DVD player software

[Konrad]

I recently (finally) bought myself a proper version of Win7 Ult and got rid of the ****ing branded OEM Windows "value bundle" crap that (originally) came with my laptop.
 
The only thing missing is DVD player software.  The Toshiba version works well enough but I can't install it (all-or-nothing image).  WMP doesn't do DVDs and it sucks the cow anyways.
 
I used to use WinAmp for such stuff.  I hear MPlayer is pretty good.  Free is better than not free.  I intend to mostly use an external monitor when playing DVDs (17" lapscreen doesn't cut it).  Any recommendations?

[Nadger]

I recently (finally) bought myself a proper version of Win7 Ult and got rid of the ****ing branded OEM Windows "value bundle" crap that (originally) came with my laptop.
 
The only thing missing is DVD player software.  The Toshiba version works well enough but I can't install it (all-or-nothing image).  WMP doesn't do DVDs and it sucks the cow anyways.
 
I used to use WinAmp for such stuff.  I hear MPlayer is pretty good.  Free is better than not free.  I intend to mostly use an external monitor when playing DVDs (17" lapscreen doesn't cut it).  Any recommendations?

Huh? WMP has done dvds since WMP11.  It includes a DVD decoder now.  And its better than most of the pay for dvd software ive used.

I have cyberlink's player and it can do some post stuff to make the image look a little better but its clunky and slow.  WMP is very quick and responsive.

I would suggest you update windows media player and give it a fair shot.

[Henry]

I haven't used WMP11 a lot, but it seems decent, I'd give it a shot too.

Now MPC-HC is pretty awesome. Thanks to its internal filters using DXVA, my cheapo Acer laptop can play 1080p movies very smoothly, even with high quality subtitle rendering (that's very important for me, 95% of the movies I watch are in languages I don't understand at all).

[CodeChef]

CCCP it and forget it (uses MPC-HC).

[Konrad]

lol, CCCP is "unamerican" enough to be far more interesting than WMP.
 
Incidentally, I can't even find the damn WMP.  Just the Windows Media Center, and nope, it still doesn't play DVDs in the drive or in ripped VOBs.

[Nadger]

Weird, you said you had windows 7 ultimate right?  That should come with windows media player 12.  Which plays dvds out of the box....at least it does for me.

Have you tried installing a codec pack?

[Konrad]

Strange.  WMP12 was there all along.  Listed nowhere on the start menu, quick links, Desktop (uh, well maybe it was on the Desktop but I deleted the shortcut along with all the other trash).  It think it was not associated with files because of an un-WMP codec pack I installed.  Yeah, it works fine.  Better than the Toshiba/Roxio "value" player, to be sure.

[Nadger]

Sweet, glad you found it and got it working.  WMP used to be horrible, i used to use winamp because of how horrible it was, but now i actually like WMP.  Though its interface could be laid out better.  Its not real intuitive.

But it makes up for it in speed and seamlessness integration

[Konrad]

I loved Winamp since about Win95 ... but I noticed that, back when 98 was new, Winamp had a tendency to cause all sorts of annoying miscellaneous problems with the OS. Then all over again in XP. Presumably the same in Vista, though it was hard to be sure because the OS already had so many ****ty little sucks built into it. I don't want to damage my "clean" Win7, plus I thought it was maybe time to poke my head out of the sand and consider other options. I'm still open to worthy suggestions - WMP12 seems surprisingly quite nice indeed and has given me no cause to complain (so far) but, well, c'mon, it's Microsoft Windows Media Player ... ew, squick. The Windows Media Center and Microsoft's ideas about how I should organize my "Libraries" suck the big one, yet I dare not remove them for fear of breaking WMP12 or other OS components.  Plus I'll never trust Microsoft when it comes to privacy and disobeying DRM restrictions, no matter what people may say.
 
[Edit]
 
There's kabillions of GUI skins and stuff for WMP12. Maybe worth checking out if you dislike the default interface.

[Nadger]

The windows media center is designed to be used with a remote.  And if you do have a remote for your pc its actually quite nice.  I can lay down on the couch and use media center & my remote to find something to watch on netflix or hulu or browse my library of videos.

If you are actually sitting at your pc then yeah, media center sucks balls.

As far as the WMP12 library goes...i actually like it a lot.  I added my mp3 folders and it sorted through them all and added it all to my library.  Now if i feel like hearing a specific song i just type the first few letters into the library search and it pops up and i start it playing.

I had quite a few mp3s with bad ID3 tags that media player didnt know what to do with.  But I went in the "unknown artist" section of the library and i would find a song, right click on it and hit find album info.  It would pop up a window with its guesses for what artist/album/song it is and 90% of the time its correct with its first pick.  Then i select which is the right one and hit okay and it automatically fills out all the ID3 info for me.

I toss together playlists very quickly by typing in the artists name, finding their album i want to listen to and drag it over to the playlist, then move onto the next artist.  Then you can hit the sync tab and throw it all over to your mp3 player.

If i want to browse the old fashioned way i can simply type the name of an artist, right click on one of their songs and hit open file location and it goes right to the dir in explorer where its saved.

Compared to itunes and winamp its really quite powerful and easy to use, so i cant imagine what you dont like about the library.

Yeah i have not checked the skins out since like wmp8 so maybe ill give some of them a whirl.

[Konrad]

What I don't like is "Microsoft".  I'm not saying these are bad products - WMP12 thus far is quite good - I'm just saying it's hard for me to suddenly overlook the years of sucking Microsoft's balls I was forced to endure.
 
Libraries ... aha, well I've actually entirely removed their existence in explorer through some drastic hacky measures.  Old fashioned, yeah.  I have my own preferences for file organization (as opposed to "My Computer, My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, My Videos", etc "user" directories) and made the decision long ago to not reorganize my digital life every time a new OS comes along.  The downside is less instant happy integration with the new toys; the upside is quick "migration" into any OS simply involves a drive transfer.
 
I tell ya though, WMP is gonna be toast the first time it ever attempts to deny playback or stamp DRM metadata onto any one of my files or start calling the mothership for suspiciously unauthorized reasons.  It looks good but Microsoft hasn't earned my trust.
 
Yeah, Media Center and a remote sounds good; I'll try out the setup in my living room, it probably works better than Winamp/XP.

[Konrad]

I like owning a copy of the content, locally, to do with as I please.  I have learned over time that the ever-shifting cloud cannot be relied upon for long-term storage.

[Zen]

Media Player Classic Home Cinema
http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/

Any long-time windows-user will feel at home with this .
If you have the CoreAVC-codec it also supports that..
CUDA-hardware acceleration of your HiDef mp4's, only 1-2% CPU-usage for 1080p playback is pretty sweet,
especially if you have one of those Atom-based mini-PC's ...

Media Player Classic Home Cinema comes bundled with K-Lite Codec Pack
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Mega_Codec_Pack.htm
Also includes RealAlternative and alternative to Apples Quick Time..

[Nadger]

What I don't like is "Microsoft".  I'm not saying these are bad products - WMP12 thus far is quite good - I'm just saying it's hard for me to suddenly overlook the years of sucking Microsoft's balls I was forced to endure.
 
Libraries ... aha, well I've actually entirely removed their existence in explorer through some drastic hacky measures.  Old fashioned, yeah.  I have my own preferences for file organization (as opposed to "My Computer, My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, My Videos", etc "user" directories) and made the decision long ago to not reorganize my digital life every time a new OS comes along.  The downside is less instant happy integration with the new toys; the upside is quick "migration" into any OS simply involves a drive transfer.
 
I tell ya though, WMP is gonna be toast the first time it ever attempts to deny playback or stamp DRM metadata onto any one of my files or start calling the mothership for suspiciously unauthorized reasons.  It looks good but Microsoft hasn't earned my trust.
 
Yeah, Media Center and a remote sounds good; I'll try out the setup in my living room, it probably works better than Winamp/XP.

You do realize you can change the locations of these libraries now...and add your own.  Its built right into windows 7.

I have my music/videos/documents saved on an external hd.  So i can hit "my documents" and it will take me to like F:\Data\Documents.  I also added a few of my own libraries such as my portfolio library, my game design library and my website library.

So if im working on a texture in photoshop and i want to save something really quick i can just hit save as and then select my game design lib from the list of libraries and im taken directly to my game design dir on my F drive as well.

I save nothing to the drive where windows is installed.  Makes reformatting a breeze.  Though i do use windows 7's backup and restore system too, i set all my game design work stuff, website stuff etc all to be backed up and compressed every day to my external in-case something happens.

I will agree microsoft used to suck hardcore, and parts of what they do now still do suck but they have come a long way to redeeming themselves with Windows 7, Windows Phone 7, and I'm told Xbox Live is great too.  But I have no xbox360 to confirm.

Edit: And as far as checking in with the mother ship...just make sure you are dealing with MP3s and not WMAs and you shouldn't have a problem.  Go to wmp, then go to the organize dropdown, then to options.  Go to the rip music tab and make sure its set to mp3, then if you want pop over the the privacy tab uncheck anything you dont like.

I left all of mine default in privacy and ive never had any issues with any DRM at all.

[Konrad]

What you and I do with our libraries are both valid; my method just refuses to conform to Microsoft's arbitrary hierarchy, yours works seamlessly within it.  Nope, the libraries cannot be renamed/moved anymore because library support is now entirely non-existent.
 
Most of my music is OGG (not that great, but it's what I used to think was cool), though a goodly amount is MP3, and there's even some MID and WAV files for variety.  Where possible - ie, I'm ripping it myself - I pick FLAC (though I've played with other lossless formats and didn't like 'em as much, so I have a bunch of each kind).
 
Not even one WMA anywhere to be found ... there's a little program called UN****.EXE (seriously) which would turn any crappy DRM audio into a nice clean MP3 (by encoding the MP3 straight out of the audio card buffer).  I'm sure there's other, less DOSsy tools these days but oh well.  AAC is even worse than WMA - such is my opinion anyhow, everybody has different favourites.
 
WMP12 is working quite nicely for me.

[Konrad]

There is an annoyance with WMP12.
 
Those stupid FBI/MPAA legal screens which declare what happens when you're a bad boy or how old you gotta be to watch the "mild content" ... WMP12 doesn't let you skip 'em. Nor can you fast/next past stupid lengthy menu animations and such stuff ... doesn't matter if you're playing off a disc or a VOB. Just because some jackass put a DVD format together which tries to choke 5 movie previews (with "locked" media controls) down my face doesn't mean I have watch them all like a sheep when I can instead bite back.
 
Are there any hacks to fix this bull**** in WMP12? If not, then I'm going for MPC-HC (or CCCP) ... unless y'all report they suffer from the same arbitrary restrictions.

[godly_music]

Media Player Classic - Home Cinema < Player
ffdshow tryouts ICL10 < Codec

Plays everything.

And Vorbis is so good, dude. ~160 kbps, I'm throwing a 300$ headphone plus amp at it and it's still transparent.

[Brian8bit]

The people who're most fanatical about media players I've found are 4channers. Seriously. Go start a thread recommending a new media player on /g/.