Windows 11's New Player Eats RAM and Charges You for Basic Features
It is truly a masterclass in corporate evolution: taking a perfectly functional tool, bloating its memory footprint, and putting basic codec functionality behind a paywall. Microsoft really knows how to reinvent the wheel—if that wheel was a brick.
The modern Media Player in Windows 11 has officially replaced the classic tools that actually worked. In its idle state, the app now gobbles up about 377 MB of RAM, which is roughly 3.5 times more than the lightweight legacy Windows Media Player that sat comfortably at 103 MB. Even the simple act of opening a video file has been optimized into a delay, increasing launch times from a snappy two seconds to a leisurely three seconds.
Performance isn't the only casualty in this update. Users looking to play HEVC files now face a paywall via the HEVC Video Extensions in the Microsoft Store. Furthermore, the Windows 11 version 24H2 update has stripped away the native AC-3 codec entirely, meaning your hardware might just stay silent unless you open your wallet or find a workaround.
While Microsoft maintains that the classic player is technically still available as an optional component, they are aggressively pushing the new version as the default choice. This comes shortly after they killed off the metadata servers for the legacy player in early 2026, leaving users with empty album art and broken libraries. For those who prefer their computer to actually play media, open-source alternatives like VLC or MPC-HC have stepped in to handle the job without holding your system resources hostage.
This shift perfectly captures the current era of software development where efficiency is discarded in favor of forced ecosystem locks. Instead of improving the user experience, the industry seems obsessed with turning basic OS features into recurring revenue streams, effectively treating local files like a luxury service.
Source: ExtremeTech
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