Advice to get DVD movies playing on machine

I have just upgraded my Pentium 400 machine from Windows 98SE to Windows XP.

Can anyone suggest the best **free** (if that's possible) DVD player software + decoder?

I have an Acer 16x DVD Rom installed. Windows Media won't play movies - not until I add the necessary software decoder anyway. Hence I'm looking for all the useful software to achieve playing my DVDs.

Any advice most welcome!

 

Add me to the list of those seeking help. I'm in a similar situation after a forced upgrade of a Gateway 550 PC from Win98SE to Win XP Home that involved a HD reformat..

 

Here's a list of downloadable DVD players from download.com.

http://download.com.com/3120-20-0.html?qt=dvd+player&tg=dl-2001

 

Thanks!

I'll try a few and see which one seems best.

 

Free DVD players.

You get what you pay for - or worse.

There are several DVD player programs which are on DVDs - when you insert them an autorun box pops up asking you if you want to install it "to get the most functionality from this DVD ".

Villians Such as "PC Friendly" which is anything but... and a few other ones which I can't recall the names of.

Go to Pricewatch and look under DVD accessories - You can get CYBERLINK PowerDVD XP Ver 4.0, Windows 95/98/98SE/NT4/2000/ME/XP for $10.95 shipped (within the US). - I have used ver 3 in W2K, and I have ver 4 on my XPpro box. - It works flawlessly.

 

Have installed MaXimusDVD .. all working

I downloaded PDMSB s/w but it just crashed when starting up so deinstalled it. Installed MaXimusDVD player, plus it's free codec (also found at www.maximusdvd.com), and DVDs now happily play. Haven't tried any others; this one seems quite good.

As Profgab101 indicates, not all are as friendly as they seem. I tried PC Friendly (on Matrix DVD) on Win98SE & no DVD would play until I deinstalled it. Never again!


Thanks for the help.