Windows 7 Media player will not play back BluRay disc's

This is terrible, yet another Windows 7 disappointment.  Every day it feels like I'm confronted with yet another reason I should have held onto my cash or gone somewhere else.  Office 2010 64 bit?  Oh well, forget syncing my Windows mobile 6.5 phone then

• MS has no plans to upgrade WMDC to support it.  Expensive rig so I can do cool stuff - and even watch a blu-ray, nah, forget it.  MS isn't bothered to support us here either.  I suppose more fool me for not spending hours and hours googling for Win 7 tech woes before parting with my cash.  Stupidly I bought into the ethos of 'Windows 7 - just works!'  I'm disappointed folks.  Remember, a happy customer tells 5 others but an unhappy one tells 20.

The line is easy to draw for a product called "Ultimate", it should of course include Blu-ray technology that is already several years old.

This way it stays optional for mainstream users, and the premium price can cover the Blu-ray license until this aberration is removed.

Until Blu-ray is part of Windows and Mac OS, the market will develop only slowly, users will be limited to bad players like PowerDVD 10, DVD and BD movies will not be integrated seamlessly into movie library features, etc.

To return your question, why would you draw the line at DVD technology and not BD?

If I had to put a screw into a piece of wood, I wouldn't go buy a hammer...Windows 7 is what it is, an "operating system". Sure they have thrown on a lot of cool add ons that they developed and more than likely "patented" in house. Last time I checked people used PC over MAC was so that they get to CHOOSE what types of software application they want, as opposed to the canned yet streamlined stuff that is available for your mac. Sure it would have been real nice if they MS could have included BD playback capability, but where do you draw the line on what they are reasonably entitled to include?

Guys, if you want anyone to blame then blame Sony. They are the ones who created and patented blu-ray and CHARGE anyone/everyone a licence fee to use it (incl. premiums on films, codecs, hardware etc.). I bet it would have cost Microsoft and ultimately the customer an extra ~£50 for it to be included in the Windows 7 OS per copy.

Microsoft originally backed HD-DVD and AFAIK was an "open" technology which would not have cost MS or the end user any extra money for its use, essentially it would have been free and was functionally no worse than blu-ray (apart from lack of copy protection, but to me that is the opposite of functionality). This would have resulted in cheaper HD films, hardware and OSs supporting HD dvd play back out of the box.

So why did HD-DVD not take off? Simple, Sony got a lot of backing from the film companies mainly because they own most of them; and of those they don't own they simply spun the whole copy protection nonsense.

End Result: Public get screwed out of money and overall experience so that Sony can make big profits.