Do I Really Need THIS Many Audio Codecs?

[Totentanz]

I have Win98 SE, and just looked at:
Control Panel -> Multimedia -> Devices -> Audio Compression Codecs (and also Video Compression).
Where did all these codecs come from? I certainly did not install them manually. Here are the ones listed:

Lernout & Hauspie Codecs (WTF??)
Microsoft IMA ADPCM Codec
Microsoft ADPCM Codec
Microsoft GSM 6.10 Audio Codec
Microsoft CCITT G.711 A-Law and u-Law Codec
DSP Group TrueSpeech(TM) Software Codec
Microsoft G.723.1 Codec
Indeo audio software
Windows Media Audio
Spiro Lab Telecom ACELP.net audio codec
Creative MP3 Codec
Voxware Audio Codec
Fraunhofer IIS MPEG Layer-3 Codec (professional)
Microsoft PCM Converter

Eh?? And here's the Video Codecs!

Cinepak
Divx 5.0 Codec
Indeo R3.1
Indeo R3.2
Indeo I.263 Video Driver
Indeo video 5.04
Intel I.263 Video Driver 2.55.016 [I420]
msh261 [M261]
msh263 [M263]
msyuv [UYVY]
msyuv [YUY2]
msyuv [YVYU]
RLE
VD0net VD0Ware Video Codec
Video1

Either I'm an idiot and these are all supposed to be here, or I'm an idiot for being gullable. What's the deal? Can I get rid of some of these?

[Enchanter]

As long as you have no problem with your video playback, leave them alone. Don't fix it if it ain't broke.

[xviddivxoggmp3]

extra codecs

if you installed any program onto your system for playback or encoding this would have came along as a codec pack
i agree with enchanter to keep them due to you will lose encoding capabilities and possibly playback if you chose to delete. i think you are the only one ever to want to delete codecs. i'm on a mad hunt to find all of them that exist to try an encode in them. mo dig mo dig

[techno]

I suggest u keep them. very handy.

Not doing any harm to your system. just keep them. Trust me

And Enchanter it's:

if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

Techno

[Enchanter]

Right. My bad.