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Media Players for Windows Without DRM?
jasonmicron asks: "I am curious as to what you Linux/UNIX people use for a media player that supports both license lookup on the internet and DVD Playback support. I am quite sick of Microsoft's media player telling me that my 'license is invalid', even on DVDs that I own. I find that VERY lame. I ask because not only does Microsoft tell me that my license is invalid but Real Network's Real Player tells me the same thing (even though I place my totally VALID and self-owned DVD in my DVD-ROM player in my DVD-ROM, which runs on Windows). What media players does Slashdot recommend to bypass the total ignorance of Microsoft and Real Networks? I am looking for a Windows solution, though any Linux / UNIX solution is completely welcome."
VLC is a great, cross platform media player. I run it on Windows and it works well - it actually performs better than WinDVD on my laptop. It will play a number of file formats as well. I think it is also open source.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Good media players: ZoomPlayer (for DVD playback is not free) or MPC (is, but less pretty). use Dscaler5 and ffdshow and you're set. oh, add something like DVD43 for de-CSS and other bullshit removal. I use this on my HTPC and with some careful setup its the bees knees. Certainly nothing complains about piracy here :D. Glad to be of service.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
http://videolan.org/
A player and oh so much more.
Also, next time try Google. Really.
Mplayer - Distibuted as MPF on windows, it's not _that_ user friendly, but it plays everything under the sun.
MediaPlayerClassic - Hosted at sourceforge, this recreates the WMP 6 UI and has pretty solid playback. Friendlier than Mplayer, but a tad less solid video playback.
VLC - yup the one and truly. Not too user friendly.
I use and recommend to everyone the K-Lite Codec Pack for all your Windows Media needs.
Along with everything else, the Mega Codec Pack includes "Windows Media Player Classic" which despite the name isn't anything to do with Microsoft, though it does clone the interface of Media Player version 6.
I carry the Mega Codec pack around with me on a USB Stick, you can install just one thing or you can install everything. Media Player Classic has built in support for a lot of things (I think including DVD Playback) so I'm sure it'll fit your needs exactly. If it doesn't by itself, the Mega Codec Pack includes plugins for just about any codec you'd ever need, including a DVD Decoder.
I really can't recommend the family of K-Lite codec packs enough, especially the Mega becasue you don't need to install Real Player or Quicktime anymore! It'll install cut down versions of them that have just the bare bones dll's, enough for MPC to play Quicktime/Real clips without needing all the bloat those programs bring on their own.
Give the site a look over, I'm sure it's probably what you're looking for. The Mega pack might be overkill for you, but Media Player Classic I think suits the bill perfectly.
Tim
[Sorry for the double post, I accidently posted this without being logged in. Duh]
I don't know about windows reinstalls just for a codec pack?
I'd used some terrible codec packs before K-Lite and some of them did mess up pretty bad and that's why I praise this one so highly, it's never given me any grief. The few times I have uninstalled it, it's removed everything cleanly.
You're right in that installing all those codecs is really overkill, but don't forget that installing this codec pack also allows you to *encode* as well as decode, something neither MPC or ffdshow will do. As I understand it you also get the visual quality benefit of each seperate decoder, as opposed to ffdshow that just decodes them all as mpeg4. Fro Joe average that's probably not a concern either.
You're right that the DVD Decoder in K-Lite isn't legal, something I probably should have pointed out in my original post.
Tim
FYI, mplayer on OS X has a really, really bad user interface. You can tell it was a port, and a poorly-done port at that... it took me probably a half hour to figure out how to quit. See, instead of the one Dock icon every OS X program gets, mplayer for some reason has two Dock icons... one of which works (has quit, minimize, etc) and one of which appears to do nothing at all. If you click in the movie window, (the nonfunctional Dock icon) you can't quit the program, use any services, or do anything at all because there's no menu.
In short, if you like a smooth user experience, avoid mplayer, at least on OS X. VLC is much, much better and plays DVDs like a champ.
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Both Xine and VLC are based on the mplayer code. In Linux GUIs, Xine is the clear choice (mplayer beating it out for consoles). Many of my Windows friends extol the virtues of VLC, but it leaves much to be desired in its Linux implementation.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!