Get the best seat in the cinema without leaving your PC screen

For many people, PCs now serve as home-entertainment centres, playing digital music, streaming radio shows from the internet, viewing Youtube videos or catching up with a favourite TV programme on iPlayer.

However, plenty of computer users struggle to achieve even the simple multimedia stuff – like using a PC to watch a DVD, as even though recent editions of Windows 7 include everything required to enjoy DVDs, some versions aren’t so accommodating.

In this Back to Basics we’ll explain how to watch a DVD on any version of Windows, how to negotiate DVD menus and how to tweak Windows’ settings to get the best sound from what you’re watching.

Windows and DVDs
It is nigh on impossible to buy a modern desktop PC without a built-in DVD drive. Inevitably, most people who want to play DVDs on their home PCs will turn to software included with the operating system – Windows Media Player. In most situations, this program will play DVDs just fine.

Unfortunately, though, that’s not always the case. With Windows XP for example, it’s a bit of a guessing game. Indeed, with XP Microsoft’s attitude is essentially to advise users to stick a disc in the drive in order to see what happens.

The logic is that, while Windows XP itself doesn’t include everything required to play DVDs, if the PC has a built-in DVD drive then the chances are that the manufacturer included the necessary Windows Media Player codecs (or other media-player software) to do the job.

It’s a fair assessment of the situation on a Windows PC computer. Pop a DVD disc in the drive and sometimes a dedicated DVD application will launch (early ones tried very hard to look like fancy TVs).

Equally, though, Windows Media Player may appear and display an error message. In order to watch a DVD you’ll have to get hold of some extra software – see the step-by-step guide at the end of the article for help here.

There is an exception: if you’ve got a PC that came with Windows XP Media Center edition, then it should play DVDs with no additional software. As we’ll see, things are more predictable for Vista and Windows 7 – though problems may still arise.