of course, classic shell. And then O&O Shutup 10 to disable all spy settings and disable forced updates and all the nagging features.
 
I was thinking the same. I hate, HATE all those metro, modern, uwp or whatever they are called apps. They have ugly UI, lack functionality and just feel wrong. I guess that's because they are no proper desktop programs, but as you say, cellphone apps.

The first thing I do on any Win10 installation is remove all those crappy apps with a script, then restore classic paint and windows photo viewer, and install a proper browser and media player, and of course, classic shell. And then O&O Shutup 10 to disable all spy settings and disable forced updates and all the nagging features.

Classic Shell is no longer in active development as of December 2017, check the site. Microsoft kept deliberately breaking the necessary under-the-hood bits for it and the dev got tired of dealing with it.

Media Player Classic is abandoned now, too. The Windows desktop is slowly dying. I've been mostly using VLC for media playback since I switched over to Linux, it gets the job done.
 
Classic Shell is no longer in active development as of December 2017, check the site. Microsoft kept deliberately breaking the necessary under-the-hood bits for it and the dev got tired of dealing with it.

Media Player Classic is abandoned now, too. The Windows desktop is slowly dying. I've been mostly using VLC for media playback since I switched over to Linux, it gets the job done.
Classic shell still works though, so no big deal.
Yeah, soon we will need touch screens as they will do away with the mouse.
 
Media Player Classic! been my go to for many many years (ever since VLC went to crap with fast forwarding and screwing up other crap years back, never looked back)
 
Media Player Classic! been my go to for many many years (ever since VLC went to crap with fast forwarding and screwing up other crap years back, never looked back)

It's no longer in active development. I don't know if it'll keep working once Microsoft kills off DirectShow support or if it can run independently, but one way or another it will die from the appification of Windows.
 
What all the "I never used WMP anyway cuz XYZ third party player was better" posts are missing is that this isn't about the old built in Win32 programs being the best around. It's that Windows 8 and 10 have been a slow, creeping erosion of replacing the old, basic but reliable programs (WMP, Paint, Photo Viewer etc) with crappy, cellphone UWP apps that are buggy and don't even have half the features.

It's just very hard to imagine any product manager at MS pointing to any UWP app that ships with 10 and declaring "We're really proud of that, it really is our best work".

Alas, shoehorning cellphone apps onto the desktop was only ever supposed to be a means to an end - a shortcut to mobile relevance. But now that wmobile is dead, there's no more reason for UWP to exist, since all it does is disrespects desktop users.

I agree with the first half, but don't necessarily agree with the 2nd half. UWP apps to actually serve a purpose and have several advantages to them. #1 first and foremost is automatic UI scaling. Try using RDP on a 4K screen and have it refuse to scale your client properly. Half of the stuff is so small you'll have a heck of a time reading it. The other big thing that everyone always complained about was the lack of a universal updater. The UWP does just that, and gives you one place to get automatic updates to all of your apps. They can even skirt around the fact that your paid apps can be put into an automatic updater. The one thing that would probably put everyone at ease is if they followed the Steam model where I can buy a Steam compatible game from several places, and just punch in the code and go. If you could do that for UWP purchases I think a lot less people would be worried about vendor lock in. (It would also give you that advantage you have with Steam where you can shop for the best price)

There is no reason why a UWP app couldn't be comparable to a desktop one, I think the main issue stems from the fact that if they rewrite an application, it's going to take a while for it to reach feature parity. That's fine, but it also poses that issue that the replacements just aren't up to snuff with the old faithful stuff. WMP has to be replaced by 2 apps, and they are still missing WMP features. I haven't lost faith in UWP, but it definitely still needs some more time to mature.
 
music playlists on WMP .

music on VLC , MPC with their UI is not intuitive. Playing long format vids are fine though
 
out of all the media players, WMP was the least intrusive on the audio formats.

I have appreciation for all the major players, such as VLC or MPC but I can't say I like any of them more than the other. I use all 3, nothing about WMP to say its a bad program, but MS is right to remove it as Movie and TV app is pretty damn good too.
 
What all the "I never used WMP anyway cuz XYZ third party player was better" posts are missing is that this isn't about the old built in Win32 programs being the best around. It's that Windows 8 and 10 have been a slow, creeping erosion of replacing the old, basic but reliable programs (WMP, Paint, Photo Viewer etc) with crappy, cellphone UWP apps that are buggy and don't even have half the features.

It's just very hard to imagine any product manager at MS pointing to any UWP app that ships with 10 and declaring "We're really proud of that, it really is our best work".

Alas, shoehorning cellphone apps onto the desktop was only ever supposed to be a means to an end - a shortcut to mobile relevance. But now that wmobile is dead, there's no more reason for UWP to exist, since all it does is disrespects desktop users.
What are you talking about? Movies and TV is a perfectly fine app and I didn't even know it was a Cell Phone app (assuming it is). I'd have to go back to Vista (maybe even XP) for the last time I used WMP, because it just didn't play enough stuff. Movies and TV, OTOH, plays almost everything I throw at it (which granted is only occasionally), but most MKVs work and those that don't often fail in MPC too, but VLC generally can play those.
 
generally speaking if you have the codec's downloaded than WMP can play just about anything.
 
For those serious with sound and video here is a suggestion https://www.jriver.com

When I mean serious I mean sound convolution (FIR filters) and tweaking with calibrated measurement equipment. Great image quality and tweaking options as well along with a database system for storing and handling huge ( 000s) collections of music files BDs & UHDBD.

It has a learning curve though.
 
I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I've never found MPC to be even remotely as good as WMP. VLC is on par but I wouldn't say it has an advantage either. Well I'm disagreeing with everyone I may as well throw out that foobar is worse than WMP as well. The only 3rd party application that I really like was the one that really whips the llama's ass!

I still use WinAmp almost every day for listening to music and I still have archives of almost every version from the first release to the last! Actually spoke with Justin Frankel at one point many years ago when we were trying to get him to license his MP3 integer decode routines to us for a project that had a super wimpy Cyrix MediaGX processor.
 
I haven't used WMP since the first time I installed VLC player.

The last time I used Windows Media Player was version 6.4. Oddly enough, it wasn't long after that I was using Media Player Classic and have been using that through different iterations since, at least on Windows.
 
WMP can play 4k content, you just need the right codecs installed, but I usually use VLC or MPC-HC now days. The new Microsoft app is probably some horrible metro app.
 
I'll never use the Movies & TV app.

I personally only use Windows for games, but if it were my primary OS, I'd just install VLC before using that Movies & TV garbage.
 
I'll never use the Movies & TV app.

I personally only use Windows for games, but if it were my primary OS, I'd just install VLC before using that Movies & TV garbage.
To each his own. I've had a few times where my Kodi install got messed up and while VLC's and MPC's default install couldn't do 5.1 Movies and TV could. In the end, I use whatever works. 99% of the time, that's Kodi. And yes, I know I can install codec packs to get MPC/VLC to do my bidding when that happens, but why bother when I can just open it in M&T?
 
To each his own. I've had a few times where my Kodi install got messed up and while VLC's and MPC's default install couldn't do 5.1 Movies and TV could. In the end, I use whatever works. 99% of the time, that's Kodi. And yes, I know I can install codec packs to get MPC/VLC to do my bidding when that happens, but why bother when I can just open it in M&T?
When looked at my app usage I’m almost over 80% on Movie and TV now, I didn’t realize it. It’s just so much better at pulling media from my media drive. Less issues too, VLC has some terrible bugs. Don’t think M&TV has randomly crashed in the middle of a movie yet.
 
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