14 DAY TRIAL // The next major iteration of Windows will not include Dolby DVD playback technologies as Windows 7 does today.
Dolby Laboratories confirmed this detail officially, although Microsoft hasn’t provided any information on the matter.
It’s unclear how exactly a Dolby-less Windows 8 will impact customers, or if users will be affected in any way.
The Redmond company did promise that Windows 8 will continue to support software and hardware designed to play nice with Windows 7, but the software giant said nothing about media content.
“We work with operating system providers, ISVs and OEMs to support DVD on the PC. In recent years, our mix of PC licensing revenue has increasingly shifted towards the operating system as our technologies are included in 4 editions of Windows 7,” Dolby revealed. (via The Tech Trade) “However, we have recently learned that our technologies are not currently included in the Windows 8 operating system under development.”
It’s critical to note that even if Microsoft has dropped support for Dolby technologies from the next version of Windows, there are solutions designed to circumvent the software giant.
With the vast majority of Windows 8 copies shipping on new OEM machines, Dolby can simply work with Microsoft partners in order to provide their DVD playback technologies to users.
In fact, this seems to be the plan, according to Dolby:
“If our technologies are not included in the commercial version of Windows 8, we expect to support DVD playback functionality by increasingly licensing our technologies directly to OEMs and ISVs, and we will seek to extend our technologies to further support online content playback.
“It's important to note that DVD playback remains a fundamental component to most PC shipments worldwide. While we work with the industry to support DVD playback in its PC shipments, it is equally important that we continue to extend our formats to channels of delivery beyond DVD.
“This will help ensure the relevance of our technologies to the PC long term. By doing this, we believe we can help consumers receive a high-quality consistent playback experience on their PC regardless of which platform they consume their content from.”