Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs

Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by asdfasgasdgasdg on Saturday June 20, 2026 @03:08PM (#48612014)

Very few users care about how much RAM their media player uses. The practical difference between 370MB and 100MB is basically nil for any normal workload. It affects nothing but how many unlikely-to-be-used files fit in the page cache.

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Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by hsbauauvhabzb on Saturday June 20, 2026 @04:12PM (#48612580)

Now multiply that opinion by every application on your computer. Including the start bar and notepad.exe.

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Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by ethbr1 on Saturday June 20, 2026 @04:36PM (#48612768)

There's a special case argument to be made in favor of ignoring media player resource consumption, given the maximum number of ears and eyes per human.

I expect there's someone out there who tiles 10 instances of simultaneously playing audio/visual media, but that's not most of us.

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Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by Timon3 on Sunday June 21, 2026 @01:26AM (#48615931)

Computers can execute multiple different programs at the same time, so users are able to run a media player while their main focus is on a different window, tile, monitor or whatever else.

Given that 8GB machines are still widely in use (and will get even more common over the next years), 250MB of extra RAM use is a pretty huge portion of user's available RAM pool, so this is quite a big change.

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Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by asdfasgasdgasdg on Saturday June 20, 2026 @04:43PM (#48612821)

I normally don't have notepad.exe or the windows media player open, so it's irrelevant. Chrome, clangd, rustc, etc. are all that matter. Optimizing anything else fails the pareto principle. I definitely do not want Microsoft paying its engineers to optimize windows media player memory usage.

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Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by hsbauauvhabzb on Saturday June 20, 2026 @10:00PM (#48614978)

I don’t want a trillion dollar investment in ram reduction, but the fist 80% of optimisation will be trivially achieved. Microsoft have a conflict of interest given they also sell surface devices where pushing people to the more expensive models is beneficial, while also probably benefiting when other hardware manufacturers benefit too.

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Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by GeorgeWBasic on Saturday June 20, 2026 @05:02PM (#48612959)

Have you heard that there's a RAM shortage?

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Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by asdfasgasdgasdg on Saturday June 20, 2026 @05:49PM (#48613302)

Do you have telemetry about how often systems are overcommitted due to Windows Media Player memory usage? I'll bet Microsoft does.

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Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by fhn on Saturday June 20, 2026 @06:04PM (#48613413)

And Microsoft has incentive to force users to upgrade because their computers need more RAM, disk, and CPU

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Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by reaperducer on Saturday June 20, 2026 @06:05PM (#48613417)

Do you have telemetry about how often systems are overcommitted due to Windows Media Player memory usage? I'll bet Microsoft does.

Considering the way Microsoft's product line is these days, I have a hard time believing its terabytes of "telemetry" go anywhere but the Windows equivalent of /dev/null.

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Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by promano on Monday June 22, 2026 @07:09AM (#48628595)

I'd bet the kind of people who care about the RAM usage of their media player haven't used Windows Media Player in a decade and disable as much telemetry as they can.

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Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by UqWBcuFx6NV4r on Saturday June 20, 2026 @07:47PM (#48614217)

Drop the snark and respond to the actual comment please.

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Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by GeorgeWBasic on Saturday June 20, 2026 @09:59PM (#48614969)

Nope, a comment that flippant about wasting RAM use deserves that snark. It's always been bad to do it, and it's even worse nowadays.

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Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by LtWorf on Sunday June 21, 2026 @03:59AM (#48616676)

Ah, an alt account.

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Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by Tanoc on Saturday June 20, 2026 @06:21PM (#48613544)

A problem in isolation this is not, however. Large portions of Windows now have this same bloat in terms of executable filesize, runtime needed for basic functions, and RAM usage. Windows Media Player by itself might not be an issue, but it's part of a trend that now affects Explorer, Desktop Window Manager, and a bunch of other core components to the operating system.

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Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by port11 on Sunday June 21, 2026 @06:49AM (#48617661)

If all apps are developed with the same mindset, all of them would consume much more memory. Does the average user have a 3x buffer just in case? I doubt the median-ish 8GB is enough these days.

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Re:Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges f... by hulitu on Sunday June 21, 2026 @10:42AM (#48619391)

> Very few users care about how much RAM their media player uses

Famous last words.

The price of RAM skyrocketed in the last months. The users will care.

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