Is Vista Home Premium appropriate for entertainment laptops?

I have just purchased a HP Pavilion DV8689EA. It is intended to be a replacement for my old laptop which was running on XP. I used my old laptop for, amongst other things, for viewing downloaded films which were sometimes AVI format.
I thought that this new laptop would be superior, hence the purchase. I now find that because it only came loaded with Vista Home Premium, Media Player 11 will not play AVI's. The forums suggest that upgrading to Vista Ulimate will allow me to play these and give extra multimedia functionality.
My question is why have HP packaged this £1000 multimedia laptop with a stripped down version of the Vista operating system? Would it not have been better to have included the appropriate system and retain customer satisfaction?

 

Where the hell did you hear that? That's BS

You need to install the codecs..... Whatever operating system you have, even on linux.....

Ultimate is business + home prenium and has some extras like encryption and dreamscene.... (video as background)....

 

They're trying to take advantage of you.

Install K-Lite Codecs and youll be fine

 

hey get a player called "vlc" it works great plays every file and if free, plus it doesn't use much power to run. Trust me you will love it...

link

 

Yeah, use VLC, it's the best. I wouldn't touch WMP with a 10 foot pole. On which forum did they tell you to upgrade to Ultimate to play avi's?

 

Thanks for the advice. I'll try the K-Lite codecs to see if that works. Is it a pack which includes all codecs?I have also heard that if I install a codec twice then it might cause conflicts.
I have tried VLC and it seems to be able to play most things ok. I'm just annoyed that Microsoft seems to have taken a step backwards with WMP 11. WMP 10 seemed to play all I required it to do.

 

Yes make sure you download K-Litet Mega Codec Pack. I have been able to play every video file ive come across so far.

Download VLC if you dislike WMP.

 

I've downloaded and installed K-lite mega codec pack. I accepted all of the default settings when installing. I can now play AVI files again using WMP 11. During the installation I got a message saying that "msacm.13codecp" was broken. Recommended action was to remove, which I did. Do I have to find this codec again and re-install it?
I noticed that when playing the Pirates of the caribean before k-lite I had no sound. Now I have sound but the picture fast forwards a good length then starts to play, but the soundtrack is the beginning of the movie so it is out of sync. Can anyone explain this please? I dont know if this is because it is a faulty file.

 

John - Microsoft didn't didn't take a step backwards with WMP11 in Vista. On WMP10 on your XP machine, you or someone else already installed the appropriate codecs, that's why your XP laptop was able to play all your video files. WMP11 or 10 will not play any of those files 'out of the box'. The computer needs the codec files to play the .avis appropriately

 

Just for clarification...

.avi is just a "container" for your video file. The actual video can be encoded using various different "codecs" such as DivX or XViD that aren't supported by WMP unless you download them. As others have said, there are several codec packs available that include all of the major ones.

 

Thanks for all of your answers. They have been clear and helpful. I am picking up knowledge all the time. I suppose I am of a generation which is used to things being "out of the box", still we live and learn.