No Windows 7 Blu-Ray Support

Martin | Mar 07, 2009 | Comments

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APC are reporting that Microsoft will not include Blu-Ray playback capabilities in Windows 7. Adding Blu-Ray support to Windows would increase the costs of the operating system by about $30. The real question is if missing Blu-Ray support is really a kill criteria for an operating system. As of now it surely isn’t with DVD sales being stronger than ever and Blu-Ray sales still lagging behind by a huge margin. The amount of users who would use Windows 7 to play Blu-Ray movies can surely be neglected at this point as most hardware Blu-Ray players for personal computers are expensive and not 100% compatible with all Blu-Ray features.

Users who want Blu-Ray playback on their computer systems can purchase a third party software which will not cost that much more than the projected $30 that universal Blu-Ray support would cost. Everyone else will be happy that they do not have to pay for a feature that they would never use.

The majority of Windows XP users learned to live without DVD playback support for a long time and they did not have a problem finding third party software to fill the gap. If the demand is there free third party solutions will appear that can be used to play Blu-Ray movies on Windows 7.

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About the Author: Martin Brinkmann is an Online Journalist from Germany who discovered his love for technology in high school. He is currently working as a freelancer for several publications and runs his own Internet website Ghacks

  • hackitect
    Blue-ray playback - Not important.
    Hope the decision will save 10Mb of bloatware on my HDD...
  • AFK
    I dont need Blue Ray... but "Hope the decision will save 10Mb of bloatware on my HDD…" is dumb... 10 MB is nothing ad will do nothing to slow your PC down
  • especially not when you have the potential 128gb of ram that windows 7 Ultimate is capabale of running. or the 24gb that windows 7 home premium can run.
  • MSisBEST
    I don't use Blu-ray, I use on-demand through my cable provider. I'm glad I dont need to pay an extra thirty bucks for blu-ray.
  • Jardra
    Not having Blu-Ray is a buy criteria for me. DVD is more than sufficient, blu-ray is a flawed technology that rapes the consumer even further.
    so, thanks for this proper and wise decision.
  • shkyaiu
    well thay use to be but the format wars r over i had blue ray fore 2 years fore the 1st year it was a nightmar but now the format wars r over i dont know what to do with out my blue and geting win 7P its better but trying to dullboot vista just fore the blueray lol. when u get a blue ray working geed i dont go back to dvd but fore the older moves it is sunning res on a 27" dvd looks like a cheep coppy lol well hope u find out some day but i try to buy things in blue ray ps sorry fore the bad spelling
  • Alejandro
    I think that it's a wise decision to leave blu-ray out. If you buy a PC or a blu-ray drive that need to have the drivers/player/etc.


    There is no need to charge an additional USD$ 30 to all the users that doesn't have blu-ray.
  • Not required for Win 7
  • jayvandriver
    I HAVE a Blu-Ray player and would willingly pay the extra £21 ($30) if it were avaliable as an extra edition say like Windows 7 pro.Thus giving the extra option to thoes who would like to see this feature.I would like to use the "MEDIA CENTRE(CENTER)" feature in Vista now as it nicely oraganises my foldes(VIDEO,PICTURES and MUSIC) so it can all be controlled from one place and not use third party software.
  • Jerry
    I would rather it not be included for the reasons mentioned.  DVD wasn't included but when you bought a DVD burner you typically got decoder software included and had the cost of licensing included.  Why make me pay for the BD license if I don't have a BD player?  I probably won't even be getting one anytime soon as I keep all of my media on a server, not on discs.  Perhaps if and when the market becomes saturated with this as a standard media then I will buy a BD drive and the requisite software but for now it would be a waste of my money. 

    Also they should be concerned with keeping the OS costs down as low as possible.  Apple can make their money back on marked-up hardware but Microsoft only licenses software and needs to sell as many copies as they can.
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