[est31]

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...

[concinds]

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

[cfiggers]

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.

[ruszki]

There are 100s of processes running on my Windows without starting anything explicitly. They are using more than 10 gb of RAM. I am already feeling the consequences of this sloppiness. Especially that my IDE/compiler/emulator easily use 20+ GB. My 32 GB of memory is not enough somehow…

[lynndotpy]

It does not matter how well or poorly Chrome mismanages memory, 400MB is still 400MB. If that 400MB is 10% of the free RAM after the share the OS takes, then that is a hefty toll. And the regular updates Windows 11 users are getting are famously not providing value, but taking value away. Case in point right here is the new media player.

[StilesCrisis]

A single Chrome tab does not use gigabytes. In fact, this app IS a Chrome tab! It's web based, so it's using Edge, which is just Chrome in a trenchcoat.

[sgarland]

IME, there is a negative correlation “justifies increased memory consumption by citing DX” and “ships code with fewer critical issues.”

[nokeya]

The problem is that it does not. At all.

[pdhborges]

How come I have never seen this tradeoff work in practice?

[t-writescode]

You see it all the time in Slack, Discord and so on.

Isn’t VS Code an Electron app? Or just its predecessor?

[SupLockDef]

There is no nuance in 400%...

[srdjanr]

Of course there is. If it increased from 1MB to 4MB, that would definitely be insignificant

[VladVladikoff]

>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?

[GeekyBear]

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.

[kasabali]

At this point they could direct some AI to vibe rewrite every UI code in Win32 and MFC and it'd still be vastly better than crap they push us.

[secondcoming]

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

[ncallaway]

> 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.

[pixelpoet]

> 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!

[cf100clunk]

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]

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.

[winstonwinston]

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.