Playing a VOB file.

zerg rush

So, I got a DVD from Blockbuster today. I come home and realize that my old DVD player finally bit the bucket, but no problem, I've got a perfectly working DVD drive on my computer. Well, that's what I thought. Firstly, I found that the DVD tries to install "enhanced features" which are characterized as being somewhere between spyware and malware. Needless to say, I don't consider installing the software really a serious option.

-None of my players (WMP, WMPC, VLC) are able to run the video files which are in .VOB format. Does anyone know of a player that can run VOB files?
-Nero Showtime can sort-of run it, but it'll stop every three seconds or so, then the DVD will spin up for a second or two, then the movie will start back up again with everything artifacted to hell. I tried to copy a .VOB file onto the hard drive to see if it was just a slow DVD speed, and got an error saying that the file was encrypted. Is there a reason why Vista can't move encrypted files, or is this just another instance of Vista loving to guzzle horse cum?


TL;DR: I have a movie that I can't watch. The video files are in *.VOB, and I can't play them.

DrFrylock

Of course the file is encrypted, it's on a commercial DVD and thereby encrypted with the Content Scrambling System (CSS). There may be additional layers of protection such as Arccos to confound you.

You probably don't want to play the indivdiual VOB files; what you want to do is play the DVD as a whole. What happens if you go into Media Player Classic and select "Open DVD" off the file menu? Also, do you have some software like PowerDVD or WinDVD installed (or that came with your DVD drive)? That should play it too.

Rook

Vista should actually play DVDs out of the box. Or at least the Home Premium version should.

If you're using the latter, then you'll need some sort of commercial DVD playback software on your PC. If you're having drive problems then DVD Decrypter can rip the DVD to the disk and remove the encryption.