Boy I remember the "good old days" when you bought a computer that had a DVD player and you took it home and later, at some point, you bought or rented a DVD and went home.... and you just put it in your drive and watched it. WHAT A CONCEPT.

Not anymore I guess. I guess everyone wants "more choices" today, so today, even with a high dollar, well-known brand name laptop (and I believe, but am not sure, that my family member that got this for me almost a year ago paid that full "list price" back then) with a built in BVD player/recorder you just can't.

Obviously I don't watch a lot of stuff on DVD/Blu-ray, as this was my first try since I received this nearly a year ago. But I recently bought a couple of Stephen King movies from Amazon (The Stand and It) and decided, today was the day, so I popped some popcorn, put the DVD in the DVD tray and expected to watch a movie (just like you always did back in the "good old days").

Wrong. A box comes up asking what program I want to use for such a thing, and I search and I search my computer and I can't find anything that even remotely resembles DVD player software.

All of this used to be "automatic". Can't get any easier than that. But nooooooooooooooooooooo, that's not good enough. POEPLE WANTS CHOICES DAMMIT!!!! So don't give them any pre-installed DVD players and let them choose their own!!!! Or maybe even with a two thousand dollar laptop a "free" DVD player with it was just too much to ask????

Anyway.... no movie for me. I looked online and was just overwhelmed by the number of...... you guessed it... choices. I have no idea which are any good, which might be dangerous, so I just left them all alone and decided I'll watch some more baseball instead.

Anyone want a couple of DVD movies???

Maybe a solution for you in here:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/anyone_know_a_good_free_program_that_can_play_blu_ray_disc/page1

Consider that, if PCs came with defaults for everything, they'd come bundled with Steam.

That said, though, my personal philosophy has always been: if it can't be opened by VLC, it's probably not worth watching.

Consider this.

In the "good old days" when you bought a computer with a DVD player, you could, you know, watch DVD's. And those computers weren't bundled with Steam.

Just sayin....

Besides, I"m not talking about being bundled with the ability to handle anything and everything, but I don't think it's too much to ask to be bundled with any software that corresponds to any HARDWARE that's part of the computer you purchased. You know, if it has a DVD/Blu-Ray player, it should have software to play DVD/Blu-Rays. If it doesn't have that hardware, then it shouldn't be bundled with that. If it has a built in video camera, then it should have some sort of software that runs the camera. If it doesn't have a camera, then it shouldn't have that software. I don't think I'm being unrealistic here in saying that having bundled software for the hardware on your system does NOT equal having your computer overwhelmed with bloatware (although that probably occurs anyway).

Oh, and BTW before anyone mentions Windows Player (I too thought that would play DVD's). Well, it either doesn't, or it doesn't on the Windows 10 version of Windows media player, or there is something wrong with my version of Media Player because it is not recognizing the disc as being anything playable. When I point Windows Media Player to that drive it just says "Unrecognizable disc.

LOL, THANK YOU!!! I know you didn't really come out and "recommend" me try VLC, but seeing as you mentioned it being okay, I thought I'd try it.

And it works great!!!! Am now watching Stephen King's "It". LOL

Time for another bag of popcorn. LOL

THANK YOU THOUGH, even if you didn't mean to recommend it. Have a great day!!!!

aye, VLC is the discovery you were looking for!!! everything else is malware!!!

enjoy the movies!!!

In the good old days THIS was a computer! :P

In the "good ol' days," your store-bought computer came chock full of third party bloatware. Sure you could watch your DVD... on RealPlayer!

Everyone has their favorites, and I don't care who uses what, but just for educational purposes, I'll have you guys know that VLC is actually considered quite bad for certain technical reasons. Finding out why is left as an exercise for the readers.

And I'll direct you toward an "mplayer" derivative.

when you come from an era of having to DL codecs and have 5 different players to play numerous types of files, and then none of them playing your DVDs properly, VLC is pretty sweeet

I can see issues with the tech side of it given their boatload of options and how I am sometimes uncertain if I'm actually watching something "true" - but I manage

curiously, what are the issues?

Wise words. VLC's option to play DVDs without menus is also awesome.

Haha, you think DVDs are a problem?
Try watching any movie on Blu-Ray disc in Linux.
You can't.
Reason? DRM.

Didn't Microsoft specifically drop DVD (movie) support from Windows 10, in order to save money or sumthing? But yeah, third-party software like VLC should still allow you to watch them, I guess. VLC is great, it is my video viewing software of choice even on my Android devices (tablet and phones).

Wasn't there a standup special, where it was commented upon how, there are 37 choices of Coca Cola, and hundreds of fast food choices. And people are so fed up with their everyday meaningless choices, that when it comes to elections, US citizens are grateful for having only two choices.

Was it George Carlin? It sound like something he'd say.

Just install the free VLC media player and be done with it. It just takes about a minute, less than writing here. :)