Good afternoon gents. I am still stumbling along with my ancient (Pc years =Dog years) xp machine with media centre 2005. After a a couple of reinstalls I was looking out for the dreaded error "no Dvd decoder installed ". I understand Dvd playback in xp is not native. However this Dell machine most certainly played them when new. So after the latest reinstall I started digging deep into the restore discs I had to pry from Dell when I bought the machine. No dice. The Sonic cd /dvd burning suite that came with it did not do it. The media player was not part of it. I suspect that Power Dvd was originally installed and it had the decoder but was uninstalled ages ago since I didn't use it. Little did I know the decoder for these kinds of programmes is what media centre and wmp rely on for Dvd playback.
So this presents a problem. Mpeg2(Dvd) decoding requires licensing which is why there are no free ones. Win 7 comes with it but you can bet you are paying for that licensing in OS cost. MS linked to places like Corel, Nvidia, Roxio and some others. Most are $13-20 download only. "Insurance " for a year or two of back up downloads is typically another ten dollars or do. Only one added the option of a cd back up and it was less than the insurance. I really don't mind paying fairly for the license but what happens if /when you reformat? I find it all rather tedious but there's nothing for it. Is it actually worth the $40-60 for the retail player versions of Power Dvd? I just don't know with the age of this machine. BTW, I already tried the ffdshow filter and it did not work.
Cheers, Todd
So this presents a problem. Mpeg2(Dvd) decoding requires licensing which is why there are no free ones. Win 7 comes with it but you can bet you are paying for that licensing in OS cost. MS linked to places like Corel, Nvidia, Roxio and some others. Most are $13-20 download only. "Insurance " for a year or two of back up downloads is typically another ten dollars or do. Only one added the option of a cd back up and it was less than the insurance. I really don't mind paying fairly for the license but what happens if /when you reformat? I find it all rather tedious but there's nothing for it. Is it actually worth the $40-60 for the retail player versions of Power Dvd? I just don't know with the age of this machine. BTW, I already tried the ffdshow filter and it did not work.
Cheers, Todd
