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Windows 11's New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs
(www.extremetech.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2026
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It now uses under 400mb memory.
Licensed codecs aren’t free, which isn’t new.
This isn’t significant.
Yeah did it ever natively play h265? You’ve always had to pay the $2 for it, had an OEM computer that they paid for it, or gotten it from something else. It was the exact same in windows 10.
You didn't have to pay if the GPU came with a hardware decoder. But the HEVC patent owners have been infighting over royalties. So some hardware isn't shipping with the codec anymore or have it disabled.