Playing DVDs

**Germanicus75** · April 12, 2007, 10:28 AM

Wonder if any of you guys can help.

I'm running Win XP Home SP2. I have Windows Media Player 9 and RealPlayer 10.5 installed. I also have a licensed copy of PowerDVD XP installed.

RealPlayer will play video clips in MPG etc. format no prob.

But none of these players will play video DVDs. Video DVDs (of any region - my local region is region 2) make all of them hang and crash. The error messages don't help - they just come up with lots of numbers and figures.

My DVD drive works fine, e.g. reads M2TW disc no probs.

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks :-)

**wipeout140** · April 12, 2007, 12:00 PM

VLC Plays DVD and its free

Originally Posted by VLC Main Site

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

VLC Home Page

**Erik** · April 12, 2007, 12:20 PM

I recommend VLC too.
It's a great player, and it's free.

**shane32ie** · April 12, 2007, 03:21 PM

yeah and if you have a widescreen moniter or whatever VLC lets you change the aspect ratio of the films it plays to fit your screen best, also has slowdown for some 'bits' of the film you wana watch slowly

**Erik** · April 12, 2007, 04:14 PM

Originally Posted by shane32ie

also has slowdown for some 'bits' of the film you wana watch slowly

LOL, that's also one of my favorite features.

**Citizen** · April 13, 2007, 02:34 PM

Originally Posted by shane32ie

also has slowdown for some 'bits' of the film you wana watch slowly

Where can this feature be found? I Downloaded VLC but there is no obvious option for it :S

**shane32ie** · April 13, 2007, 04:06 PM

Originally Posted by Citizen

Where can this feature be found? I Downloaded VLC but there is no obvious option for it :S

Its just beside the skip next/back buttons, looks just like a rewind button beside the play/pasue/stop buttons.

**Leonidas The Lion** · April 12, 2007, 04:30 PM

You could also try WinDVD it is also free.

**wipeout140** · April 13, 2007, 03:34 AM

Originally Posted by Leonidas the Lion

You could also try WinDVD it is also free.

There's trail version only then you have to pay for it

**Germanicus75** · April 13, 2007, 07:35 AM

Thanks guys I'll try VLC and report back if there are any problems

**chris_uk_83** · April 13, 2007, 08:00 AM

also has slowdown for some 'bits' of the film you wana watch slowly

And why would anyone want to do that?

**Gaius Baltar** · April 13, 2007, 01:17 PM

Try updating the driver for your videocard.

**Spiff** · April 13, 2007, 01:32 PM

VLC is good, but i actually prefer the interface of Media Player Classic.. it seems better somehow - though i'm not so clued up on the features.

Satsuki Decoder Pack comes with it, and a bunch of useful codecs too.