DVD Movies on Windows XP
If you have a fresh installation of Windows XP, you will realize that it won’t play DVD videos, or a host of other audio/video formats on the Internet, including MPEG4 videos encoded with codecs such as DivX, Xvid, H.264 and the like. Even if you do not need to be able to watch these newer MPEG4 video formats, you will at some time need to be able to at least watch a DVD Video.
However, if you were to pop in a DVD into your computer expecting Windows Media Player to play it, you will be in for a surprise, as it will not play your DVD Video if you have not installed a DVD decoder software. This is most likely to happen if you installed the DVD drive into your computer yourself, or if you have newly formatted your computer (since any DVD decoding software which may have originally come with your computer would have been erased).
If you were to perform a search on Google to solve this issue, you may come across several different websites which will point you in different directions for a solution. Most of them lead to commercial software which then allow your computer to play the DVD content. One example is this excerpt from a blog post entitled DVD Playback in Windows XP, hosted on Microsoft’s servers:
If you are unable to find an installed DVD decoder, you can purchase one from the same vendors from which PC manufacturers license theirs. Ravisent, InterVideo, and CyberLink all have DVD Decoder Packs available for purchase and download over the Internet. Windows Media Technologies also lists third-party software vendors who have DVD Decoder Packs available. The cost from each vendor runs about $14.95, unless you want to pay a little more and get a combo-pack which also includes MP3 encoding. I tried products from the three vendors mentioned above, and they all worked great. Their decoder packs installed quickly and easily, and as soon as installation was complete, Windows Media Player immediately started to play the movie after I inserted a DVD.
While some of the software mentioned above are good, the good news is that there is no real need to fork out your hard earned money just to be able to playback your multimedia content. Windows Media Player is an excellent video player and you do not really need to pay for another video player on your computer. All you really need is a proper set of codecs which will help Windows Media Player (or any other video player on your computer for that mattter) understand the format in which your multimedia content was created in.
Personally, I would recommend the XP Codec Pack, or the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack depending on your needs. Essentially, both of these are a set of codecs which have been carefully put together to enable the playback of most audio/video formats. If alll you want to watch is DVD Video or AVIs encoded with DivX or Xvid, then XP Codec Pack would suffice. If you want to be sure of being able to watch practically any audio/video content available today, regardless of what codec it was encoded with, you will want to go for the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack.
Both of these codec packs also include Windows Player Classic, which allows you to access the various functions included with the codecs, allowing finer control over how the audio and video content is decoded, thereby tremendously improving your viewing experience. So if you find that you are unable to play a certain format of video or audio on your computer, be it DVD content, or a movie you downloaded from the Internet, be sure to install one of the codec packs mentioned above, and you should be well on your way to enjoying your multimedia content.
