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Vista won't play HD or Blu-Ray Discs

Meh.

You cant even really find ATM BluRay/HD-DVD drives for the computer that doesnt cost an arm and a leg, so its kinda pointless.
 
ReanimationLP said:
Meh.

You cant even really find ATM BluRay/HD-DVD drives for the computer that doesnt cost an arm and a leg, so its kinda pointless.
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It's not really pointless that XP Sp2 still can't play DVD's out of the box. You still need a 3rd party to do that.
 
jaxstate said:
What you talkin about willis?
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XP SP2 can't play DVDs out of the box. I bought a copy of XP Home for the Macbook and had to use an old copy of PowerDVD to play a dvd on it.

Meaning: It's no surprise Vista won't play BR/HDDVD, the question should be will Vista play DVDs out of the box.
 
I was just reading some posts on the Microsoft forums and some people were having problems playing commercial dvd's. One person said, it worked just fine, at least under the 64 bit Vista. I did read though that Vista will not support older dvd players. I think those dvd players are 6 to year old dvd players.
 
There is now a correction to the original article at:

http://www.apcstart.com/site/dwarne/2006/08/1147/we-were-wrong-about-hd-playback-in-vista-microsoft

The real deal is that no version of Windows Vista will make a determination as to whether any given piece of content should play back or not. The individual ISV providing the playback solutions will choose whether the playback environment, including environments that use 32-bit processors, meet the performance requirements for playback of protected High Definition content.
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Sounds like a mess.

seabass069 said:
I did read though that Vista will not support older dvd players.
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More on this:
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12873

7on said:
XP SP2 can't play DVDs out of the box. I bought a copy of XP Home for the Macbook and had to use an old copy of PowerDVD to play a dvd on it.
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The reason most people don't know this is that most Windows systems come preloaded with the appropriate MPEG-2 codec and a DVD Player suite.

B
 
Okay, so who is actually going to shell out money for this steaming pile of bloated inefficient antiquated code? 😕 😎
 
~Shard~ said:
Okay, so who is actually going to shell out money for this steaming pile of bloated inefficient antiquated code? 😕 😎
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the bigger question is: who's actually buying a blue-ray/hd-dvd player? i see no redeeming qualities in these devices or the format.
 
jhu, this time next year all we are going to here about is the HD or Blu-ray disc players. An HD player right now only costs about 5 to 6 hundred bucks. Companies are getting ready to ship out HD movies. Blu-ray players are more expensive. As long as Blu-ray players are more expensive, the general population is going to buy the cheaper HD player.
 
Licensing Issue

Having XP support DVDs out of the box means that Microsoft would have to increase the price of Windows to cover the licensing of the MPEG-2 codec or lower their profits. I remember the article many years ago. Microsoft wanted to have DVDs use their own Media Format because it was superior to MPEG-2.

The licensing costs is the reason why you have to use third-party products to support DVD playback on your Windows box.
 
seabass069 said:
As long as Blu-ray players are more expensive, the general population is going to buy the cheaper HD player.
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Perhaps, but there's a possible plus for Blu-ray if you're optimistic. A more or less average Joe who's doing a little consumer shopping but doesn't really know the specs of either platform sees the prices of HD-DVD and Blu-ray, and notes that Blu-ray is higher. Often the case seems to be that higher priced items generally have a reason for being higher priced, they're often better or of higher quality. Cars, speakers, monitors, etc. Joe isn't a techy who understands why higher DPI or digital input or whatever is better, but he's accustomed to seeing higher price come more features or higher quality make. So he sees Blu-ray being more expensive, probably too expensive, but it's registered that it must be somehow better. Maybe the prices are too high on both, so he waits.

Finally, both platforms have come down in price and are now about even. Joe remembers noting in the past that Blu-ray was for some reason better, and makes a purchase.

Now I'm not saying that HD-DVD isn't going to have a huge advantage with it's lower price. However, perhaps Blu-ray won't be completely driven out. There's still a fight going.


As for Vista - this OS hasn't seen a single piece of positive news in a long time. I'm not surprised to see this.
 
Average Joe sees HD tech still too pricey and postpones purchases until prices begin to come down. Average Joe doesn't care how good something is if it costs too much. That's the bottom line. Another fact is that Average Joe will be buying a HD-capable television first, and given that those are pricey too, most will only buy the TV for now.

And many are even waiting for the "full" HDTV feature even though the "HDTV-lite" would be just fine. They just know that there will be a full version soon enough, so they're not so keen in jumping to the lite-wagon.

That's how it is, sadly. Average Joe is informed about two different formats and because the devices are expensive, those two are very good reasons for him to not buy right now.

(Sadly, Average Joe has no problem buying a crappy 50-dollar SD-DVD player only to find out that it breaks soon after warranty has run out, and then buy another one. And another one. People just can't recognize quality anymore... Almighty price is everything today.)
 
JFreak said:
(Sadly, Average Joe has no problem buying a crappy 50-dollar SD-DVD player only to find out that it breaks soon after warranty has run out, and then buy another one. And another one. People just can't recognize quality anymore... Almighty price is everything today.)
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True true. However I have a $62 Progressive Scan DVD player that's worked fine for a few years and looks quite good with my HDTV. 🙂

Anyway.... there's no real reason to support HD-DVD or Blu-ray right now. Not only is it expensive, but there's little content. MS can always add that functionality in Vista SP1 or something.

And since when didn't XP support DVD playback out of the box??? WMP plays DVDs just fine. Well, I don't know what version ships with SP2, but I would be shocked if it couldn't play DVDs.
 
apfhex said:
And since when didn't XP support DVD playback out of the box??? WMP plays DVDs just fine. Well, I don't know what version ships with SP2, but I would be shocked if it couldn't play DVDs.
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MPEG-2 and DVDs have never been supported natively in Windows XP. You need a DVD decoder plugin, as described on the page: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/plugins.aspx

The reality is that most systems with Windows preloaded also come with a licensed DVD decoder, but if you buy Windows separately you don't get one.

B
 
7on said:
It's not really pointless that XP Sp2 still can't play DVD's out of the box. You still need a 3rd party to do that.
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No joke. I just reinstalled Windows SP1 on my old Toshiba laptop. I upgraded to SP2 and still can't get the thing to play DVDs. It is pi***** me off.
 
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