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XP Media Player won't play DVDs...


DyDstrysNit

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Guest LouCypher

Lou--

I thought about region settings and have verified that it's set to region 1. The DVD is reliable as I've used it on many other systems. It's the one I keep in my office for testing DVD drives.

I'm losing my starry-eyed view of the new media player. It seems like there's a lot of crap to go through to get it to do what it's supposed to be made for. Is this Linux or something?

:Elaugh [/quote:a45ec9b399]

What I was wodnering though is are you sure of the Region of the disc? I used to have a test DVD that was "Frankie Lane in Concert" (don't ask) that didn't have a region code and was not able to play under Window ME because of it. Your drive could be Region 1 and your decoder card could be Region 1 but XP might not want to let you play a Region Free disk.

I do have a Hollywood Plus decoder card with the latest drivers installed and the DVD decoder pack for WMP and I can play the DVD through DVD Station or WMP. I just figured with the DVD being a music DVD it might not have any region at all. It wouldn't cause a problem in anything [b:a45ec9b399]except[/b:a45ec9b399] XP. That's all I'm saying.

Linux would IMHO be a lot harder to get playing DVDs than XP anyday. I've been toying with the idea of just having one OS on my system but there are always the little things that keep be using both Windows XP and Slackware Linux. DVD playback is one of the reasons for keeping Windows.

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I dont know if you have tred this..but download X-setup and under program options>built in windows apps>WMP>Advanced options> you can enable WMP to play dvds...i also belive you might want to update your decoder card and dvd..that might help

-drew

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That's a new idea. I'll try it. Can you tell me where I can download XP setup? When you say to update my decoder card and DVD are you talking hardware or software?

[/quote:7f5837668d]

Heres a link to Xsetup:

http://www.xteq.com/downloads/#xset

and what i ment with updating...have you look on the manufactuer website to see if the have new drivers for you decoder card and/or dvd drive.

good luck

-drew

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As a tester for M$.

I have never been able to play DVD's on laptops without using software decoders. A hardware decoder is usually required.

You may have been able to play DVD during the RC era but you have to remember that it was just BETA during that time. Once the product shipped other changes have and were made. This issue may have been one of them that was changed.

If all else fails, you might wanna try software decoders such as WinDVD or PowerDVD.

I wish I could be of more assistance.

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That's where I am, too. This is really disappointing because I have a version of WMP8 installed on my Win2k system and I LOVE watching DVD on it. The full-screen feature is exactly what I want in a DVD player.

Fang--

Since you're a tester, if you have any contacts on the "inside," suggest that they allow us paying customers to be allowed to use the product, please.

Thanks, all, for all the help and suggestions. If nothing else, I'm a little smarter. And hey, isn't that what the internet is all about?

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This is the Toshiba Tecra 8100?

Using the DVD Mediamatics software? or the MPlayer?

Are you doing a clean install or migrating from a previous OS?

I did a check of issues with this Make and Model and it does not have a hardware DVD decoder. It used MediaMatics for the sofware decoding.

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8100 upgraded from Win2k. If the hardware has no decoder (which doesn't shock me... it's a pretty old laptop DVD drive), and MPlayer allowed me to play DVD's on pre-GA releases of XP, then M$ had to have pulled the DVD decoder from MPlayer, right? Or am I missing something? If it had the decoder at one time, I wonder why they pulled it... unless they're trying to sell it as a "Plus-type" package...

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You say this was an 'upgrade' install - so I assume you had already installed the mediamatics patch for win2K??? If not - try that. As you know - many xp problems are solved with 2K drivers and patches. If you have to resort to buying something to get it working, you can get a PCMCIA card by MARGI (i think that is the spelling) that will enable hardware decoding on almost any laptop. Actually - you will get better playback - just costs a bit more.

LS

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do you have problems playing mpegs? have a mess about in the advanced settings in media player, i had problems too, id make a few changes, untick a box, restart media player and after a bit of fiddling it worked, it seems to mess the settings up if you install real player.. might not be real player but on win2k and then winXP just after installing real player media player would need all the settings altering might have been coincidence..

see if you can play mpegs and a few other video types if not then its not a suprise if it wont play DVD... have you tried using something like mgi DVD or power quest? ive no experiance of laptops and DVD though just if one of those works.. then wont matter so much about media player

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I don't want to buy any more hardware for it. It's a company laptop and, therefore, not justifiable for watching movies. My main purpose for fighting it this far is, when we upgrade our users, they're all going to wonder why they can't do it. I'd like to solve the problem first and have an answer for them.

I have PowerDVD on there and it plays fine in that program, so I'm guessing that Fang has the best take on it in that WMP's soft-decoder has been removed. I'm still looking to see if it can be recovered "for a $mall fee," of course.

^)

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check the stuff at the following links. not sure which one you might want to try 1st, but since you are in experimentation mode - maybe one will unlock the xp media players dvd playback ability

h*tp://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/playback.html

h*tp://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/encoding_2.html#plugin

LS

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