Playing Video Disks (DVDs)


A DVD (Digital Versatile Disk or Digital Video Disk) is like a large CD-it's a digital disk that can contain video material. If you buy movies on DVDs and you have a DVD drive connected to your computer, you can play DVDs on your computer by using the Windows Media Player program or Windows Media Center. To read more about Media Center, see the next chapter.

Note  

You cannot play a DVD movie with just a DVD drive and a disc. You must also have a decoder, either built into the drive, on a separate card (or integrated into your system's video card), or from a software package like WinDVD or PowerDVD. Windows Vista includes a DVD decoder program built into the operating system files when you install Windows. Your DVD player may have come with its own player program that you can use for playing DVDs-you don't have to use the Windows Media Player program.

Playing a DVD with Windows Media Player

To play a DVD, insert the DVD in your DVD drive, and Windows Media Player starts automatically. When you are playing a DVD, the Windows Media Player works like a VCR (as shown in Figure 21-14). Additional controls may appear for the advanced features that a specific DVD offers: consult the DVD itself. These advanced features may play video clips, alternative edits, different endings, or the ever-popular outtakes. Windows Media Player has a few added DVD interface options. Right-click the movie and choose DVD Features. This shows the features available for that movie, such as Root Menu, Title Menu, and Camera Angle.

image from book
Figure 21-14: Windows Media Player playing a DVD.

Controlling Rated Movies

One popular feature with parents is playback restrictions, which is amazingly simple and effective. The playback restrictions feature uses the already existing and well-established MPAA ratings system. Each DVD movie has a lot of additional information encoded into the DVD, including the movie's rating, so the decoder software can tell a G-rated movie from an NC17-rated movie.

Before you can use playback restrictions, you must set up user accounts for yourself and other users of the computer (see Chapter 6). Assuming that you are a parent, give yourself and other adults administrative user accounts, and make any children's accounts limited user accounts. Once you set a maximum DVD rating in Media Player's playback restrictions, only administrative users can play DVDs with higher ratings.

To control which DVDs people can play on Windows Media Player, choose Tools Options and click the DVD tab (shown in Figure 21-15). Click the Change button under DVD Playback Restrictions. From the drop-down list in the Change Rating Restriction dialog box, select the highest rating that you want nonadministrative users of the computer to be able to play

image from book
Figure 21-15: Playback restrictions in Windows Media Player.



Windows Vista. The Complete Reference
Windows Vista: The Complete Reference (Complete Reference Series)
ISBN: 0072263768
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 296

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