In order to be able to watch DVDs on my netbook, I recently bought an external CD/DVD drive. It plays my CDs just fine, but won't play DVDs. I get this message: "Windows Media Player cannot play the DVD because a compatible DVD decoder is not installed on your computer." The material that came with my DVD drive tells me that it doesn't include a decoder, because many computers already have one. There seem to be a lot of different options available, and I haven't the first idea which ones might be promising. Can anyone give me an idea of exactly what I'm looking for and where I can find it? Thanks.
If you are using windows 7 you can use this one in the link below or you can try one of the other ones depending on the version of windows you are using. You can also try the VLC media player. It will play just about any type of audio or video file. http://www.afterdawn.com/software/audio_video/media_players/vlc.cfm http://www.afterdawn.com/software/audio_video/codecs/win7codecs.cfm
For the decoder I prefer to go with ffdshow: 64-bit: http://www.afterdawn.com/software/audio_video/codecs/ffdshow64.cfm 32-bit: http://www.afterdawn.com/software/audio_video/codecs/ffdshow.cfm I also recommend using a player other than WMP. VLC would work, although I don't personally like it so much for playback. I use Media Player Classic Home Cinema. If you go that route (or with VLC for that matter) you don't have to worry about installing the decoder separately. 64-bit: http://www.afterdawn.com/software/audio_video/media_players/media_player_classic_home_cinema_64-bit.cfm 32-bit: http://www.afterdawn.com/software/audio_video/media_players/media_player_classic_home_cinema_32-bit.cfm
If you want a plain DVD decoder for windows try the one at this link. It is lightweight and non-intrusive. It works with Windows media player. I have used it before.
