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Comment by mrec | Hacker News Reader

I set up a Win10 box recently and was kind of stunned to find that the built-in Media Player is now b0rked to the extent that it can't play media. Practically any media. Even with codec packs installed it won't play any of my hundreds of h264 DVD rips, it won't play the few WMVs I still have kicking around, it won't even play bloody MP3s. I think I found one weird-codec MP4 and a couple of ancient AVIs it deigned to accept, but that was it.

Or I can spend 30 seconds installing VLC and be 100% confident that it'll handle anything I throw at it. If I could fit a Lascaux cave wall into a USB port it'd play it.

Congrats to everyone involved in making this software. The world would be a sadder and more frustrating place without it.

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Software that lasts over 10 years should be celebrated. Software that is still just as relevant after 20 years is extraordinary. If VideoLAN were a startup, it'd be a unicorn.

VLC (and ffmpeg) are nearly singlehandedly keeping the world's media accessible. Otherwise, video would probably be a walled garden (subscribe to Adobe Cloud, share to Youtube, etc.).

>If VideoLAN were a startup, it'd be a unicorn.

Isn't VLC useful precisely because the interests of the devs and users are aligned? If it were a startup, they would have had to ruin it to continue

>If VideoLAN were a startup, it'd be a unicorn.

If it were a startup it would have been run in to the ground by VCs in the name of growth-or-die.

I built a win7 HTPC about 6 or 7 years ago after not having used windows in AGES, and it blew my mind how awful it was finding codecs. Learning to avoid spyware and viruses really does require practice, and when you haven't spent the past decade visiting sketchy download sites, you really lose an eye for what's what.

I still recoil at the thought of being told "no, that's a container, not a codec!"

TBH, I'm still surprised at how awful some video stuff is. I've actually had about 5 false starts trying to make Plex work, and I'm trying it again (yeah, I never learn). Now the codecs and transcoding and stuff works on modern hardware, but it simply refuses to index content that you don't rename to please the master. It's absolutely insane. Software designed to make your life harder, not easier. There's a reason I just point Kodi to a NAS share. (speaking of awful configs.... but at least it plays!)

I'd tell you to check out Emby, but if ya can't figure out Plex...

Related: Sonarr, CouchPotato, etc

I would tell you both to check out Jellyfin, the Free Software continuation of Emby.

https://jellyfin.org/

Thanks for the insult.

Talking about codecs and splitters, LAV Filters covers pretty much everything. It packs libavcodec and libavformat as DirectShow filters.

https://github.com/Nevcairiel/LAVFilters

Before that, there was FFDShow. Things weren't as mature nor complete back then, though.

Huh. I find that interesting - for myself, Plex worked immediately, out of the box, was incredibly easy to use, and has held up like a tank. I’m watching a show off it right now at the moment; actually!

I just installed the Server on my MacBook or Windows laptop, installed the Plex channel on my Roku stick, added two folders, one for films and one for TV Shows, and I have never looked back.

Not saying your experience couldn’t have been the exact opposite - I’m just wondering what particular issues you ran into? Plex is solid af for me.

It's similar to this:

https://forums.plex.tv/t/need-help-for-organizing-naming-aut...

And the characteristic response from a Plex user:

>Well that is going to be a problem. Plex has a proper Naming Convention 2 that it expects you to follow. As This particular set of videos is not part of TheTVDB.com's database, Id recommend you reformat it to something plex is going to recognise.

That just doesn't make me happy. I get that the Plex use case is "indexing downloaded TV shows and movies", but I find it annoyingly prescriptive.

You can use "Fix Match" when Plex doesn't link up certain titles. I also find Plex incredibly easy and believe you have quite a big ask for identification in a free to use and very robust media management system. It's like complaining that self-checkout at the grocery store doesn't "just know" what groceries you are buying while refusing to scan any of the barcodes. Further, this is for an unlimited inventory of items and not limited by any boundary of supplier, shelf space, or category.

I've also added FileBot to my routine which improves organization of media, but Plex usually does well with unmodified naming.

So actually, my gripe is that Plex refuses to show the content at all. I'm looking at Fix Match and it looks it's for incorrect matches, not content it refuses to index.

I recognize the perils of asking for the moon and stars from free software. The issue is, they chose to make it insanely featureful at the expense of Just Working :)

I'm not afraid of work; I've spent days across local and containerized solutions for downloading, proxying, and outputting. It's possible to rename files in my download software, I estimate it at about 1h additional effort. However, the content I most often download is not yet available, so I'm not investing the time in generating those rules. So far I've been just playing with content that doesn't justify the time investment in creating rules. For example, often this content is uploaded by different people in different file formats. There's no one renaming catchall until you know specifically which sets you want to use.

I never asked for automatic categorization or metadata retrieval or album art or IMDB links, but it's forced on you by Plex :)

I remember 'back in the day' anytime I would set up a friends PC I would go and download the latest version of "K-Lite Codec Pack Mega". And one day a friend told me about VLC and it changed my life (from a media-player standpoint).

Thank you VLC!!

But don't pick the latest Codec Mega Pack for there are bugs. Pick the version that you read on a forum works almost perfectly. It's the one prior to the one that's prior to the absolutely newest one. THAT one! Also download your preferred MKV codec, because it's not included in the mega pack. Because it's not a codec.

VLC, you saved most of my sanity. Whatever was left. Thank you.

Let's be honest here about our youths (or current lives): if we weren't consuming media compressed by hand tuned, artisanal release groups, things probably wouldn't be as hard.

To use a firearms metaphor -- when you're looking for the performance optimizations of wildcat rounds, don't expect to be able to buy at Walmart.

Have you tried playing a plain normal Blueray on windows without VLC?

VLC cannot play a majority of those because of DRM.

Though worth noting that VLC + AnyDVD HD just works there. Even if you don't have a Java installation you can still play the main feature, without menus. I was pleasantly surprised by that.

25 years ago, or so, Microsoft introduced the Windows Media Player, and it was impressive, because before that you needed a different player for every format. WMP went through a number of mutations, some better, some worse, but for the last 10 years or so, I've found it to be pretty useless. It fails on the most common formats, like you've described. Sometimes it's hard to find something it _will_ play.

VLC is my media player of choice. It. Just. Works.

I have not run Windows in any serious capacity in about 12 years, but I don't remember Windows Media Player being that bad, and I thought that Windows now had a license to H264 built in, so I'm actually a bit surprised that a rip wouldn't work. Any idea what the issue was?

No idea. I'd been using Win 7 before that where Media Player mostly managed fine (probably with codec packs). VLC had audio glitching issues on that box but doesn't on the new one, so I quickly lost patience with trying to debug MP. Diagostics and codec help links are utterly useless.

Are you sure you didn't tried Windows 10 N? It's a specific version for Europe, it comes without codecs.

Good question, but pretty sure. Settings > System > About > Windows Specifications just shows generic "Windows 10 Pro" as the edition.

Also, AFAICT the N edition doesn't have Media Player at all, it doesn't just gut the codecs.

Yeah, just found it weird because Windows does have x264 codec, and obviously mp3 since ages.

Went to play a mkv file and it wanted me to pay $1.99 for a codec. I had and prefer vlc but I'm also lazy. Unless given a reason I was not gonna switch my default program. That was reason enough.

I gave up using anything other than VLC long before you did. [I'm not trying to play a trump card here, I'm saying you had a lot more patience on this than I did].

What did me in was realizing the insanity of installing the "Gordian Knot Codec Pack" (or whatever it was called back then) every time I refreshed my OS ... and hoping it would work. That did work for a little while until the traffic cone finally opened my eyes and I never looked back.

set up a Win10 box recently and was kind of stunned to find that the built-in Media Player is now b0rked to the extent that it can't play media.

Weird. I've basically ended up only using the Win10 default media player since it handles basically everything I throw at it with at least as good performance as VLC, even on a pretty low power Surface Pro.

> Or I can spend 30 seconds installing VLC and be 100% confident that it'll handle anything I throw at it.

I have a bunch of video files that VLC used to play with no problems. But it can't anymore.

I use mpv now.

Really? What format were they in?

Awful story without that detail.

Why? What would knowing the format contribute?

Well, for one there may be VLC people on this thread who'd know whether this was an unintentional regression.

Knowing whether it's the format or your setup.

And the slew of obvious reasons.

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