Due to the different laws and regulations of different countries or set of countries like the European Union and China and Korea, Microsoft has to remove certain features or add some local features to its Windows 10 editions meant for those regions.
Windows 10 N deprives you of media player and Internet Explorer and is required (by law) to allow users to choose the browsers of their own choice. It is for the European region.
Windows K is for Korean region and according to law, Microsoft has to add at least two local government’s websites to the operating system. Though it can carry Internet Explorer, it doesn’t have media player.
Windows 10 KN is combination of Windows 10 N and Windows 10 K editions – where you won’t find neither WMP nor IE. And it contains two shortcuts for local government’s websites.
To play back media, you have to install the multimedia software separately. Microsoft released a bundle containing Windows Media Player and certain other multimedia software for all three editions: Windows 10 N, Windows 10 K, and Windows 10 KN editions. You can install this bundle from the Microsoft website or you can choose to ignore the Microsoft players (and browsers in case of Windows 10 N edition) and install something like VLC. Here is a list of browsers for users of Windows 10 N edition. Before installing VLC, you may want to look at the review of VLC player that we covered on The Windows Club.
While VLC is a great program to play back DVDs and even record streaming video, it can be too complex for novices. Its equalizer does not move smoothly and I had to spend almost an hour tweaking the sound for my liking. Plus it has other enhancements that are hard to grasp. In short, it can be used by anyone but if you intend to get best sound and playback, you have to tweak and that is where you get stuck because there are way too many options.
Media Player for Windows 10 N, K, and KN editions
I prefer Winamp for listening to music but since the creators are not pursuing the product anymore, I have my second choice as Windows Media Player. It too has options to customize audio and video playback and unlike VLC, they are too easy to set up. The equalizer in Windows Media Player can be easily tuned in minutes because it has the facility to move the sliders in group – unlike VLC or Winamp that make you move each slider independently.
If you are running Windows N, Windows 10 K or Windows 10 KN, you can download Windows Media Player and install it. It will also affect other programs such as Live Movie Maker if you can get it running on Windows 10. The codecs used by Movie Maker are installed when you install the Windows Media Player. Another way to get the codecs is to search the web manually but it is a tough game because you do not always know the name of the codecs required.
I would recommend downloading Windows Media Player as it has a range of tweaking options, it can play both audio and video, it has easy configuration settings for the equalizer, SRS, and normalizing, etc. You can also set up the colors of the video being played and of course, there are many plugins that you can download from the website for DSP and Visualizations. In addition, WMP downloads artist and album information in the background when you play a song.
To download the Windows Media player and other related apps, visit Microsoft, select your language and click on download.
You can also download Media Feature Pack for Windows 10 N version.
