Quick question - Best free DVD player

Impersonator

Can anyone help me? ;-)

Macro9

VLC player

Daedalus

If you're on Windows, VLC player is the only free player worth bothering with.

If you're on Linux, install libdvdcss and every player now plays DVDs.

bloodr

Either VLC player or Media Player Classic Home Cinema. Personally, I like MPC-HC because of the more user friendly interface.

Impersonator

Wow, thanks for the fast replies, I think I'll choose VLC, I liked the quality better ;-)

wabbiteh

VLC can be a bit finicky with DVDs at times, but it's the only one I can think of.
I've found WMP to be pretty decent with DVDs, myself.

Agehn

VLC is the industry standard of cheap-bastard free stuff. But I'm frequently vexed by my inability to simply 'rewind' when watching a DVD; I have to drag the location indicator backwards, which is quite imprecise. Is there a 'play backwards' feature of which I am unaware? Or a feature that allows me to type in "1:30:45" and have the current file begin play at one hour, thirty minutes, and forty-five seconds in? Those would be handy features.

wabbiteh

Agehn wrote: »

VLC is the industry standard of cheap-bastard free stuff. But I'm frequently vexed by my inability to simply 'rewind' when watching a DVD; I have to drag the location indicator backwards, which is quite imprecise. Is there a 'play backwards' feature of which I am unaware? Or a feature that allows me to type in "1:30:45" and have the current file begin play at one hour, thirty minutes, and forty-five seconds in? Those would be handy features.

There is Ctrl/Alt/Shift + Left/Right Arrow Key, which skips around in time. There's a "skip to arbitrary time" ticket in VLC's feature/bug tracker, but it seems no one is working on it. I'm guessing there's no rewind button because rewinding for highly compressed video is very tricky - you have to work backwards to an unknown starting point, then run through the video until you get to where you can display an image. Someone could probably write a slightly hack-ish rewind for some formats (just grabbing still images slightly before the current time as quickly as it can, then displaying them), but it would require doing a lot of codec stuff to work half-decently. I think. On the other hand, I imagine most XviD capable DVD players can rewind as well, so... ignore me, for I have no clue what I am talking about.

Agehn

That makes a certain amount of sense. Thanks.

Dunadan019

media player classic is real simple - i use it to play most files.

i use VLC for actual DVDs and anything that wont play in classic.

anything else that wont play i go through the list of random players i have on my computer

mooshoepork

MPC. +1


VLC fucks me around all the time with framerate drops and such

Kyanilis

VLC was the standard for awhile. I mean, free and played anything you threw at it. But now? MPC is starting to come out on top. Hell, VLC doesn't like some types of subtitles, but MPC can do anything VLC can't. And with the CCCP, you really just can't go wrong with MPC anyway.