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One alternative is VLC, which I have praised before.
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No one is "required" to use Windows Media Player-exactly the opposite. In fact, as I noted in a 2010 post, Microsoft has provided financial support for VLC:Īnyone can write a media player for Windows and can build in support for whatever media formats they want. The noteworthy exception is the VLC media player, which proudly bills itself as "a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework." It explicitly lists DVD as a supported format.īut the VLC project is hardly a rogue player. Microsoft, Apple, Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, and other companies that make DVD players (hardware and software) have to pay those license fees for every unit they deliver to a customer, which is why you don't see very many free DVD players. My back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that Dolby gets at least 50 cents and as much as a dollar for every Windows PC sold.
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The licensing schedule isn't public, but in its annual report for 2011 Dolby revealed that it collected $124 million in licensing fees from Microsoft for the year, with most of that revenue generated from Windows 7. This decoder, which is required for DVD movie playback, has to be licensed from Dolby Laboratories, Inc. Microsoft pays An OEM PC maker who licenses Windows from Microsoft must pay $2 in MPEG-2 licensing fees to enable DVD playback in every copy of Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate. The maker of a cheap DVD player sold at Costco pays $2 per unit for the MPEG-2 rights. The pool itself is managed by MPEG LA, which collects and distributes royalties on behalf of the patent owners, under a master license agreement. The licensing rights for the MPEG-2 standard are made up of a pool of patents contributed by their inventors.