14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 10 was launched last week, and in addition to the standard versions which most of us are already using, Microsoft also released N and KN versions, which come without a number of apps that enable multimedia features, including Windows Media Player and pre-installed media apps (Music, Video, Voice Recorder, and Skype).
So users who install one of these two particular Windows 10 versions also need to install the so-called Media Feature Pack in order to enjoy multimedia capabilities on the new operating system, and today Microsoft has released this add-on for download.
Basically, without the Media Feature Pack, on Windows 10 N and KN you won’t be able to use app sync, OneDrive and Photos cannot play videos, the webcam won’t work at all, sound recorder is limited to the WAV format, speech interaction with Cortana isn’t available, and PDF viewing in Edge is disabled.
Unsupported codecs
In addition to Windows Media Player and the other media-related pre-installed apps, Windows 10 N and KN also lack support for a number of audio and video codecs, such as MPEG, WMA, AAC, FLAC, ALAC, AMR, VC-1, MPEG-4, H.264, H.265, and H.263.
“Some websites and software, such as Windows Store apps or Microsoft Office, use Windows Media-related files that are not incorporated into these editions of Windows. Users can make these websites and software work correctly by installing the Media Feature Pack for N and KN editions of Windows 10,” Microsoft explains.
The Media Feature Pack is available for both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows 10 N and KN, so make sure you get the right one for your system. The 32-bit version has only 72.4 MB in size, while the 64-bit version weighs in a little bit more and has 108.9 MB.
Below is the download link for both versions (you can choose which one to download at the next screen):