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

What's Sony got to do with the Blu-Ray license? If you don't know, don't speculate. The FLAA that grants the licenses also includes Hitachi, Matsushita, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, and Thomson. They or Sony certainly cannot deny the license to Microsoft or any company as long as it follows the same conditions as other software player licensees such as Arcsoft, Corel or Nero. Therefore it was entirely Microsoft's decision not to include a Blu-Ray codec in Windows 7. Also, the cost of a BD-ROM2 codec license is probably around a few bucks, not the $30 mentioned earlier: The license fee for a BD player (hardware) is about $4.50.

If the license fee for a codec is so cheap, that's reason enough to whine about a bad business and technological decision.

I don't see how working or not for Microsoft is relevant to assessing honestly this specific Blu-Ray situation, but FYI I did work for Microsoft for many years in Europe and Redmond, as a temp, as a vendor, as a full time employee and manager. This never prevented me or other employees I knew from being objective, at least regarding Microsoft: Too many people that have been playing with too many registry keys and hacks for too many years unfortunately have subjective ideas about Windows and how easy to use Operating Systems are supposed to be.

I am the first one to praise Windows 7, but only in as much as it is a fixed version of Vista, with less UAC and more of the features missing in Vista. It really is not a different product, its internal version number is actually 6.1, not 7. It should have been called Vista R2, according to the current OS nomenclature at MS.

Are you all a bunch of sad, spoiled, pathetic children?

Microsoft cannot just force Sony to include bluray functionality in Windows 7. They cannot just "make it happen" and it doesn't matter what massive buying power it may have. Sony is a massive corporation and they have decided not to provide the software to Microsoft to be sold at a reasonable price. Perhaps not even at all - we don't know.

While I too wish it was easy to include Bluray playback in Windows 7, Media Center is very good and Windows 7 is superb.

I don't work for MS and am not affiliate with them. If you want to blame anyone, blame Sony. They did a great job of ruining HD-DVD and the reasonable price point it provided for movies and blank media. But since Sony has a stake in many films, you wouldn't see them on HD-DVD either.

The point of this post is to tell the bunch of you to stop whining like spoiled brats. Microsoft did the best it could with a great Windows 7. Send your hate mail to Sony.

That was about as helpful as a brick to a sinking man. Fair enough. I've been corrected. Depending on where I live.

...The silly argument why should people who don't wan't blu-ray functionality have to pay for it? Well then why should people pay for Media Center? Can we buy a version of Windows that doesn't come with Media Center? Of coarse not...

Yes you can. Home Starter and (depending on where you live) Home Basic do not have Media Center features.

James Wolf MS-MVP [Media Center]