Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs

Ugh... for the life of me I still can't understand why you can't click to play pause in VLC. Probably once upon a time it was about dvd, but the number of played dvds compared to pirated mk4 is probably one to a billion.

jesuslop• 1 month ago

Agreed, Media player classic is the Winamp of video.

tredre33• 1 month ago

It's nice to see that someone revived MPC-HC (again). For a while MPC-BE[1] was the alternative. I don't know how they compare today, but the latter is still great.

[1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/mpcbe/

foresto• 1 month ago

If mpv on Linux and MPC-HC on Windows, what is recommended on macOS?

applfanboysbgon• 1 month ago

MPC is better if you're on Windows.

AlienRobot• 1 month ago

PotPlayer is the new kid, I guess? Personally I don't like VLC because of the UI, so I've always used MPC.

snvzz• 1 month ago

Still vastly prefer mpv[0].

0. https://mpv.io

bl4kers• 1 month ago

IINA is much better on Mac

https://iina.io

herf• 1 month ago

HEVC used to be a capped license per organization, so not providing it in the OS seems really harmful and expensive. Has the cap changed recently?

t1234s• 1 month ago

M$ knows the laws will change in their favor requiring a gov ID to boot a computer. This is how they will get away with crap like this.

shaokind• 1 month ago

What? I can find at least one article from 2018 about HEVC being pay-walled? [0]

EDIT: Also, what do they mean by "new" Media Player? It shipped in 2022 [1]. This article is garbage. The source article [2] is fine.

[0] https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-now-charging-hevc-v...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Player_(2022)

[2] https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/06/16/microsoft-reveals-w...

ftchd• 1 month ago

So it started sucking almost a decade ago, checks out in my experience

fuzzfactor3• 1 month ago

The article mentions W11 24H2 but that might have been the only update the article had if it was first published much earlier. Might have even been an advance warning about AC-3 even before 24H2 was released.

Otherwise looks a bit deceptively like new findings just because the date at the top of the page says June 18, 2026 :\

somat• 1 month ago

Windows media player always sort of sucked. I remember when I discovered mplayer. What a breath of fresh air by comparison. ostensibly worse, with it's barely there user interface. But... all it did was play video, it would play anything, no more faffing about with installing codecs or different programs for different formats. No annoying ui that tried too hard to look like a piece of hi-fi gear.

I am not sure exactly what happened to it, it's maintainer moved on to other projects I imagine, it's current equivalent is probably mpv

XzetaU8• 1 month ago

A solution for AC-3 is to get Dolby Digital Plus decoder for PC OEMs from here:

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/dolby_ac_3ac_4_inst...

and then you recieve the latest update from windows store.

est31• 1 month ago

Removing HEVC support wasn't their choice but probably stems from the licensing pools increasing their prices [1].

Windows media player probably sees very little usage nowadays and probably even less for HEVC, when most content playback happens via streaming and browsers today.

As for the RAM increase, well that's probably a consequence of the general trend of doing frontend engineering via JS/TS instead of using OS native frontend APIs. The advantages are more on the development side of those apps, i.e. you can hire JS UI devs way more easily, and probably LLMs know way better how to deal with a react app than an UML one.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/04/lawsuits-licensing-a...

cf100clunk• 1 month ago

HEVC is provided by the official, licensed h265 standard. The open source ~HEVC-compliant codec library is x265 created by VideoLAN but was apparently not an option for Microsoft.

cornstalks• 1 month ago

x265 is an encoder, not a decoder. Also, being open source doesn't matter here: an open source library, even with a patent grant, doesn't give you a license to someone else's patents.

izacus• 1 month ago

VideoLAN wants you to pay the royalty for x265 and you'll get sued by patent pools if you use it in a company (and are big enough).

tredre33• 1 month ago

It's not about the code. The open source implementations are also subject to patent laws, they just ignore them and put the responsibility on the user. And users don't know/care about it so in the end they get playback for free.

That is why some distributions (RHEL derivatives, for example) do not ship support for many codecs out of the box and they make you jump to (admittedly simple) hoops to get it working.

winstonwinston• 1 month ago

Windows 11 is not free software. Apple macOS, iOS, ipadOS all support HEVC and Dolby because Apple pays licensing costs, likewise Microsoft should do the same for Windows users, it is not free OS.

VladVladikoff3• 1 month ago

I don’t recall ever having a good time using a native Mac OS video player.

pixelpoet• 1 month ago

The advantages are more on the development side of those apps, i.e. you can hire JS UI devs way more easily

Ah yes, we don't want Microsoft to run out of JavaScript developers to keep improving their desktop operating system in this manner. More webdevs, that's what's going to fix what ails Windows!

concinds• 1 month ago

'It's worse for our users, but easier for our developers' is an unacceptable tradeoff, they deserve the backlash.

cfiggers• 1 month ago

I mean... Yes, but there's nuance here.

Using 400 MB of RAM vs 100 MB of RAM is close to unnoticeable in a world of a GB+ for a single Chrome tab... And if "easier for our developers" means the end user is getting more regular updates with fewer critical issues, then it's not an uncomplicated tradeoff at all, parts of it are actually synergistic.

asdfasgasdgasdg3• 1 month ago

Very few users care about how much RAM their media player uses. The practical difference between 370MB and 100MB is basically nil for any normal workload. It affects nothing but how many unlikely-to-be-used files fit in the page cache.

vjvjvjvjghv• 1 month ago

'It's worse for our users, but easier for our developers'

That's how a lot of software gets done these days. More bloat, less features, lots of inconsistencies.

UqWBcuFx6NV4r• 1 month ago

You do not know what unacceptable means. Everyone that uses or buys Windows “accepts” it. What you mean is that you don’t agree.

duxup• 1 month ago

I don’t know if that really is any different than any other time.

breve3• 1 month ago

It's worse for our users, but easier for our developers

What's easiest for both users and developers is royalty-free video formats.

AV1 is solution to these video format licensing problems. Microsoft is part of the Alliance for Open Media: https://aomedia.org/about/members/

Dolby has made direct threats to the royalty-free status of AV1: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/av1s-open-royalty-fr...

So Microsoft and all the AOMedia members will need to defend AV1 if they want it to remain royalty-free.

stuaxo• 1 month ago

Especially for a company the size of Microsoft.

The programs shipped with the OS should be exemplary versions of each thing.

ncallaway• 1 month ago

The advantages are more on the development side of those apps

I mean, I agree, but Microsoft of all companies really should be invested in building Windows native applications. If they can't be fucked to build Windows-native applications, why would anyone else?

Microsoft should be setting the example, and the high bar of what Windows-native quality software should be. It's frankly embarrassing for them that they can't or won't do it.

GeekyBear• 1 month ago

If Google and Apple also decided to remove support for common video formats instead of just paying the slightly higher licensing fee, I might have some sympathy.

Microsoft thinks they have all the money in the world when it comes to wasting huge sums on mergers and acquisitions that go nowhere. Spend some on maintaining the user experience.

Also, with Dell and others releasing new Windows laptops with 8 Gigs of RAM, needless memory bloat is unacceptable.

kasabali2• 1 month ago

I believe, at this point they could direct AI to vibe rewrite every UI code written after 2010 in Win32 and MFC and the result would still be vastly better than crap they push us nowadays.

LtWorf3• 1 month ago

Probably there's not enough open source code to ~~steal~~ train the AI on for this to work. If they were to use Qt or GTK it'd work.

secondcoming• 1 month ago

It must be possible these days to allow designers to prototype UIs in WebTech and then convert it to native code.

VladVladikoff3• 1 month ago

As for the RAM increase, well that's probably a consequence of the general trend of doing frontend engineering via JS/TS instead of using OS native frontend APIs

Can someone explain to me why these multi operating system app building tools don’t compile down to native code and leverage native APIs? Is there nothing like that available?

AlotOfReading• 1 month ago

Microsoft has written more application development frameworks than you can shake a stick at. They've also failed to gain traction with virtually all of them, even internally.

mfro• 1 month ago

The web browser is a compiled program. The problem is that it’s a huge program.

dist-epoch3• 1 month ago

The HEVC support is free is you know the "secret" link:

ms-windows-store://pdp?productId=9N4WGH0Z6VHQ

It's a wide know workaround, been there for years, obviously Microsoft pretends they don't know about it.

https://www.howtogeek.com/680690/how-to-install-free-hevc-co...

Wowfunhappy2• 1 month ago

Your link says this doesn't work anymore?

saidinesh5• 1 month ago

Wouldn't HEVC licences already be paid by the hardware/gpu vendors on most devices? And Microsoft just exposes api for that hardware?

Is this just for a purely software implementation of it?

kasabali2• 1 month ago

Nah. Search for "Nokia h264" and see for yourself how they've sued like every single vendor in recent years, because they want to double dip.

contextfree8• 1 month ago

It doesn't use JS/TS, it's a reskinned Groove Music and is all either C++ or C# (I think C#) + UWP/WinUI2 XAML

Xbox Music in Windows 8.x was actually web tech based, but was rewritten into C# and XAML when it was turned into Groove Music in Windows 10

dblohm7• 1 month ago

The modern native frontend APIs aren’t exactly lightweight themselves…

Wowfunhappy2• 1 month ago

As for the RAM increase, well that's probably a consequence of the general trend of doing frontend engineering via JS/TS instead of using OS native frontend APIs.

How do we live in a world where simultaneously "human coding is dead" and also "we need to trade performance for developer efficiency"? I thought code is free now?

Also--this is Microsoft! It's their OS!

Microsoft should just come out and say that the whole of Win32 is deprecated and kept around for legacy compatibility only, and all new software should be written in Electron. They're already acting that way, why not make it official?

reaperducer2• 1 month ago

probably stems from the licensing pools increasing their prices

/clutches pearls

Won't somebody think of the trillion-dollar companies!

queenkjuul• 1 month ago

HEVC has been a paid add-on for as long as windows 10 has been around, iirc.

Dropping AC3 does seem unnecessary.

IronWolve• 1 month ago

Do people still use the K-Lite Codec Pack so their players have all the codecs installed? Or just use vlc?

accrual• 1 month ago

I loved the K-Lite Codec Pack and CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack) back in the XP days, especially while exploring MKVs and anime, but I virtually never run into a media file that VLC or MPC-HC can't play by default these days. Just drop it in and it plays.

notpushkin2• 1 month ago

If I understand correctly, most of what K-Lite / CCCP did was wrapping libavcodec/libavformat for the Windows APIs, so native players could use them. VLC just ships with libavcodec included, so it supports all these formats. Not sure about MPC-HC nowadays (it used to use Windows APIs, but you’d usually get it with your codec pack installer anyway).

eproxus• 1 month ago

I still use K-Lite since they ship MPC-HC (a fork of Media Player Classic) that comes with really good HDR support and default configuration out of the box. If you don't like to have the desktop in HDR you can even configure it to automatically toggle on/off HDR whenever an HDR movies is played.

The HDR support in VLC has been really lackluster. Maybe it is better nowadays, I don't know.

dist-epoch3• 1 month ago

It stopped being a thing about 10 years ago.

Mostly because everything is H.264, H.265, VP9, AV1, MP3 or AAC.

breve3• 1 month ago

And Opus: https://opus-codec.org/

wiether• 1 month ago

So the weekly updates are... fake?

https://codecguide.com/changelogs_standard.htm

trivialities777• 1 month ago

These days you can just install SMPlayer and have all the codecs bundled in the player.

adjfasn47573• 1 month ago

mpv

y-c-o-m-b• 1 month ago

I don't think I've ever voluntarily used their shitty media player since the classic version. MPC-BE (some folks use MPC-HC) is my goto with VLC as a backup if certain codecs don't play nice with it. I'm able to use nVidia super resolution with them as well.

orthoxerox• 1 month ago

I kinda have to hand it to Microsoft for dogfooding vibecoding with Copilot to such an extent. You can't say they encourage their customers to use a bad solution while doing something different in-house.

contextfree8• 1 month ago

This app is a reskinned Groove Music, it was mostly written back in the early Windows 10 days (2014-2017) and long predates Copilot/etc. Even the Windows 11 rebrand as Media Player (2022?) predates that stuff, and it's barely been touched since then.

make32• 1 month ago

OP was clearly a joke about Copilot making bad code

LollipopYakuza• 1 month ago

Didn't they just publicly make an apology for enshitting Windows over the last years, and committed to go back to building native app?

I understand that project might have started way before the public statement but it really doesn't look good from a PR standpoint.

contextfree8• 1 month ago

The Media Player the article about is a fully "native" app though (at least if you count C# as native). The Windows8.x version (Xbox Music) was web tech based; it in turn was a reskin/UI-layer-rewrite of Zune (which was C++), so they've already gone through a whole cycle of native->web->native with this. (The "new" Media Player still identifies as "ZuneMusic" in packaging metadata!)

nekusar2• 1 month ago

For everything except sabotage-ware rootkit based games, Linux is the better solution for basically everything.

Running MS Windows these days is like having a "kick me, hard" sign on your back. Or, you're treated like a money and data piñata.

fecal_henge• 1 month ago

There is a lot of professional software that locks people in also.

ValentineC• 1 month ago

Can't wait for said professional software to eventually decide that Electron's the way to go as well, and make shittier new versions, but cross-platform.

(I don't know if this can be sarcasm anymore.)

What is Windows's moat among the business crowd? Is it the "can't get fired if they buy Windows" mantra?

(Well, now they can get laid off anyway.)

rustcleaner3• 1 month ago

Qubes OS is nice for that. Set up a plain vanilla Windows TemplateVM (Windows Firewall whitelisting in/outbound connections), clone the vanilla template for each subset of applications, then make a bunch of AppVMs which point to those cloned templates.

tosh• 1 month ago

The modern Media Player is said to use around 377MB of RAM when idle, compared to roughly 103MB for the old player—about 3.5x as much memory while doing absolutely nothing.

even 103MB sound like a lot for doing nothing

wvbdmp• 1 month ago

Idk, it is a media player. I’m not mad about it keeping a ton of cover images and audio stubs in memory for immediate playback. Plus probably metadata of the entire library, with various indices. Makes sense to me.

We might expect newer players to cache less because SSDs are fast, but perhaps this is offset by the increasing use of network storage, whether it’s internet-based or a local HDD NAS.

goodmythical• 1 month ago

Idk, using the same file I got mpv: 144mb, vlc: 144mb.

Reccomendations for other lower ram solutions?

Const-me• 1 month ago

Why is that HEVC video extension is required?

As a part of the user-mode half of the GPU driver, GPU vendors ship media foundation transform DLLs to use HEVC hardware codecs. Don’t AMD, Intel and nVidia already pay patent royalties? I expect them to include into price of the GPUs with hardware support i.e. all of them made in the last decade.

jjcm• 1 month ago

I think what I find fascinating about this is it's a native app with no web version... and they still decided to write it in html/js. This is after Microsoft's commitment to rebuild things in WinUI.

Don't get me wrong, I totally understand the barrier of friction that native presents compared to html/js, but that barrier has lowered so much with the advent of agentic development. It just feels like things weren't thought out.

prmoustache• 1 month ago

Which barrier?

contextfree8• 1 month ago

1. It does not use HTML/JS. It is a fully "native" app (at least if C# counts as native) written with C# and UWP/WinUI2 XAML. Actually, Xbox Music in Windows 8.x had a web tech based UI; when it was rebranded as Groove Music in Windows 10, its UI layer was rewritten. Xbox Music itself in turn was a reskin/rewrite of the UI layer of Zune (which was C++) so it's already been through full cycle of native->web->native. (The "new" Media Player still identifies as "ZuneMusic" in packaging metadata!)

2. it's not "after"; Groove Music was largely written in 2014-2017 in the early Windows 10 days, and even its rebrand as Media Player in Windows 11 happened in 2022, and it's barely been touched since then.

breve3• 1 month ago

at least if C# counts as native

It can count as native. You can turn on Native AOT compilation:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/nati...

bigstrat2003• 1 month ago

There isn't even really a barrier. It's not actually hard to do UIs in WinForms, nor WPF, and I assume not in WinUI either. The problem is that a lot of people are just too lazy to even try to step out of the HTML/JS comfort zone, not that it's hard to do.

yokoprime• 1 month ago

I rarely use widows, but i feel like windows media player is only there to check a box that windows has a media player. Most people dont play local videos anyway, and those who do use something else like VLC.

orphea• 1 month ago

   feel like windows media player is only there to check a box that windows has a media player

This is probably not far from the truth. Although, I think it's still an important box to check, even if only 2.5 boomers are going to use an out-of-the-box media player.

Fraterkes• 1 month ago

Kind of a pity that we used up the phrase "a fractal of bad design" on php, it's so applicable to much of the stuff coming out of MS. I've been using PowerBi for a few weeks now and I'm sometimes impressed by the novel ways it finds to suck.

anaisbetts• 1 month ago

This article is likely AI slop, none of this is "news" and I'm pretty sure that this is just factually Not Accurate. Windows 11 is not shipping a new media player, it has the same one as it has since Win10. Codecs have like HEVC/H.265 always cost a very small amount of money, in order to pay patent owners. Again, it has done this for years now.

contextfree8• 1 month ago

The rebrand of Groove Music to Media Player was a Windows 11 thing, so it sort of did ship a "new" media player. It also still ships the old one though (as "Windows Media Player Legacy")

SSLy2• 1 month ago

As a certified MSFT's antifan, I’ve noticed Apple’s Music.app uses roughly 580 MiB of RAM for comparison.

encrypted_bird2• 1 month ago

Ooh, I love learning new words. What's an "antifan"?

paulryanrogers• 1 month ago

hater?

SSLy2• 1 month ago

A portmanteau of anti, and fan. 'Hater' wouldn't be exactly the same.

krieger_857• 1 month ago

itunes on windows still leaks memory like a water hose, it can go up to 4gb listening to online radio

nottorp2• 1 month ago

Hmm anyone remembers mplayer?

Last update seems to be from 2022 at mplayerhq.hu.

Used to be the go-to that played basically anything years ago.

chronogram• 1 month ago

mpv is that. In 2010 mplayer2 forked from mplayer, in 2012 mpv forked from mplayer2. It's all I've used since.

nottorp2• 1 month ago

Oh thanks! I lost track because vlc became "good enough".

naturalmovement• 1 month ago

Well it's written in managed code, what do you expect?

Windows core apps used to be pure C++.

Cry long enough about "safe" languages and expect to take the RAM hit.

pjmlp2• 1 month ago

WinUI, WinAppSDK are built on top of WinRT, which is C++ for the most part.

That is the whole joke about it, Windows division tried to kill .NET with their updated COM based on Vista victory over Longhorn, and the whole AddRef/Release makes it slower than WPF applications.

https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/windows-8-and-winrt...

contextfree8• 1 month ago

I think Groove Music/Media Player is C# though

lpln3452• 1 month ago

Reducing this to a simple language fanboy war is a massive oversimplification. Recent memory bloat and performance issues happen everywhere, whether it's C++, Java, or React. In most cases the real culprit is architecture and implementation not the language. Such as embedding browser engines just for cross platform UI.

You talk as if language choice dictates performance but even C# allows active stack allocation for optimization. Conversely C++ becomes a bloated mess if poorly implemented. In fact terrible C++ code has caused issues for decades.

Ultimately the root cause is that as users' available memory expanded, developers (or rather, management) stopped caring about memory usage. This approach is finally hitting its limit and alternatives are emerging.

Telaneo4• 1 month ago

I love VLC <3

WalterBright• 1 month ago

When Windows 7 got an update, WMP decided to delete all the folder.jpg files for my CDs that it had earlier downloaded when I ripped them.

cadamsdotcom• 1 month ago

Every day there seems to be a new reason not to use Windows and still people keep using Windows!

The suffering will continue until there are good alternatives.

phs318u• 1 month ago

I wonder how the memory footprint would compare between vanilla Windows 11 (latest) and Windows 11 with all user apps substituted for memory efficient native apps. I know there are several third party “de-bloat” flavours but I believe they focus more on disabling redundant services.

Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs

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