As you may have heard from a Pit thread last week, I don’t have a TV, but I do enjoy watching DVDs on my computer. At least until now.
All three DVD playing applications on my computer have suddenly turned against me, saying that they cannot detect my DVD decoder. I’ve tried following the help links and have downloaded several things that they claim will help, but even after restarting, nada.
What the heck do I do now? Besides get a new computer, that is, although I am sorely tempted.
Your dvd-rom has given up the ghost?
Don’t say that! It still works! I’ve…I’ve just done something! I don’t know what but it’s fixable, I know!
Does it still mount the discs, or not?
Does it work with CDs?
What are the three DVD Players?
How long have you had each of them?
Which one came with the drive?
Do you still have the CD for the DVD software that came with the laptop?
If you have the software discs for your DVD players, uninstall the programs and then do a fresh install of each one. That’s usually a better option than just trying add-on fixes.
Wikkit: Yes, CDs still work. And it does get to the start menu on DVDs on one of the applications. But then I get a message that the DVD decoder cannot be found.
1010011010 and mhendo, the applications are PCFriendly, InterActual, and RealPlayer. I just dled the first two in my attempt to get it working right - despite its occasional massive flaws, I prefer RealPlayer because it has the brightest picture and least offensive “window”.
The computer used to belong to my ex-bf and I don’t have any of the original disks and I’m not really sure what the original player was although I suspect it was InterVideo, which I deleted recently. Damn, I bet that’s the cause of the problem, huh? I just assumed that it was another DVD playing application, and since I never used it, I figured it would be okay to delete it. But last night in my quest to find a functioning application, I redownloaded InterActual - isn’t that the same thing?
Help me, I don’t know what I’m talking about!
OK, i think that your problem here might have been uninstalling Intervideo.
Most commercial DVD-playing software comes with a commercial codec, which is necessary for decoding the mpeg-2 format of the DVD’s video files. Most free players like RealPlayer don’t come with such a codec, and they can only play DVDs if you already have the codec on your computer from installing a commercial DVD program like InterVideo. That is, RealPlayer can’t decode the DVD on its own; it uses the commercial codec, and then displays the result.
Now, there are two excellent free media players that can, i believe, play DVDs without installing any commecial mpeg-2 codec:
VLC Media Player
Media Player Classic
I use Media Player Classic (MPC) on my computer, and it’s great. It’s an open source media player that doesn’t come with any of the bloated crap that is so common in other free players like RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. It is not constantly asking you to update to Pro, and it is not a resource hog the way Real is. I know you said you liked Real, and it certainly is handy at times, but it is also bloated crapware that tends to slow computers down, and i don’t like the proprietary nature of the file formats either.
In fact, i don’t even have Real or Quicktime on my computer anymore. Instead i use two MPC plugin called RealAlternative and QuicktimeAlternative, which allow me to play Real formats (.ram, .rm, etc.) and Quicktime formats (.mov) without having those programs installed. It makes things much easier if you only need to use one media player.
I also installed a little thing called ffdshow, which is an open source codec library that basically allows you to play any type of media file on MPC without having a bunch of different codecs on your computer. It allows you to play .avi, divx, xVid, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
So, basically, i have one program (Media Player Classic) and three small plugins (RealAlternative, QuicktimeAlternative, and ffdshow) to take care of all my possible video needs. They could even take care of my audio needs as well (.mp3 etc.), but i have some commercial software for that.
If you can’t fix your problem any other way, i highly recommend downloading and installing MPC and ffdshow. If you have any trouble doing it, or if you want any other advice, come back to this thread and i’ll see if i can help.