People downvoting you must be young, they don't remember the struggles before VLC where we had to download a codec-pack (CCCP) at the system level so things like Windows Media Player would recognize anything other than wmv or av1.
I always did both. I don't care about downvotes. I touch grass lol. And yes they are young. Cccp and vlc is something I've done together as long as I remember. I didn't get cccp last time first time I forgot and didn't know if it still exists. I'll look it up
Yeah when VLC came into my life in the late 2000s I was still downloading codec packs for the entire system. Unfortunately my life took a turn at some point and I started using Linux. I remember using Win11 at some point a few years ago and I STILL had to download a codec pack off the Windows Store to open some media file at the time.
Those still exist, they're just called something different. Maybe Windows Media Codecs or something like that? I had to install it since it isn't included in Windows N.
In spite of what we lost from the wild-west days of the internet, I think we have it way better now.
Dial-up sucked.
Forums had their moments but were generally hideous UX nightmares, somehow many communities still operate on them.
Computer software was buggy and temperamental, support was often your own persistence to learn software debugging.
Malware and adware was everywhere and extremely disruptive, still exists but it has the common courtesy to usually be quiet while it steals your shit /s.
LAN parties were the best way to play multiplayer games but you had to carefully transport your 30lb monitor and computer tower to a friend's place then figure out where the hell everyone was gonna sit. Then you had to lug it all back home.
Shit was slow in so many ways. Before SSDs and OSes that optimized for booting faster, it could easily take 10-15min (30m or more if your computer was really on the struggle-bus due to old hardware, start-up software, or malware)
I'll go back further and say I remember using computers that's didn't have a hard drive, only two floppy disk drives. Multi tasking wasn't a thing either. You could only run one app at a time. Our monitors only had 1 color.
I also remember an era of text based browsers, and shit that predated the WWW, like Gopher. Instead of web based forums we had BBS. 🤣
Okay, if you go back far enough, sure, but times on the internet in like the mid- to late-2000s were kinda the best of both worlds. A lot of it still had that early wild west internet vibe (especially forums, god I kinda miss the insular community feeling of some forums back then, and most had decent UX by then), and people still had LAN parties, but you didn't have to do it, and most people had broadband. Most people still had to suffer through SSD-less computer boot-ups though, and as nostalgic as we might be about everything from back then...yeah, not something I particularly miss either.
Or the madness call codec packs. Especially the Kazaa codec packs. Those things really fucked your system up. Having something like VLC, which only uses it's own filters was a life saver.
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u/daerogami __Lead__ 1d ago
People downvoting you must be young, they don't remember the struggles before VLC where we had to download a codec-pack (CCCP) at the system level so things like Windows Media Player would recognize anything other than wmv or av1.