Alternatives to PowerDVD

[SteveThaiBinh]

Reinstalling everything from scratch after switching to Windows Vista, I discover that I've lost my CD key for PowerDVD 6. I never much liked PowerDVD anyway, but it always came free with whatever computer I bought so I've always used it, and I understand that unless I have it or something similar installed, Windows Media Player and RealPlayer won't play DVDs either. So is there anything else out there that will do the same job? For free would be nice too, of course.

[Pidesco]

Media Player Classic.

 

I'm guessing VLC also works.

[Gorgon]

VlC works fine, thats what I use. I like Chrystal player the best, but it isen't free and it is dependent, like media player, on codec downloads for playing various non dvd formats, VLC seems to make do with just DirectX/draw

[Kelverin]

AVS DVD Player works great for me Edited April 9, 2008 by Kelverin

[SteveThaiBinh]

Cheers guys. I've downloaded VLC and it seems to be working fine, although it doesn't enable Windows Media Player or Realplayer to see DVDs the way that PowerDVD does. On the other hand, it's able to run pretty much everything and it opens and closes very quickly - much better than Windows Media Player.

[Kelverin]

PowerDVD - is just terrible, glad I got rid of it.

[angshuman]

Do you have an Nvidia card? If so you could consider investing in their PureVideo DVD decoder. It offloads the bulk of the decoding process to the GPU, plus it does a fantastic job (the best I've seen) of deinterlacing non-progressive-scan content. You can use the decoder with frontends like Media Player Classic, Zoom Player (both excellent frontends) and even Windows Media Player.

[SteveThaiBinh]

Thanks, I've had a look at the website. I think I'll see if I can get used to the VLC interface. If I can't, then Purevideo looks like the best option.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

I use Dell's MediaDirect on my laptop, and it seems ok.