Apparently I need a codec plug-in

I recently obtained a desktop computer that for the first time in my experience, has a DVD burner/player. The friend we bought it from never actually used it to play back a DVD; only to burn them.

I tried to play a DVD movie this morning, and Windows Media Player told me I needed a plug-in DVD decoder, and offered to direct me to a place where I can BUY one. Well, screw that. I don’t BUY things, if I can get an equivalent for free.

Google does respond when I search on “free,” “dvd plugins,” and “Windows XP.” But lately, I’ve been deciding to be careful about the sites I go to for free downloads. Anyone have any suggestions for a safe place to download such a free plug-in?

Thanks in advance.

Install the Media Player Codec Pack from here

It’s a safe site.

Or install the free http://www.videolan.org/ and you can play just about anything.

I’ve always recommended the k-lite codec pack, it’s solved all my users’ problems in this area

Another vote forVLC Player. Been using it for years, even before I switched to Linux.

The default distribution of VLC includes a large number of free decoding and encoding libraries, avoiding the need for finding/calibrating proprietary plugins. Many of VLC’s codecs are provided by the libavcodec library from the FFmpeg project, but it uses mainly its own muxer and demuxers and its own protocols. It also gained distinction as the first player to support playback of encrypted DVDs on Linux and Mac OS X by using the libdvdcss DVD decryption library.