Microsoft has announced that starting with Windows 11 24H2, the AC-3 decoder will no longer be built-in. This will result in the Windows Media Player being unable to play many DVD-originated videos. Since AC-3 is a proprietary format owned by Dolby, the likely reason is that Microsoft's AC-3 licensing agreement has expired. Users should migrate to free audio codecs such as Opus (lossy), Vorbis (lossy), or FLAC (lossless) as soon as possible. Additionally, AAC (lossy) and MP3 (lossy) remain viable alternatives, as AVC (H.264) is typically bundled with AAC, and the patents for MP3 were abandoned in 2017. Nevertheless, Dolby provides OEMs with a media extension to support AC-3 audio decoding. As a temporary workaround, users can install this decoder to enable AC-3 audio decoding in Windows. The decoder can be downloaded from this repository, with its Microsoft Store Product ID is 9nvjqjbdkn97.

The free media conversion tool FFmpeg can efficiently convert AC-3 to other audio codecs. Example commands are as follows: ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:a codec -c:v copy -map 0 output.mp4, codec can be aac, libmp3lame, libopus, or libvorbis. If there are multiple audio tracks, use -map 0:a:num -c:a:num to select a track, where num is the track index. Example commands are as follows: ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:a copy -c:v copy -map 0:a:0 -c:a:0 libmp3lame -map 0 -map_metadata 0 -map_chapters 0 output.mp4。FFmpeg can be downloaded here: FFmpeg-Builds.

微软宣布从 Windows11 24H2 起不再内置 AC-3 解码器，这将会导致 Windows 媒体播放器无法播放大量源自 DVD 的视频。由于 AC-3 是 Dolby 公司的专用格式，原因可能是微软购买的 AC-3 许可已经到期。用户应尽快迁移到 Opus(lossy)、Vorbis(lossy) 或 FLAC(lossless) 等免费音频编码。除此之外，AAC(lossy) 和 MP3(lossy) 也是可选择的，因为 AVC(H.264) 通常和 AAC 一起捆绑，而 MP3 的专利已经于 2017 年放弃。虽然如此，但 Dolby 为 OEM 提供了一个媒体扩展用于支持 AC-3 音频解码，作为一个临时之计，可以通过安装该解码器使得 Windows可以解码 AC-3 音频。该解码器可以在本仓库中下载，它的 Microsoft Store Product ID 是9nvjqjbdkn97。

免费的媒体转换工具 FFmpeg 可以高效的完成 AC-3 到其他音频编码的转换，示例命令如下：ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:a codec -c:v copy -map 0 output.mp4，codec 可以是 aac，libmp3lame，libopus 或者 libvorbis。如果有多条音轨，可以使用 -map 0:a:num选择，num是音轨号，示例命令如下：ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:a copy -c:v copy -map 0:a:0 -c:a:0 mp3 -map 0 -map_metadata 0 -map_chapters 0 output.mp4。FFmpeg可以在此处下载：FFmpeg-Builds。