WMC and EXIF orientation tag for jpegs

I know that Windows Media Player does not utilize the EXIF orientation tag to automatically rotate jpg photos. And of course neither does WMC.

I can install other software on the HTPC but was trying to keep the number of programs to a bare minimum. I know I'm grasping at straws here, but is there any add or modification for WMC that corrects this?

My photos are already on the desktop HDD and the portrait oriented ones are stored sideways. You can see this when using Windows Photo Viewer because it does use the EXIF orientation tag, and neither does WMP/WMC. All my other viewing & graphic programs do a soft rotate & display them properly without actually changing the file. It's a known issue that M$ does not use the EXIF orientation tag, and yet most other software has done this for years.

I actually came across something discussing one of the M$ photo programs & it changed the chroma subsampling before rotating the image, thereby affecting image quality. I don't think it was Windows Live Photo Gallery, but who knows.

I'm not going to change the photos already on the HDD because everything else out there properly handles them. I'll just install the small & fast IrfanView on the HTPC.

What MS software are you using?

When I was working with jpegs last year every comment that I read said MS did not use the orientation tags, at least when displaying a jpeg video. Here’s a link to a MS website which states that Photo Gallery rotates, but only when importing jpegs.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-pictures/windows-photo-viewer-or-live-photo-gallery-does/a161c8da-c1ce-4347-a92e-724f9e535c15

And here’s a lot more about Windows not using the orientation tag.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-pictures/windows-7-not-auto-rotating-pictures/602f19ed-e0d0-4624-b5de-859ca2103814?page=1

I tried using Windows a couple times when importing photos from my Canon camera. I don't recall if this using a USB connection from the camera or directly from the SD card, but it was the program that automatically came up. Problem is that it renumbered all my photos & they did not match what was on the SD card. And every time a new batch was imported the numbers started over so I ended up with duplicate numbers. Obviously I stopped using that method and went back to using the Canon software.

All my photos are shown in the correct orientation, as long as I don't use a MS program.

I did rotate some images before copying to an SD card & DVD in order to play on my Blu-ray player. But there was a delay when loading & displaying these portrait images. I went back & used the original "sideways" images and the photos displayed right away. You would think the ones that I had already rotated would display quicker, but that was not the case.

I was also given a DVD with jpegs already rotated & there were no EXIF orientation tags on any of the photos. When it came to displaying the vertical photos there was also a delay.

Maybe it's the Blu-ray player doing something, I have no idea. I have since built the HTPC and will have to try this again & see what happens.

I have been using IrfanView to look at jpeg photos, which are on my other PC. WMC displays those large icons or tiles for the folders & the descriptions get truncated. I find it easier to look at the photo folder descriptions (no icons) using Windows Explorer.

From what I've read & experienced, it appears MS is possibly the only one that does not use the orientation tags. I agree really dumb.