[anaisbetts]

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.

[contextfree]

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")