If you are running Windows 7 and like to use Windows Media Player,
this may be something you'll want to read!
Tom Kaufman
From: marianne Interest
Hi Tom,
If you use Windows 7 as I do, this may be of interest to you.
Windows 7's Windows Media Player app is about to get worse
By
Matt Hanson
3 hours ago
Software
No more metadata
As Windows 7 hurtles towards its end of life date (January 14 2020),
it looks like Microsoft is beginning to strip features from the ageing
operating system,
and it has now removed a key feature from Windows 7's Windows Media Player.
According to
a support document
that Microsoft quietly updated a few days ago, "you may be unable to
view information (metadata) such as the title, genre, and artist for
songs, and the
director, actors, cover art, and TV guide for movies in Windows Media
Center and Windows Media Player."
This move also affects the Windows Media Center app found in Windows
7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.
So, it looks like when you import music or videos into Windows Media
Player in Windows 7, titles, artist names and other information won't
be downloaded.
This is a major blow to the usefulness of the app, in our view.
Why?
Microsoft looked at customer feedback and usage data regarding the
feature and decided to discontinue it, so it probably means not many
people were using
it.
If you were, it might mean it's time to finally upgrade from Windows 7
- as you'll probably want to anyway before January 14 next year - or
start using
an alternative such as
VLC Media Player.
While the removal of this feature is disappointing, Microsoft has
promised that metadata that's already been downloaded will still be
available - it just
won't download metadata for new media you add.
Microsoft has also explained that this change won't affect any of the
app's media playing functionality, such as playback, media stream and
other major
features.
Still, it's a reminder that it's probably worth thinking about
upgrading to
Windows 10.
