DVD decoder?

[ZacSquatch]

Tried playin a DVD on my laptop and keeps poppin up that I need some silly decoder... looked for some freebe's but they all look sketchy.. anyone know of a good one or have a link?

BTW, its a HP Pavilion dV5000 runnin XP

[Lowrange2]

:scottm:

[5-90]

Tried playin a DVD on my laptop and keeps poppin up that I need some silly decoder... looked for some freebe's but they all look sketchy.. anyone know of a good one or have a link?

BTW, its a HP Pavilion dV5000 runnin XP

Decoder? All you should need is player software - which usually comes preinstalled on anything with a DVD drive anyhow (I've had several ThinkPads that have.)

MediaMatics DVD-Express is what I've usually worked with, and it's worked well. I'd bought a copy some time ago - and it turns out that it's what IBM/Lenovo uses as OEM anyhow.

I'd also think that there are some freeware and shareware versions out there - they may not work quite as well, but should be serviceable.

[8Mud]

I use AnyDVD, primarily because it defeats the area codes, I play both US and European DVD's. But it has other uses.

Could it be you have to download additional codexes for your media player. GOM player is free and works better than most others (windows, Real or whatever) and has a good selection of codexes.

[1985xjlaredo]

VLC Media player is the best player arond. It will play any file format. It will also play the individule .vod files on a DVD no matter what region it is.

[streetpirate]

VLC Media player is the best player arond. It will play any file format. It will also play the individule .vod files on a DVD no matter what region it is.

X about a million

best thing to happen to digital video since the home computer

[DrSockMonkey]

VLC Media player is the best player arond. It will play any file format. It will also play the individule .vod files on a DVD no matter what region it is.
x1,000,003
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html

[8Mud]

I keep VLC also, but find GOM to be about the best all around for me, fills about 95% of my needs. I use VLC when all else fails.
GOM seems to have my, most used, functions in an easy format. The everyday stuff, easy to find and use, layed out in an easy practical way. I don't have to scroll through lengthy menus to find what I want. Maybe I just never really got used to the VLC layout.
I get a lot more use out of my Widows media player since I downloaded a couple of codex packages.
I've got four media players and two conversion programs and still can't do a hundred percent of what I (think) I want to do.
There are a whole bunch of different file types out there.