Windows 7 - Why wont the media player or the media centre play MP4's?

Is there a good reason why MS don't equip either the media centre or the media player with the ability to play MP4's.

I don't see why they can't play them,and surely it would be in MS's best interest if they could play them.

It does support MP4s.

However, MP4 is simply a container. (Video,Audio,Subtitles etc)

What exactly is inside the MP4 container? This is likely what the problem is.

For example, x264 and AAC audio should work with out issue, right out of the box.

Other mixtures of various codecs may be a issue.

That has still not answered the question of why VLC player will play MP4's without issue but ms media player will only play the music and not the video.

Hi there
It might be the old hairy chestnut of DRM and encryption.

Companies like MS and Sony are PARANOID about video copyright violation -- even now we have this rediculous system where DVD's are regionally encoded making a Laptop which is DESIGNED to be taken on journeys hard to use for playing DVD's if you are in a hotel room in a country in a different region and you buy a DVD there. --Get aroundable I know by extracting the DVD and burning to an ISO file and then mounting as a virtual drive with alcohol 52 free edition where you can specify any region you like any number of times too.

I suspect its some of the possible encryption algorithms in the mp4 that WMP objects too.

Fortunately VLC doesn't care and has its own CSS decryption routines built in.

Cheers
jimbo

Thanks that has shed some light on an issue which otherwise makes no sense.

If you choose to install the Shark007 Win7codecs WMP and MC will be able to play the files. If you have an x64 operating system, you will also need to install the x64 Components addon for Media Center to work properly.

There are dozens, maybe even close to 100 video codecs. Many official, many hacked, many obscure.

VLC is a single mission to support all codecs in existance if possible.

MS supports most of the mainstream ones but not necessarily things like xvid for example.

It's only been with the advent of Windows 7 that you've been able to play standard mp4 files out of the box at all! So it's an improvement.

Sharkey would know best about his own codec pack, but I'll second that that codec pack has worked very well for me on my machine playing the uh... various and sundry underground codec and container combinations found around the net.

[Edit] Though MS pays licenses for h264 and aac and others, they may not be able to include a lot of open source codecs at all... ever. VLC being an open source project can include all open source codecs and well also potentially illegally licensed ones by placing the blame on you for using them... Linux also does not come with all codecs installed due to opposing licensing restrictions as well, forcing you to "take the blame" for installing and using them. [/edit]

My guess is its something like Xvid and MP3 inside the MP4 container.

Sharks pack will certainly allow you play any variation of codecs inside that container.


In the end, it simply comes down to a codec issue, as MP4 is nothing more than a container to hold the streams.
What is actually inside determines if its supported natively or not.


Because of this, Its actually a bit misleading when they say Windows natively supports MP4 playback