Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
DVD Drive Compatibility
WhenDVDdrivesappearedonthemarket,theyweretoutedtobefullybackward-compat-
ible with CD drives. Although that might be the case when reading commercially pressed
CD-ROM discs, that was not necessarily true when reading CD-R or CD-RW media. For-
tunately, the industry has responded with standards that let you know in advance how
compatible your DVD drive will be. These standards are called MultiRead for computer-
based drives and MultiPlay for consumer standalone devices, such as DVD-Video and
CD-DA players. See the section “ MultiRead Specifications , ” earlier in this chapter.
DVD Movie Playback on a PC
DVDvideodiscs(likethoseincludedwithmostofmybooks)aredesignedtobeplayedon
standard“set-top”DVDplayersconnectedtoatelevision.YoucanalsoplaythemonPCs,
as long as the proper hardware (for example, a DVD or BD drive) and software are in-
stalled. Unfortunately, many people are unaware that the software required to play DVDs
is not included by default with most versions of Windows. This means that to play DVDs
under Windows, additional software must be installed.
The first versions of Windows to have any sort of built-in DVD-playing capability
were Windows 98, 98SE (98 Second Edition), and Me (Millennium edition), all of
which included a funky command-line utility called DVDPLAY.EXE. The version of
DVDPLAY.EXE included with Windows 98 could only play DVDs if one of two suppor-
ted hardware DVD decoders were installed, which were physically in the form of a PCI
card.TheDVDPLAY.EXEapplicationincludedwithWindowsMewasthefirsttosupport
a software decoder (that is, no special card required), as long as the PC had a 333MHz
or faster processor. But few people used the DVDPLAY program because most retail PCs
and DVD drives sold at the time included commercial DVD-playing software such as
WinDVD (Intervideo/Corel) or PowerDVD (Cyberlink). The first version of WMP cap-
able of playing DVDs was WMP 8, which was included with the original release of Win-
dows XP in 2001.
Whereas WMP 8 was included with Windows XP, later WMP versions have been avail-
able as free downloads. For example, Windows 98SE, Me, and 2000 support up to WMP
9. (Note that the original Windows 98 release only supports up to WMP 7.1, which is not
capableofplayingDVDs.)WindowsXPandVistasupportuptoWMP11,whereasWMP
12 is included with Windows 7.
But just having WMP 8 or later isn't enough. To play DVDs, you must also have a WMP-
compatible MPEG-2 decoder installed. An MPEG-2 decoder is included with Windows
Vista Ultimate and Home Premium editions, but not with Vista Home Basic and Busi-
ness editions. Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate include a decoder,
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