Microsoft is slowly making Home windows Media Participant Legacy much less helpful, and their newest transfer is especially telling. In Home windows 11 Experimental Construct 29648.1000 for Future Platforms, the outdated participant’s caption controls have been restricted. Attempting to allow captions now produces a message telling you to maneuver to the trendy Media Participant as an alternative.
Home windows watcher Xeno Panther spotted this alteration first, and located that it’s particular to Experimental Construct 29648.1000, as of now. Captions have stopped showing within the newest Experimental 26H2 construct, 26340.9212, so this could probably take extra time to succeed in regular Home windows 11 PCs.
In fact, the legacy participant is so outdated that Microsoft doesn’t should justify nerfing it. It’s clear that the corporate desires us to make use of the trendy Home windows Media Participant, however we really discovered a strong motive why Microsoft eliminated this specific characteristic from the legacy app.
Home windows Media Participant Legacy can not allow captions within the newest Experimental construct
Proper-click on a enjoying media and hover over Lyrics, captions, and subtitles in Legacy Media Participant, and also you used to get three choices: Off, On if accessible, and Defaults, the final of which allow you to bounce into deeper caption settings.
In Construct 29648.1000, Off and Defaults are gone. Solely “On if accessible” stays.
Strive turning captions on, although, and Home windows Media Participant Legacy now throws a dialog that claims, “Captions can’t be enabled in Home windows Media Participant Legacy. Transfer to Home windows Media Participant to allow captions.”
It could appear to be a bug however isn’t. It’s Microsoft blocking the characteristic and redirecting you to its substitute, which is absurd, and we’ll inform you why.
Windows Latest covered a Media Player update back in June that gave the trendy app caption customization for the primary time, together with font dimension, colour, and background to your Home windows caption settings robotically, plus a fast hyperlink straight to these settings from contained in the app. Caption styling in Legacy Media Participant didn’t supply this stage of management, however that’s not the purpose.
Legacy Media Participant misplaced a superbly working characteristic, so we’ll be compelled to make use of the brand new caption settings in Trendy Media Participant.
Microsoft desires you to go away Legacy Media Participant behind, however the fashionable app nonetheless has work to do
Microsoft nudging folks towards its newer app would have been alright if the app was as quick and aesthetic because the one it’s supposed to switch. Nonetheless, as our testing confirmed, the trendy Media Participant falls quick even on fundamentals.
Pace is the primary downside. Legacy Media Participant opens a video nearly immediately. The trendy Media Participant takes noticeably longer to do the identical factor, even on a comparatively highly effective PC.
Our testing discovered the trendy app utilizing round 377 MB of RAM simply sitting idle, towards roughly 103.4 MB for Legacy Media Participant. That’s greater than 3 instances the idle RAM utilization!
Codec assist is the second, arguably greater downside. Legacy Media Participant, code that predates HEVC by properly over a decade, nonetheless performs HEVC information with out grievance. The trendy Media Participant doesn’t, except you purchase the HEVC Video Extensions from the Microsoft Store for $0.99.
HEVC is the default format on principally each fashionable telephone digital camera, so asking somebody to pay simply to observe a video they shot on their very own telephone isn’t a terrific first impression for Home windows’ built-in participant.
Legacy Media Participant additionally nonetheless has the acquainted library view and CD burning, and Microsoft continues to record it as an elective Home windows 11 characteristic as an alternative of eradicating it fully, even whereas pushing folks towards the trendy app for issues like 4K playback.
This isn’t the primary time Legacy Media Participant has quietly misplaced a chunk of itself. Its outdated Sync tab, used for transferring music to suitable gadgets, disappeared around 2023.
In fact, you may all the time go along with third-party open-source media gamers which have a a lot bigger characteristic set, whereas being optimized properly to work on Home windows. VLC could be the favored alternative, however enjoying music may end in sluggish efficiency within the app, and as we reported, VideoLAN blamed Microsoft for this bug.
We suggest mpv participant, because it’s additionally a free and open-source media participant with a intentionally minimal interface and a robust deal with efficiency and adaptability.
Both method, Microsoft clearly desires the trendy Media Participant to change into the default, and stripping capabilities from Legacy Media Participant is one strategy to push folks there. However that solely works if the substitute holds up by itself deserves.
Proper now, it must open quicker, use much less reminiscence at idle, deal with HEVC with out an additional buy, and add some aptitude to the design, a type of character that makes us need to use the app.
