Radeon VE 7000 and playing DVDs

[powercat]

I've had an older Radeon card, the VE, working flawlessly in Windows XP
with just the Catalyst driver installed, viewed on a DVI-I connected
LCD monitor. Having installed about four ATI cards in the last decade
I did not opt to install all the bloatware. In the interim, alas, I
have lost the original installation CD. Now I'd like to upgrade this
computer to a DVD burner and be able to play them back. So I guess I
need a software decoder installed even though the card has hardware
support for DVD playback?

What do you readers of this newsgroup suggest (other than "leave well
enough alone")?

I can't download the ATI DVD player (elsewhere in this newsgroup I see
that's because of copyright issues). I could buy a copy of something
like InterVideo's WinDVD. Or I could spring for a new card. Or I
could pour gasoline on this PC and light it and build a new one
(although this PC is fairly speedy with a 2 gig processor, 1 meg RAM,
and a not-so-old chipset).

Thanks for any help. I have a number of hours on a camcorder to
offload to disk awaiting a solution.

 

[Barry Watzman]

The full version of either of the CD/DVD burning packages (Roxio or
Nero) will contain a DVD player. Or you can get WinDVD really cheap
(about $6) from some of the surplus places (try
www.surpluscomputers.com). Or get someone to copy an ATI CD for you.
The ATI DVD player isn't that great anyway.

 

[First of One]

Use the open-source Media Player Classic with built-in MPEG2 decoder. It's
just a clean 5 MB single executable with no dll files and no installation.
Quality is superb, as it plays most widescreen DVDs at 960x540.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82303&package_id=84358&release_id=403110

 

[powercat]

Excuse my ignorance but with the software (ATI DVD Player, Nero, Roxio,
or Media Player Classic) does the DVD play "in" that software or does
it play in, say, Windows Media Player? Thanks again.

 

[Barry Watzman]

Both.

Each of the software players that you listed is a full player and the
DVD can play "in" that software. But, EXCEPT for WMP, during their
installation they all install MPEG2 decoders that then become available
to other windows applications. Windows and WMP does not have or come
with an MPEG2 decoder, but it will play DVDs if, and only if, some other
software suite has installed such a decoder that it can use.

 

[First of One]

The DVD plays "in" that software. Of course, Media Player Classic's
interface looks a lot like Windows Media Player's, albeit with 2-3x more
functionality, so everything is familiar.

 

[powercat]

Thanks again much appreciated.