I recently ran into the problem of having people not be able to play a DVD that I had burnt for them. They were using it on their computers and it seemed to be isolated to the PC users and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what was causing the problems. However, I think I now have a solution!

PROBLEM:
It is my understanding that when a computer company installs a DVD player in their machine, they package a player and set of video encoders/drivers with that machine. This is why the DVD seems to play on some machines and not on others. Different manufacturers use different software to interact with their DVD player and it’s not consistent across the board. Mac computers seem to have this pretty well covered and are able to process a wide range of media with no problems. Also, since it’s one company, they have standard hardware/software installations. If you’re on a PC, it’s kind of hit and miss. The standard Windows Media Player requires that you have a plugin to handle certain burnt DVDs and I believe it costs a small sum to purchase. Or it could be just a problem with older versions of the software, I’m not sure.

So what can you do about this?

SOLUTION:
A very helpful IT person at my office recommended a free, open-source program called VLC Media Player. You can download it at: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

This program is supposed to be very versatile at playing any number of video formats including DVDs which is great since video is becoming increasingly popular. Although I have not used it on a PC, the MAC version seems to work great and some internet searches reveal it to be a legitimate and popular solution. There are versions for all different types of operating systems, so all of you Linux users out there can enjoy this as well!

If you try this with (or without) any success, please leave a comment and let me know how it works!

Tags: DVD, video, VLC