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In the specs in the section "Feature deprecation" (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-specificat...) Microsoft mentions that removal and that eligible Windows versions will get a free DVD player app after the Upgrade.

Has anybody seen that Microsoft's free DVD player app for Windows 10?

What's actually "a limited time (the “eligible period”)" they talk about? (all the quotes from your link http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-specificat... ):

"For a limited time (the “eligible period”), on systems upgraded to Windows 10 from one of these older versions of Windows (a “qualified system”), a DVD playback app (“windows DVD player”) will be installed."

And I've actually paid for the Media Pack upgrade. It goes away now for sure:

"Windows Media Center will be removed."

Probably the one year free upgrade window.

Seems to be different, nothing else mentions such limits.

> Note that the upgrade will remove your Windows built-in DVD player.

That's bonkers. Ok, it was never a great player and every half-decent geek uses VLC or better, but still, plenty of people use MediaPlayer every day.

Tech support hotlines will be overwhelmed by furious customers.

Windows 10 still supports music and video playback just fine, through applications called Xbox Music and Xbox Video:

"Xbox Video supports all the video files you’ve probably been downloading the VLC Media Player desktop app to watch."

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2015/01/25/windows-10-vs-window...

But not the DVD playback, which has to be licensed additionally. Being the person who also legally bought the DVDs (all of them are DRMd nowadays) it really hurts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Scramble_System

To which I already replied in the same thread - use VLC which decodes CSS on the fly, unless you live in a country that doesn't believe in your freedom to play legally purchased content and prohibits doing that(United States of America).

Of course, it would be nice if Windows 10 just included that and saved everyone the trouble.

It's not only the US, see the post from the user noinsight here.

If you upgrade from a version that supported DVD playback rather than do a fresh install, the DVD playback will still be there.

Why can't I just play my media (which I paid for) on my hardware (which I paid for) in "normal" software (which... I thought I paid for). Instead I have to have the Xbox brand shoved in my face at every opportunity?

Nobody is forcing you to upgrade. If you bought Windows 7 and have it on disc you can keep using it, even without installing any updates, ever! Then you can continue enjoying IE7, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Centre - all of which you paid for. But if you want to upgrade to a new version which doesn't have those "features" - then it's your choice. It's not mandatory, nobody is shoving anything in your face.

Windows 7 comes with IE8 by default, IIRC, and you can upgrade it to 11.

WMP was never a great player, but at least it would ship the necessary DVD-reading machinery as well as a license for using it legally.

I don't find it very different from having the "Windows" brand shoved in my face with Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows Internet Explorer (formerly) etc. or the "Microsoft" brand shoved in my face with Microsoft Office, Microsoft Internet Explorer (formerly)... the OS is made by Microsoft, I expect to see mentions to Microsoft's properties and trademarks.

It would be like that if you were running these apps on an Xbox. But when you are running a PC, it doesn't make sense to brand them with Xbox branding unless they are services specifically related to the Xbox (e.g., Xbox Live account management or something). Otherwise it sounds like a weak attempt at cross-branding.

> Instead I have to have the Xbox brand shoved in my face at every opportunity?

I know this isn't your point, but you might be happy to learn that Xbox Music and Xbox Video have been renamed in Windows 10 to "Groove Music" and "Video", respectively. According to Microsoft, most users thought "I don't have an Xbox, why would I want to use Xbox Music?" — so they rebranded those apps.

Yes another good reason to switch to Mac. None of my current Macs have DVD drives, so I simply don't have to deal with this problem ;)

> DVD Player doesn't work, better throw this laptop out and spend $1k on a new one. Oh well…

You should have read to the end. Clearly a joke.

The amount straw grasping I've seen when people try to justify their purchases leaves me unable to tell anymore.

Me too. I'm constantly surprised by the amount of Stockholm Syndrome reminding behavior in the tech world. I'm not sure if this behavior is more common in this world or I see it more because that's the bubble I'm living in. Watching people bending backwards to rationalize their irrational decisions never ceases to confuse me.

I know you're joking, but your Mac, even without an optical drive, will still play a DVD if you connect a drive (networked, USB etc).

Indeed. My first draft of the post was along the lines that my Macs can all play DVDs just fine, er, except none of them have DVD drives anyway so....

It's the times we live in. All* the PCs have DVD drives they can't use, and all the Macs can play DVDs just fine except they don't have drives.

* Warning. No actual All intended.

VLC plays DVDs just fine for free, by decoding CSS on the fly. One might argue that that "The right to play DVDs must be paid for every computer" but I have never signed such agreement with anyone, ever. If I legally bought a DVD then I can legally watch it - maybe in US people would argue that decryption of a legally bought DVD is "hacking" but fortunately I don't live in that beautiful country.

It's probably/usually inclusive in your OS or computer purchase

> I have never signed such agreement with anyone, ever

Until Windows 8, Microsoft did this for you behind the scenes. From Windows 8 onwards, Microsoft stopped doing it; you could either pay them to do it again, or OEMs would do it for you.

With 10, Microsoft just won't do it. I expect OEMs will still do it on new devices, but upgrades are anybody's guess.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-specificat...

    For a limited time (the “eligible period”), on systems upgraded to Windows 10 from one of these older versions of Windows (a “qualified system”), a DVD playback app (“windows DVD player”) will be installed.

They aren't stealing anything from you, and they're not causing it to be "for ever deleted."

I just checked with my Windows 7 Ultimate machine I upgraded this morning and sure enough, I have a Windows DVD Player there. Like many users, I have no DVD drive and no DVDs, so I can't confirm it works.

Also, Windows 8 didn't come with a DVD license, you had to buy it separately as part of the "Pro Pack" or "Media Center Pack." The base editions of Windows 7 (below Home Premium) also didn't include one.

Honest question - who cares? Someone actually used the built-in media player? Step 1 for me on any new desktop/workstation install (regardless of OS) is to install VLC.

I have to believe the number of people who actually use that can be counted in the tenths of a percent of their user base.

Among people I know, I can think of a few who rent DVDs from Redbox and watch them on their laptops (we're out in the country, so the internet isn't fast enough for streaming video). They're not technically adept enough to know that they would need something like VLC after this update.

I would care if tbe Xbox one, which will soon be on Windows 10, stopped playing DVDs. But I don't think this would be the case, there is probably a specific player for it.

You're correct on the latter point; the Media Center functionality (not to be confused with Media Player) was used by very few.

That said, if you have cable TV in the US, it was the best way to use your own hardware to watch cable TV.

Can you not use VLC or MPC?

It's not about what "can" be done, you can also install the pirated software too, the thing is, by buying legally Windows 7 or Windows 8 Media Pack or Ultimate I have really paid the DVD playback functionality to Microsoft as well as the other features I've mentioned.

Also read about the legality aspects of the Microsoft's DVD solutions up to now and of the open-source DVD players:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/if-vlc-can-ship-a-free-dvd-play...

I don't get it... are you complaining that you were revoked a license to a software that came bundled with windows?

http://www.windowscentral.com/windows-media-center-gets-laid...

"Microsoft confirmed to ZDNet that Windows Media Center is indeed finished, and users who upgrade to Windows 10 will no longer see it."

http://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-will-include-option...

"In a statement on his Twitter account, Windows Insider leader Gabriel Aul provided this tidbit of news:

"The main scenario people used WMC for was to play DVD. We'll provide another option for DVD playback in the future."

Exactly what this option will be, and if it might be free or if it will cost Windows 10 users extra, has yet to be announced."

Why wouldn't someone complain about a reduction in functionality in software they paid for? Do you somehow feel that's out of line?

It's not only that Microsoft removes the features, they also don't tell you clearly they'll remove them but they put almost "malware-like" request on your system for which you already paid to them to "just upgrade it's safe."

> they also don't tell you clearly they'll remove them

Yes they do. The upgrade assistant warns you during the upgrade process[0] and specifically has you confirm it.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/ekSbGOL.jpg

In the EU, Microsoft sells the N edition [http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows7/products/what-is...], Windows sans Media Player. Thus, if you have selected the normal version, you are actually paying for Media and DVD playing capabilities.

The pricing is exactly the same, nor was the rationale ever to provide an edition for people who don't need a DVD player. You can still download and install those components freely after installing the OS.

The rationale for it was an anti-competition lawsuit brought by the EU.

The pricing may be the same, you may even be able to download the components, but the difference exists and there is choice to select something without.

They may have been forced to do it, but you are paying for a product WITH media player, same price or not.

Yes but you do not have to upgrade to Windows 10 and they made it pretty clear they removed these softwares (it warned me when they proposed the update). This is unfortunate but I don't think Microsoft has been evil here.

Where is the warning being displayed? As far as I've seen you can click through the dialogs without seeing it.

"you do not have to upgrade to Windows 10"

Everyone has to stop using that as an excuse. It doesn't even make sense & it's myopic. Obsolescence is built into Windows. If you want to continue being safe using Windows you NEED to upgrade. You can choose not to upgrade, but it's at your detriment.

It's a choice until it's not.

Sure it is a choice. You absolutely need the DVD player...don't upgrade now. Maybe by the time you need it, the functionality will be restored. Regardless, it is a choice you can make. Don't be entitled.

"Don't be entitled."

entitled -- to give (a person or thing) a title, right, or claim to something

I spent my money, I can be entitled. Besides this isn't just about libdvdcss. There are many withdrawn features and anti-features included.

> I spent my money, I can be entitled.

No, you didn't. You spend $0 on Windows 10.

You spent money on Windows 7 and you can continue to use that without restriction.

You absolutely are acting entitled for something which is free.

If it was 2020 you might have a point, since that's when they'll end-of-life Windows 7. But it is 2015, you can use Windows 7 with Media Center and your DVD codec for the next five years.

Honestly I get the strong sense we wouldn't even be having this discussion if Windows 10 was NOT free i.e. if it costs $100. Since then people would simply not feel compelled to upgrade, instead it is free for a limited period, so people feel compelled and are now complaining about being "forced" to.

The reality is you can use Windows 7 until 2020. Just go ahead and do that then.

And according to everyone else, if you paid for it as part of either of those, it's still fucking there.

You can use VLC. After your comment, I wasn't sure why that was the case. Apparently:

> Neither French law nor European conventions recognize software as patentable (see French section below). Therefore, software patents licenses do not apply on VideoLAN software.

From http://www.videolan.org/legal.html

But see also this (on the same page) if you're using VLC in the US:

"libdvdcss

libdvdcss is a library that can find and guess keys from a DVD in order to decrypt it. This method is authorized by a French law decision CE 10e et 9e soussect., 16 juillet 2008, n° 301843 on interoperability.

NB: In the USA, you should check out the US Copyright Office decision that allows circumvention in some cases."

Ah interesting! I missed that.

That is actually illegal in Finland because it's illegal to circumvent the copy protection. Technically you need a licensed player. A few people have turned themselves in for watching a DVD on Linux and they received a token fine.

How much is the fine?

It's hard to find working links for old stuff (this was in ~2007), but...

The law made "organized discussion" about breaking copy protection illegal so they also created a website with the title "organized discussion" and displayed code for breaking the protection and someone also paid 5 cents for it after which they turned themselves in :)

Apparently the lower courts acquitted them but that was reversed and the supreme court didn't take the case. So the end result is that it's illegal but they didn't receive any penalties. Apparently the European court of human rights didn't accept the case either.

http://mjr.iki.fi/eucd/ (discussed here in Finnish)

http://www.digitoday.fi/yhteiskunta/2008/05/26/dvdn-katselu-... (news article about it)

Heh, nice. Thanks!

I'm pretty sure it's illegal to circumvent the copy protection in the US, as well.

I'm no expert in US law but this US copyright office decision suggests that it's legal in some cases: http://www.copyright.gov/1201/

The case here seems more related to the MPEG patents though.

My brain went to DeCSS, which, weirdly, the DVD licensing company lost because enough people had (illegally?) published it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_Copy_Control_Ass%27n,_Inc....

I think there was also the Sony jailbreaking guy who settled with Sony out of court.

I'm pretty sure it isn't (anymore) in all cases or it would run afoul EU Directive 2001/29 (see also the ECJ Nintendo case of 2014).

> That is actually illegal in Finland because it's illegal to circumvent the copy protection.

How do you not circumvent the copy protection to read a DVD?

(See my various talks about libdvdcss)

It's probably not circumvention if you're using a licensed reader/player.

(disclaimer: I wrote that page :) )

Well, there are 2 legal parts that apply here: - DRM - software patents.

Software patents for DVDs are almost all over (it's a 20 year old technology). And in Europe, we don't have valid software patents.

On the DRM part, libdvdcss is not DeCSS, it's either finding the right key or brute-forcing to find the right key. In order to play a DVD, you need to "open" the DRM, else you cannot have playback.

In the case of VLC+libdvdcss-bundle, it's usually fine in (sane) juridictions because it's a player, not violating the copyrights holders. On some other, it's illegal.

The underlying motivation of the encryption on DVD's goes beyond preventing piracy. It's about making sure you cannot skip past the ads at the start of the movie. They needed a mechanism to require all DVD players to respect the flags on a DVD that say "this cannot be skipped", and did that by pushing it into the 1996 WIPO treaty that you must have anti-circumvention laws that prohibit people from breaking the encryption on copyrighted materials without the permission of the rights holder. Only licensed players are decrypting with permission. VLC is not a licensed player, so VLC often runs afoul of such laws.

Just because the patents expire doesn't make the anti-circumvention laws go away. Those laws only stop applying once the copyright on the DVD expires, in a century or so.

Well, those anti-circumvention laws, for example in Germany, only apply in some cases. For example, as soon as software is included on the CD, too, breaking the DRM becomes legal.

> And in Europe, we don't have valid software patents.

That is categorically untrue, and you should stop telling people that. In Europe, software is not patent-eligible "as such", but it is if it solves a technical problem.

The only thing that eliminates is "business method" patents, which are just a subset of what people generally refer to as "software patents".

I'm interested, could you please give an example?

There are plenty of patents listed at http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-att1.p..., http://mp3licensing.com/patents/ and http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/hevc/Documents/hevc-att1....

I upgraded to Windows 10 Home from Windows 7 Home Premium and I have a Windows DVD player installed.

RE DVD, they just rolled out a DVD app for those that used Media Center[1].

[1]: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_app...

As long as they left in pinball

You can always extract it from NT4, just run this in the i386 folder:

  EXPAND.exe PINBALL.IN_ C:\PINBALL.INF

Take the list of files from there, and expand them, ex.

  EXPAND.exe PINBALL.EX_ C:\PINBALL\PINBALL.EXE
  EXPAND.exe PINBALL.HL_ C:\PINBALL\PINBALL.HLP
  REM etc.

If you don't have an ISO at hand or if you prefer to avoid extracting/expanding the files: https://archive.org/details/pinball.7z

Backup was there in the last CTP. Assuming it's still there.

Note that the upgrade will remove your Windows built-in DVD player.

Windows 8.1 had no built in DVD player. Nor did Windows 7 Starter or Basic. Further, I suspect it's a feature that the vast majority of people have never used, exactly why Microsoft decided that they wouldn't subsidize the licensing for no reason. This is a very 2002 discussion.

Not that your point isn't valid -- at least for those users who ever actually tried playing a video DVD, and who had a supporting version of Windows -- it's just pretty odd that such a comment sits at the very top of an enormous technology event.

The Tesla doesn't come with a holder for my buggy whip.

> it's just pretty odd that such a comment sits at the very top of an enormous technology event.

Tech people like you and me love to nitpick. It's quite "logical", measurable, and it generalizes complex issues into nicely formatted bullet points.

> it's just pretty odd that such a comment sits at the very top of an enormous technology event.

What you call "an enormous technology event" I call a disaster, showing perfect "we don't care for the current users" attitude, even after the public demonstrated what it thinks about the "improvements" in Windows 8. The commenters here rightly point that the returned Start menu is even worse than it was during the tech preview. And I have actually paid for my copies of Ultimate and Pro with Media Center versions and I actually need the features I note are now quietly removed. It's your right that you don't need them, but I do need them and the people who consider installing 10 should know about it too.

Okay, so I hope others see your real motives.

Don't upgrade. You paid $0 for Windows 10, had absolutely no expectations about it when you apparently bought Windows 7, and now it's a "disaster" because an unused feature was openly and clearly removed. Give me a break.

This sort of "take a shit on everything" attitude is one of the worst facets of HN, and your comments in particular exemplify them. Don't upgrade. Move on.

Or upgrade and download VLC.

VLC, in my experience, plays 90%+ of DVDs perfectly (actually better, since now everything is skippable and you get significantly more rendering options than any other player).

The few DVDs which malfunction are typically published by Disney in the last few years and contain DRM specifically designed to break unlicensed players. VLC have been very active in fixing these issues, and have in many cases.

But if people plan on using VLC just be aware that the rare DVD won't work well or at all. Still the best DVD playing software I've used, including paid software.

As a user I have issues with Windows removing a built-in DVD player. I'm one of those dinosaurs who still watches his DVDs from his laptop. It was news to me and I appreciate that it was at the top.

But that's just the thing. They didn't remove it. I have literally never been able to play DVDs in Windows without installing third party codecs or programs.

All the DVDs I've bought which were marked as protected I've played on more legally bought Windows 7 and 8 computers without the 3rd party programs.

I've never had an issue playing on Windows 7 Media Player out of the box (I skipped 8 and 8.1 chaos).

"Windows 8 with Media Center" did contain DVD playing capability.

The Media Center addition was given to early adopters of Windows 8 for free.

DVD? What is that?

It's a technology that allows you to watch movies without an internet connection.

Yep, Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Back up and Restore (Windows 7)

Exact same old craptastic System Image backup stuff. Still can't only backup my C drive, got to include my TB's of bulk data on non-system drives too, grr.

So it's not improved but at least they haven't removed it. Thanks.

? On Windows 7, I can deselect non-system drives. Did that change on Windows 10?

The target drive on Windows 7 and 8 has to be at least the size of the previous one, which includes even the partitions which aren't copied. It seems nothing changed on 10 regarding that.

No, like I said, it's exactly the same. If it decides it's a system drive, you can't unselect it, and it's very easy to make something a "system drive" when it's really entirely non-critical (a drive with some games on it, for example).

I at least found the one tiny non-critical service I had installed from my downloads drive - a PS3 controller driver. Ironically having removed that, the drive in question is now impossible to include in a backup. WTF.

It's all very frustrating when you just want to make an image of a single drive.

This shouldn't be discussed.. We ALL ARE Linux/Unix Guys, Right?