Windows 7 DVD Software

So What Does It Take To Play DVDs on Windows 7?

First of all you need to have a compatible optical drive that supports DVDs - most PCs have one today.

Then you need some software to play back the DVDs... 

DVD Software for Windows 7

Windows Media Center in Windows 7 can play many different music, video, and picture file types.... and this includes DVDs (technically known as MPEG-2). NB - Media Center is only available in Windows 7 Home Premium / Professional / Ultimate / Enterprise.

# Windows Media Center - Video Files Support:

Windows Media files - .wm, .wmv, and .asf

AVCHD files (including Dolby Digital audio) - .m2ts and .m2t

Apple QuickTime files - .mov and .qt

AVI files .avi

Windows Recorded TV Show files - .wtv and .dvr-ms

MPEG-4 movie files - .mp4, .mov, and .m4v

MPEG-2 movie files - .mpeg, .mpg, .mpe, .m1v, .mp2, .mpv2, .mod, and .vob

MPEG-1 movie files - .m1v

Motion JPEG files - .avi and .mov.

# Alternative DVD Software -  Typically most users are going to be happy with Windows Media Center. However there are alternatives available such as the marketing leading 3rd party DVD Player WinDVD 2010 (US Website) WinDVD 2010 (UK Website) with advanced features NOT available in Windows Media Center.

If you are looking for an alternative "basic" DVD player then things are a bit more difficult. In Windows XP and Windows Vista you could simply purchase a great little plug-in for Windows Media Player 10 or 11 that would make WMP a DVD player! ...read more here: DVD Decoder Media Player Windows.

However, no such plug-in exists for Windows 7. But there does exist a 3rd party media player called VLC Media Player. It will play DVDs but is in a bit of a legal "grey" area on this point as it uses libdvdcss a free software library for accessing and unscrambling DVDs encrypted with the Content Scramble System (CSS).

libdvdcss is not to be confused with DeCSS. While DeCSS uses a cracked DVD player key to perform authentication, libdvdcss uses a generated list of possible player keys. If none of them works (for instance, when the DVD drive enforces region coding) a brute force algorithm is tried so the region code of a DVD is ignored. Unlike DeCSS, libdvdcss has never been legally challenged.

Its a bit like buying a second hand car from a guy down the local market... It will probably run OK and do a fine job, but when things go wrong there is going to be very little support!

COPY any Movie DVD Regardless of copy protection!

AnyDVD works in the background to automatically remove the copy protection of a DVD movie as soon as it's inserted into the drive...

For more information on this amazing product visit the website: AnyDVD Website