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

microsoft wont give you an answer because the bottom line is, they dont know how to. its US that purchase there "so called" new state of the art software, its US that make them richer, its US that have to suffer the issues that there software brings up, its US that find the solutions to many problems that microsoft fail to see, that tv advert they have for windows 7, how it can do this and that, alot of which NONE of us will use in a hurry, and they cant even give us a basic feature such as blu-ray playback, you are right, they do have the technology and money to over come this issue, the fact that sony own the rights to blu-ray will be putting them off giving us what we bought windows 7 for in the first place. microsoft are just like nasa, they think up an idea, then go, oh yes that will make us alot of money, make it, then they dont know how to work it OR they havent thought it through properly and dont want to deal with all the complaints afterwords by mugs like US, afterall they now have the money we paid for the software so what do they care? if they like ripping us off, do the same to them, download all microsoft hacked software and use it. sell it, pass it around. for a start, them saying use third party software, then saying they DONT recommend it, thats just sheer stupidity, and there just pushing us to look and buy elsewhere for our needs. THEN however (when its to late and you have already got your third party software) microsoft will have an update like "BD - Blu-Ray WMP Plug-in E1947558329" come up on there stupid windows update. a 5 year old could run microsoft better. they said windows 7 was unhackable, it is, i know that from experiance, just a classic example of the cr*p they say. dont use microsoft for anything, do it yourself. someway or another, someone will come up with a codec for it wether microsoft like it or not.

they can certanly play blu-ray in their x-box or did they screw that up too

Guess again...

The case of the missing Xbox 360 Blu-ray player

I too think Microsoft is being a little dishonest about the licensing issues with blu-ray... they can certanly play blu-ray in their x-box or did they screw that up too.. The following quote from your windoze 7 website describes 7 ultmate as follows. " It also now plays more popular audio and video formats—including 3GP, AAC, AVCHD, DivX, MOV, and Xvid." Now, call me stupid, but I would certainly call Blu-ray one of the "more popular video format, and certainly a format needed to "make your pc a complete home theater tool." And, the price difference for system 7 ultimate certainly should be able to absorb any reasonable licensing fees Microslop should have to pay to Sony.  Microsoft got me to drink the koolade again and I bought Windows 7 Ultimate thinking that they FINALLY got something right. And was disappointed again.  Yes, I will buy the 3rd party software to fix Microsofts screwups, not because I want to but because yet again, it seems that Microsoft can not get the complete job done correctly.  If Microsoft was an employee that kept dissappointing its employee this way, constantly only doing part of the job, they would soon find themselvles unemployed.  Your answer, Buy Microsoft and depend on Roxio, Divix or someone else to make it work.  Great Job Microslop.

and that isn't the problem! You don't have to buy ANYTHING! It is a driver issue with Windows 7. Until they update their drivers it will NEVER work!

The hardware manufacturers are responsible for drivers, so "outraged consumer" needs to speak with them.

James Wolf MS-MVP [Media Center]