Playing DVD's in Windows 10.

[JayCeeDee]

Well, my old Home Cinema has been sat there unused for some time now. Downloads, streaming and Netflix/Amazon/NOWTV have made it superfluous. No big deal, but I wanted to play a couple of my DVD’s yesterday and it’s stopped working properly. It’s gone into the garage as a sound system.

No real problem there, but now, when I tried to play the DVD’s on the computer they’re not playing properly/at all. That problem seemingly is I’m running Windows 10 and they have stopped providing a player/codecs.

No problem there really so a quick bit of research later and I’m off to download VLC. All downloaded and went to play the DVD and every time I press ‘Play’ VLC crashes ( even when I try running as administrator ). Research gave the solution as “Reset Preferences”, so I tried that but no improvement.

First alternative for VLC came up as 5KPlayer, so I downloaded that, activated it, but the same thing happens. As soon as I try to play a DVD 5K crashes as well.

I’ve checked the program list for any clashes, but the only other player on there is Cisco VideoGuard Player, which apparently is needed for streaming NOWTV, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix through my browser.

W10 is all up to date – Version 1903 ( OS Build 18362.356 ) and shows as Licensed to me.

My first thought is to buy an external DVD player, which will come with a basic player, see if it works and then go for the full paid for version.

Second thought was to try VirtualBox – again – ( I didn’t have a great deal of success last time, trying Ubuntu ) but I’m having problems loading Windows onto it. I can’t find an iso of winXP SP3 that I trust the download site. I chose Win XP as it’ll also let me play a few games that stopped playing when I upped the OS to W7 and W10.

Any suggestions, solutions or alternatives guys??

[PlaneMan]

Media Player Classic, used to use that back in my Windows days.

No idea how good it is now but used to be very good.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Most odd that VLC crashes, its usually the one that works if all else fails 🤔

You may like to try downloading the K-Lite codec pack and then seeing if Windows media player will work.

[Mark Turner]

Try the k-lite codec pack as Graham says I believe it comes with a copy of media player classic as well in the standard version which is what I have installed. Its worth a punt

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

https://www.codecguide.com/about_kl.htm

And just in case you’r not convinced already, have a look at the above link 😁

[JayCeeDee]

Cheers guys – so far I’ve installed klite, which installed Media Player Classic. That has played so far, Lord of the Rings, an old 2006 DVD, Butterfly on a Wheel, plus a music DVD, The Eagles – Hell Freezes Over ( bonus on this one, it was an NTSC American DVD).

Glad to have access to these, and others, again. 👍👍

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Glad thats working, now try this.

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/how-to-project-your-screen-to-a-tv-on-windows-10

Remember the Win+p key if you do though because you can end up projecting your main screen to “nothing” and pressing Win+p a few times will get it back 😀

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Oh, one more thing to note. If you are playing a DVD on a PC then PAL/NTSC only specifies the resolution and refresh rate, its only the region code that will get in your way.

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