And jeez what happened to it anyways? It actually used to be pretty decent back in the 98/XP/7 days :(
“Oh no, I can’t play this modern video file using a codec that’s literally been around for more than 10 years unless you pay me $0.99 for a codec pack…”
Every single time I forget to change it and I want to play an h265 file from my phone.
Enshitification is what is happening, the original windows video player was way more capable than this modern garbage.
I think this part actually isn’t enshittification. I think this is being legally cautious, as you probably should be when you’re Microsoft.
It’s also partly the patent holders for H.265.
H.264 had a license fee, but it wasn’t ridiculous. It was jacked up for 265, to the point that a lot of software houses no longer bundle the 265 decoder license.
It annoys me too: Security cameras often use turnkey H.265 encoding packages rather than more open codecs, which makes dealing with the files using FOSS more of a pita.
