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  • Gigaplex - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    "we changed our approach to media codecs to enable us to get more codecs to consumers faster"

    “Customers who upgrade to the FCU on compatible hardware will get HEVC. For new devices that do not include HEVC, it will be available soon through the Microsoft Store. It may take a day or two after the upgrade to FCU for the codec to get installed.”

    I'm not sure how removing something we already have, and then making us wait a day or two for it to magically show up after the upgrade is us getting something we already have faster.
  • beginner99 - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    This is known as management logic.
  • 0ldman79 - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    Those two words together in a sentence is dangerously close to some kind of "end of times" witchcraft.
  • designgears - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    for the first one sure, but in the future they will just be added to the store without having to wait for it to be rolled into an update.
  • taltamir - Saturday, July 21, 2018 - link

    That MS exec is actually from bizzaro world. So when he says bizzaro "faster" he actually means slower

    Incidentally. This had several other issues:
    1. Customers now need to manually install the codec pack from MS.
    2. All software that used it needs to be modified to work with the new codec pack as it is now packaged differently.
    3. The 32bit codec is flat out broken. only the 64bit codec actually works as of july 21st 2018
  • quielo - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    Effecieny?
  • boozed - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    "Effeciency" hahaha
  • boozed - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    Oh god, I even stuffed up transcribing the stuff up.

    "Effecieny"
  • Ryan Smith - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    This is the problem when we put too much trust into stock logos...

    Fixed!
  • boozed - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    It was fun while it lasted!
  • speculatrix - Saturday, December 9, 2017 - link

    Fixed, but the broken version lives on in my rss feed :-)
  • Hurr Durr - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    So that's what it was downloading regularly for a week.
  • leo_sk - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    Is there any chance if an open source standard (looking at av1) can become mainstream?
  • Ryan Smith - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    Given all of the licensing difficulties of HEVC, yes, there's a good possibility. The membership roster of the AV1 org is a who's who of tech companies.
  • brucethemoose - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    I'd say it's almost certain.

    Apparently, MPEG is so bad that MANY big tech companies decided it's cheaper to engineer around patents than pay for them. Some of them did so independently, noticed other efforts, then came together, hence AV1 was born as a giant "screw you MPEG!".

    Point is, unlike other efforts you may have seen fizzle out, there's alot of money behind AV1.
  • saratoga4 - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    Very possible that AV1 will succeed in replacing HEVC. The patent situation has made HEVC radioactive, and the industry is already looking at successors. By the time HEVC is sorted out (if it ever is), it may already be obsolete.
  • Alexvrb - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    Indeed. VP9 wasn't quite good enough to supplant HEVC. AV1 on the other hand (derived from VP10 plus some bits from Daala and Thor) looks to be shaping up as good or better than HEVC. Plus of course royalty free.

    Unfortunately it's not ready for prime time, I don't even think they have the bitstream locked down. But once they do get things finalized it should move faster than previous efforts, given the wide support.
  • colonelclaw - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    Call me paranoid, but this move *might* be setting the stage for a later move to start charging for the codec. Micro-transactions in an OS, whatever next?
  • Ian Cutress - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    They're called apps ;)
  • Valantar - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    Yep, and they've been around since... you could install apps on your OS, I suppose. So, the '80s?' 70s? Didn't use to be anything "micro" about the prices though. Freeware, open software and the mobile markets have changed that, for sure.
  • CaedenV - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    This is really interesting. I wonder if this has to do with win10S and the move away from traditional installers and moving everything to the store.
  • MrSpadge - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    "users of the Movies and TV app built into Windows 10 FCU or software relying on the OS decoders such as Plex will find HEVC videos playing back with a blank screen."

    That's a pretty bad and unspecific error message. The app should take the affected user to the codec pack in the store directly.
  • 29a - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    Or you could just install the K-Lite Codec pack and not have to wait on Microsoft to fuck around.
  • Hurr Durr - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    >KL

    I`d take my chances with MS any day before touching that turd. Or just go for MPC-HC.
  • kerbe - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    Can't locate the HEVC extension in the Store...
  • ganeshts - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    Did you click on the MS Store link in the article? It is not readily available via the Store Search, which is why we made it a point to link it explicitly in the article itself.
  • Wolfpup - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    I noticed that getting installed the other day! I think some other codecs too being downloaded I'd not seen handled in that way before.

    Seems like it would make sense.

    Fall Creator's Update broke my ability to playback MPEG2/TiVo/broadcast TV files through Movies & TV though. It still works through Windows Media Player, but that's lame/disturbing...
  • amaqjuaq - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    Doe anyone know how to bring up the debugging / logging screens like in the last screenshot of the post? I found a few old reddit threads concerning hidden Netflix menus, but nothing seems to display Bitrate or Resolution in such an obvious way.
  • ganeshts - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    Ctrl + Shift + Alt + D for debug information

    Ctrl + Shift + Alt + S for forcing / overriding bitrate
  • leexgx - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link

    cool cheat codes
  • Xajel - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link

    I think it's cheaper for them if they're paying a license for each device that plays HEVC, so not including it with the OS means they don't pay for every OS even if the user won't use it.. not to mention that they can update the codecs whenever they want without the need to update the whole OS.
  • snapch23 - Friday, December 29, 2017 - link

    We have seen the recorder for windows 10 here. http://screenrecorderwindows10.com
  • koditv - Monday, March 5, 2018 - link

    yaa after the windows fall update many decoders started malfunctioning and the Kodi tv was also a victim of that windows update, but the developers have worked with that and Kodi is now much better and robust this time, starting from the Kodi Krypton update don't worry update Kodi and it will work fine with Windows 10 fall creators update.
    https://crumbles.co/update-kodi/ visit the following link for instructions

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