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

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

#81

Post by tredre3 »

ValentineC wrote: post #54
fecal_henge wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.)

Being Electron doesn't mean that the developer will release builds for all platforms that Electron supports. Discord took 3 years, for example.

> What is Windows's moat among the business crowd?

The moat is that it just works[1] will all of their software developed over the past 30 years, and support contracts/staff[2] is incredibly easy to obtain.

1. Contrarians will say that wine has better backwards compatibility than windows, but that's just cope and limited to a handful of games (and even then it's only because people made elaborate compatibility profiles for those specific games, those won't exist for internal apps).

2. Linux sysadmins are easy to obtain, but dedicated staff to support a desktop linux fleet is still fairly niche. There is some overlap in skillset and sysadmins can learn, of course.

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

#82

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

concinds wrote: post #29
est31 wrote: post #16

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…

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

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.

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

#83

Post by AlotOfReading »

VladVladikoff wrote: post #66
est31 wrote: post #16

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…

>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?

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.

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

#84

Post by 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.

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

#86

Post by ffsm8 »

lynndotpy wrote: post #59
cfiggers wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

People try to use Windows 11 with 4GB of RAM?

I doubt that's viable, honestly... At that point, just don't use microslop software

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

#87

Post by sgarland »

reenorap wrote: post #78
sombragris wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no and no. Last year I paid money to upgrade my laptop's RAM from 16 to 32 GB. I didn't pay it so apps could just be more bloated without offering any significant benefit. Developers should respect and be efficient using hardware resources. There are no excuses for that.

From CS101 it’s called virtual memory. Things get swapped in and out of memory when they need to. An extra 200MB of memory when Chrome takes gigabytes of memory is a petty thing to complain about. How much do you want to bet you don’t even use windows media player? It’s fake outrage and if you care that much use VLC.

> VLC

VLC on my Mac uses about 130 MB of RAM (as reported by Activity Monitor) to play a FLAC file, and about 300 MB to play a high-bitrate 1080p MP4 file. The audio file memory consumption frankly seems high, but it’s fine, and apparently 1/3 that of WMP.

More directly, do you not find it odd and embarrassing for a tech giant to be unable to beat a bunch of volunteers? I mean, ffmpeg famously hand-writes a lot of assembly, but it turns out Microsoft could absolutely do that as well if they really wanted to. They could produce performant, native apps; they just choose not to.

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

#88

Post by sgarland »

VladVladikoff wrote: post #68
winstonwinston wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

QuickTime is fine. It does the basics, is intuitive, and fast.

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

#89

Post by roto »

reenorap wrote: post #78
sombragris wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no and no. Last year I paid money to upgrade my laptop's RAM from 16 to 32 GB. I didn't pay it so apps could just be more bloated without offering any significant benefit. Developers should respect and be efficient using hardware resources. There are no excuses for that.

From CS101 it’s called virtual memory. Things get swapped in and out of memory when they need to. An extra 200MB of memory when Chrome takes gigabytes of memory is a petty thing to complain about. How much do you want to bet you don’t even use windows media player? It’s fake outrage and if you care that much use VLC.

Chrome does it, so it must be good? Is a extra 200mb going to cause the computer to choke? probably not, but that doesn't mean people cant complain about the fact that a lot of modern software has gone this route and it all does add up.

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

#90

Post by aleph_minus_one »

sgarland wrote: post #87
reenorap wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From CS101 it’s called virtual memory. Things get swapped in and out of memory when they need to. An extra 200MB of memory when Chrome takes gigabytes of memory is a petty thing to complain about. How much do you want to bet you don’t even use windows media player? It’s fake outrage and if you care that much use VLC.

> VLC VLC on my Mac uses about 130 MB of RAM (as reported by Activity Monitor) to play a FLAC file, and about 300 MB to play a high-bitrate 1080p MP4 file. The audio file memory consumption frankly seems high, but it’s fine, and apparently 1/3 that of WMP. More directly, do you not find it odd and embarrassing for a tech giant to be unable to beat a bunch of volunteers? I mean, ffmpeg famously hand-writes a lot of as…

> VLC on my Mac uses about 130 MB of RAM (as reported by Activity Monitor) to play a FLAC file, and about 300 MB to play a high-bitrate 1080p MP4 file. The audio file memory consumption frankly seems high, but it’s fine, and apparently 1/3 that of WMP.

Not without reason VLC is considered to be a memory hog.

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