Windows Media Player will live on for now, Microsoft says

Jul 8, 2015 11:47 GMT  ·  By

Windows 10 is indeed coming with a plethora of features, including a revamped UI and new apps, but there are two things that users are continuously asking for and that seem to be ignored by Microsoft for the time being: tab support for File Explorer and a new Windows Media Player.

If you have a look at the feedback that Microsoft received on these two features, it’s pretty clear that they’re both options that could improve the experience in Windows 10, and that’s why thousands of users are asking the Redmond-based tech giant to introduce them in the new OS.

The Windows Media Player suggestion alone has nearly 5,000 votes in the Windows Feedback app, but for the moment, the software giant doesn’t seem to be willing to introduce a new application to allow users to watch videos or listen to their music on PCs and tablets.

“We need a new Windows Media Player. Most people install other players like MPC and VLC because of the lack of codec support and features. WMP should have a playlist that can be detached as a separate window,” the feature suggestion reads.

“There is a host of codecs it doesn’t support and although it now supports MKV, its level of support is very basic. It doesn’t support multiple audio streams and so far I’ve yet to be able to display subtitles.”

“Some” new features being added

Windows Media Player will live on in Windows 10, there’s no doubt about it, and unfortunately for users who expected to get a more powerful solution for managing and playing multimedia files, it won’t get any big improvements.

It will, however, receive some tweaks, including native support for FLAC and MKV, but that’s all about it, so in Windows 10, third-party software might still be needed for truly powerful multimedia playback experience.

Windows Media Player has received only few updates in the last few years, so it’s no surprise that so many users expect a significant makeover. Unfortunately, there is no plan to revamp WMP for this first release of Windows 10, but there’s still hope that a future update will bring enhanced functionality.

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