Maximum PC

I just clean installed a fresh copy of Windows 8 Pro x64 earlier this month, and finding my way around. However, one of the things I recently expected out of the box was DVD Playback, since I'm a big Trekkie, and own almost all the series' from TOS all the way to Enterprise, and everything in between (I know, huge, and pricey hobby, but worth it). However, not only does Windows not include anything to automatically play them, but they don't support any official codecs anymore. Seems like now I have to ADD ON Media Center, and hope to receive an e-mail giving me the license key in which to do so (I assume since they're on holiday break for the New Year, I think the e-mail may wind up coming in tomorrow). Boy, for those that expected an "upgrade" from the Windows 7 experience, hoping and expecting the same bells and whistles when moving to Windows 8 right out of the box...heh, now I think Microsoft made me regret this upgrade.

I mean, there ARE still people that rely on optical media, not everyone has the highest speeds of broadband internet, nor has those massive HDDs to download movies or TV Series from whatever. Not to mention I can't imagine the time consuming process of converting DVDs to hard drive media, and how long I'd have to sit here waiting for a whole mess of TV Shows from the whole Star Trek franchise to be moving to a hard drive. Anyone else fed up with the lack of support on Microsoft's part to support optical media right out of the box? Too many workarounds, I tell ya, not to mention, too much expectation from the end-user for there to be a lot of the same features that are included right upon installation of previous flavors of Windows.

Because nobody likes it when Microsoft bundles anything with their OS, on the grounds of "monopoly!". Even though Apple has a good chunk of the market share and can include (and deny) anything they want to.

Just get Media Player Classic or VLC, they're better than WMP anyway.

Thinking about this, I have to wonder how much they're saving in royalty payments for the use of the tools needed to decode.

...and No,...stuff like that isn't free either.