Unable to play DVD's

[Paul]

My friend has recently bought a secondhand Dell laptop Inspirian 1525 that
has Windows XP Media addition installed and came with a Vidsta Home Premium
disk.

He has left in on Windows XP as he prefers this operating system, however,
when he tries to play DVD's, it comes up with a message saying that the
computer does not have an MPEG-2 decoder installed.

Can anyone tell us why this is happening please and what we can do to sort
it out.

Many thanks,

 

[ACC]

He needs UK compatible software such as PowerDVD, or WinDVD. These are
usually distributed with new DVD drives, but otherwise have to be bought and
paid for.

 

[Olórin]

My friend has recently bought a secondhand Dell laptop Inspirian 1525 that
has Windows XP Media addition installed and came with a Vidsta Home Premium
disk.

He has left in on Windows XP as he prefers this operating system, however,
when he tries to play DVD's, it comes up with a message saying that the
computer does not have an MPEG-2 decoder installed.

Can anyone tell us why this is happening please and what we can do to sort
it out.

Many thanks,

Dell used to provide a free version of PowerDVD that would only install on
Dells but don't any more for licensing reasons. Now they (well, the tech I
spoke to last week) just advise you to install VLC
(http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) which will play DVDs, as well as just about
any other format. I thoroughly recommend it, too.

 

[John Inzer]

My friend has recently bought a secondhand Dell laptop Inspirian 1525
that has Windows XP Media addition installed and came with a Vidsta
Home Premium disk.

He has left in on Windows XP as he prefers this operating system,
however, when he tries to play DVD's, it comes up with a message
saying that the computer does not have an MPEG-2 decoder installed.

Can anyone tell us why this is happening please and what we can do to
sort it out.

Many thanks,

===================================
The following article offers DVD Decoders for Windows Media Player:

Info on DVD Decoders:
Plug-ins for Windows Media Player
http://tinyurl.com/j9e29
or...
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/plugins.aspx

Also...you may want to try the free VLC Media Player:

VLC Media Player
http://www.videolan.org/


--


John Inzer MS-MVP
Digital Media Experience

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk

 

[olfart]

===================================
The following article offers DVD Decoders for Windows Media Player:

Info on DVD Decoders:
Plug-ins for Windows Media Player
http://tinyurl.com/j9e29
or...
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/plugins.aspx

Also...you may want to try the free VLC Media Player:

VLC Media Player
http://www.videolan.org/

you might also go to
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_lite_codec_pack.htm and download free
Media Player Classic with K Lite codecs. It's free and plays about anything.
I have both K Lite and VLC on my machine, What one prog won't play the other
one usually will. I never use Windows Media Player or Media Center as they
are full of bloat and they are always trying to connect to the
internet,,,which is a big PIA