Today I thought to myself, "Hey Tracer, why don't you go buy some DVDs? You've never tried that before," and so I ended up with Strange Days, Minority Report and all the episodes of Firefly. We've got two computers in the house, a laptop with a DVD-drive and the computer I'm typing to you from, which has a Radeon 9200. The laptop for some reason has no DVD software, so I tried to install the player that came on my ATI disk. This failed because the ATI software won't install unless you have an ATI card (the laptop has some generic thing currently running 24-bit at 1024*768). Questions:

Does the laptop just need the correct software to play DVDs, or do you have to have a fancy video card too?

Is my only option to go buy a DVD drive for my ATI-equipped computer? How much are they?

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"Look at me! I'm Tracer! BLAHBLAHBLAH!"

-MBeggar

Proably alot less to get a DVD player for your TV. I've seen them as low at 25 bucks for the TV, that is a DVD player without any bells and whistles. 1 disc, no CD support or anything.

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I made a thread, that turned into the debate, so I made a second thread, that turned into a debate, then I made a third thread, that caught on fire, burned down, got flamed, crapped on, bashed, then turned into a debate...but the fourth one, the fourth one stayed on topic!

You need to get the drivers for the DVD drive then any media player should play the DVDs without a problem

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I'm not an actor. I just play one on TV.

Just "find" yourself DVD playing software online. Jeez, I've got like 3 or 4 CD's with different versions of PowerDVD and WinDVD lying around. They were all bundled with hardware I've bought in the past couple years.

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When guitars are outlawed, only outlaws will have guitars.

^That sounds promising (what Avenger said). But shouldn't it already have drivers installed if it works?

Mad Cow: How big is power DVD? The laptop doesn't have a network connection, so unless it fits on a floppy I can't transfer it.

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"Look at me! I'm Tracer! BLAHBLAHBLAH!"

-MBeggar

[This message has been edited by Tracer (edited June 30, 2004).]

Tracer: If your laptop runs on Win2k or XP, try this:

Go to start>run. Type dvdplay

Hit enter. A cheap crappy DVD player should come up. It should work fine to play it. Otherwise, I HIGHLY recommend you use Media Player Classic, not only for DVDs, but for any video:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82303&package_id=84358

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Ah. I forget to mention, this laptop is running Win 98. It's a bit dated (pentium 2), but I figured it should still be able to play DVDs (right?).

And yeah, I know I could always go out and just buy a player for my TV, but that's kind of the last resort. I don't want to spend any more money if I can avoid it (bear in mind, Sajn, that I'm in Canada so $25 turns into about $40) - I've already spent $87 on the DVDs themselves (stupid, I know, but hey...).

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"Look at me! I'm Tracer! BLAHBLAHBLAH!"

-MBeggar

[This message has been edited by Tracer (edited June 30, 2004).]

If you can read from the drive, you won't have to install any other drivers.

Power DVD is about 15 megs or so. I'm sure if you asked around, someone you know probably has it or a copy of any other DVD playing software.

[edit] Wasn't DVD in Win98 only supported in the second edition?

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When guitars are outlawed, only outlaws will have guitars.

[This message has been edited by MaD CoW (edited June 30, 2004).]

Also, alot of dvds include a crappy player with them, suchas interactual player.

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"It's OK for us to randomly attack people!"
-BV

It's Win98 second edition. Forgot to mention that as well.

Uh, matty, can you tell me which file to download?

I'll check that out, Greenboy. Firefly didn't seem to come with anything, maybe the others did.

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"Look at me! I'm Tracer! BLAHBLAHBLAH!"

-MBeggar

[This message has been edited by Tracer (edited June 30, 2004).]

P2? what speed? it probably won't... my POS300 can play DVDs with major frame skipping and occasional audio hiccups... leave it to compaq to put a DVD-ROM drive in a computer that is too slow to play DVDs

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LONG LIVE DREAMCAST!!!

Don't know. It's worth a try, at least. And none of the DVDs came with additional software.

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"Look at me! I'm Tracer! BLAHBLAHBLAH!"

-MBeggar

A PII will not play a DVD, especially not on a laptop. Plus, I highly doubt the laptop even HAS a DVD drive in the first place, which would kill all chances of playing it.

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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...
Make Sorrowind Worthwhile... join it! http://sorrowind.net

No, the laptop definately has a DVD drive, but like Jim said, it's too slow/unpowerful/whatever to play them in a watchable manner. So plan B: what's a decent DVD player at a fair price? Should I get a drive for my computer, or a TV one?

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"Look at me! I'm Tracer! BLAHBLAHBLAH!"

-MBeggar

Strange that a computer that slow would come with a DVD drive in the first place.

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If you can read this you're
TOO DAMN CLOSE!!

I recommend VideoLAN. Windows Media player is a bloated POS compared to it. It supports DVDs, Divx, OGM, and virtually any video format that there is, and it is GNU and free on top of that.

http://www.videolan.org



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You could check pricewatch. I know DVD burners are 70 American now, but the players for comp are like 30-40 American. Up to you.

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There is no signature

It should be able to play it, I used to have a 350Mhz PII Toshiba laptop and it played DVDs perfectly.

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http://www.sporkaudio.com

If you have a K-Mart near you, go there and they have a brand called Goldstar. It sounds like crap, but guess who makes them? LG you can get a DVD player for about $60 (around the same price as a DVDROM from Best Buy) and it will play VHS, DVD, MP3 discs, and the like. I have one and I love it.

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1337Yectiwan
OSC Returns!!
10 of 14 -- 27 Lives On

[This message has been edited by Jaiph (edited June 29, 2004).]

Really? What OS? Maybe the problem was with the video card...

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"Look at me! I'm Tracer! BLAHBLAHBLAH!"

-MBeggar

98SE at first, later upgraded it to XP. Used PowerDVD as the player both times. What you need is a good DVD Decoder, which is what PowerDVD, WinDVD and the like are. Programs like dvdplay won't work without one. Even Windows Media Player in XP needs one. The reason the ATI software won't install is probably because it uses some ATI specific features. Hope that helps...

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http://www.sporkaudio.com

I never had any problems with my old Acer PII 350 mhz while playing DVDs. Had Windows 98. I don't think it was SE either. Came with an ATI Rage Pro Turbo, and DVD playing software. Always worked just fine for me. But I have nicer options now (Read: 52" TV)

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Our very existence is at stake

Yay! I can finally join the snail-racing crew.

-@%

Does windows ME come with the nessecary DVD software? Because I could install that on the laptop...

Okay, it does. WinMe has that dvdplay thing, but like NoEsc said it still requires a software or hardware decoder. Now here's what I'm confused about: when I download PowerDVD, I assume I get a bunch of other stuff besides the decoder, which makes the download much bigger. Is there some way to just get a decoder? How can I tell if I've got a hardware decoder?
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"Look at me! I'm Tracer! BLAHBLAHBLAH!"

-MBeggar

[This message has been edited by Tracer (edited June 30, 2004).]

Stick with 98. ME is like a crappier 98. Trust me.

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There is no signature

Yes, but it doesn't have the dvdplay program. I don't care about operating system wars, I care about watching DVDs.

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"Look at me! I'm Tracer! BLAHBLAHBLAH!"

-MBeggar

You can download those. That's not the problem. Trust me, you can even watch them in Media Player Classic, or WMP9 (don't know if that's available for 98)

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There is no signature

There's not any way to just get the decoder that I know of. You could always use powerarchiver and make a spanning archive over multiple disks... or burn it to a cd...

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http://www.sporkaudio.com

I just remembered, Realplayer has a DVD player. Get that. Spyware comes with the free version, but it's still good.

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There is no signature

You might find that your laptop has some sort of hardware MPEG2 decoding, so it'd be able to play DVD's even with it's crappy CPU. Most Toshiba PII era laptops came with such hardware. I'd still suggest a real DVD player though, it'll be a nicer watching experience than a crappy LCD screen. Just make sure you letterbox the image, not pan and scan it if you've got a non 16x9 capable TV.

Yecti, LG stands for "Lucky Goldstar".

If you want a box to hook up to your TV, get something by Toshiba - they're pretty good. As for actual drives? I'm not too clear on the selection.

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Wise men say that fools rush in where angels fear to tread, so look before you leap, so to speak, because the grass is not always greener on the other side of the hill.