Need some basic information and plain facts about DVD Decoders

[Guest]

I bought a puzzle game at a drug store and it came with a DVD. I believe it
is a DVD and not a CD but how do you tell? Thats the first question-I did go
to the properties of my cd/dvd multi drive and tried playing the disk with CD
Recording enabled and then with CD Recording disabled. Got the same error
message both times-
"Windows Media Player cannot play the DVD because a compatible DVD decoder
is not installed on your computer."
Now I did a little searching and also installed WMP 11 but I cannot verify
this because I do not know how to verify the WMP version. I did the usual,
going to properties of WMP but could not see any identification there.
Information received when I went to Help, etc, suggested retail companies
that had DVD decoders for sale. Retail companies? Is there not supposed to
be some basic dvd decoders that come with Windows or with WMP? To do any
basic operations are there not free, reliable dvd decoders out there?
If there is not free help I saw a recommendation on this site, a few
messages down, but when I selected this URL activated phrase I did not get
the correct website.
Frank C.

 

[SingaporeWebDesign]

Hello,

You can use VLC media player to play DVDs. Its free.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

 

[Guest]

Thanks. I was not in the same group when I wrote my email but posted it to
this group, I mean I made this a new selection from the drop down box when I
posted this message. There are some answers to my questions if I go back
through the list and search.
However the website you have given me will be used also. Thanks for
responding. Frank C.