Chapter 3. Multimedia

In the old days, video problems meant using a butter knife to pry a tape out of your VCR. But in our modern Windows XP era, video hassles result from the complex interplay among player software, hardware (and its drivers), a baffling assortment of codecs, and Microsoft's DirectX extensions. And of course, there's also sound to consider, plus television piped through your PC (via the Media Center Edition of Windows XP), as well as managing digital photos and burning CDs and DVDs. I'll tackle these and other media annoyances in this chapter.