Windows has, for a while, had Windows Imaging Component for images (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/wic/-wic-lh) and Microsoft Media Foundation for video (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/medfound/mic...). Not sure how widespread actual use is though.
replyWIC is reasonably widely used since it's used by WPF to load images. The problem is that a plugin codec structure exposes you to bad codecs. We had a tool at work break because someone installed a fast image viewer that overrode the default WIC JPEG decoder with a faster one that crashed loading our tool's splash screen image.
replyCodecs have been a thing on both major OSes, Windows Media Player could open DivX and QuickTime could open MKV. I think they were only limited to videos however.
replyThat's true, Windows has had an OS-managed codec system since 3.x. Only applies to video and audio formats, though, not a general system for any data type.
replyGives me fun memories of installing the Intel Indeo codec on Windows 3.x and Windows 95 PCs to play videos from a CD-based encyclopedia.
replyI think QuickTime 7 had that capability (I remember installing a codec to make it play wmv video) but Apple removed the plugin architecture in QuickTime X.
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