Home

Hardware

Playing DVD, players of DVD and Divx movies

Setting up the support in the system

• Besides setting up the region that you will probably not change you should take other important settings into account:

• DMA setup for the DVD drive. The change is done in the same way as in case of such change for hard disk. It is advisable to install the newest support for your chipset...

• Sound support setup (some players just support playing stereo and do not support more recent and quality DTS).

• Screen setup - you can also partly adapt the screen. You can start playing in window or you can switch to the full screen mode which enables to change the display views (it greatly depends on the player).

• Setting up the sound tracks (or subtitles). This is done in the Main menu after starting the movie or in the local menu of the player. You can also set up displaying of English sound and subtitles which can be very interesting for those who learn English. In addition, some players allow displaying of different subtitles at once, e. g. in the PowerDVD player you can choose of two language versions of subtitles - than one of them are in the upper and the others in the bottom part of the screen - suitable in case you learn more languages. .

DVD players

• WinDVD - www.intervideo.com - Now, version No. 3 is available supporting multilingual setup (more than 20 languages). The trial version is limited to 30 days and to play time of 5 minutes. More speakers are supported. Price: $50. DTS support i available for extra $20.

• CinePlayer DVD - www.ravisent.com (trial version not available)

• PowerDVD - www.gocyberlink.com - version XP 4.0. Limitation to 30 days. Limitations: support of sound not available, video play time 30 minutes and audio play time 5 minutes. Many additional functions in comparison with other players. Possibility of displaying particular chosen pictures, options for more language versions of subtitles on the screen ... (50$)..support of Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS Digital Surround and Dolby Pro Logic II for a fee ($10 - $40)

• ATI DVD Player - www.atitech.com - Current version 5.0 has been developed for Windows XP and especially for the Radeon graphical cards. Also older ATI cards containing Rage 128 chipset supported (see picture in All-In-Wondows Radeon).

• MSI - www.msi.com - this player is of 90% the same as WinDVD. It does not support more speakers. In comparison with the WinDVD trial version, there are a lot of skins available. (see picture in MSi GeForce2Ti)

• Windows Media Player (Microsoft DVD Player) - it functions provided that there exist SW codecs in the system, it means if there exist some other SW player in the system. 

• VaroDVD - www.varovision.com (trial version not available)

• DVMatics - www.national.com (trial version not available)

• SoftDVD Max - www.mgisoft.com (trial version not available)

Divx players

• If you have film codecs installed in the system, than most Windows video players are able to play. But important are the additional functions, e. g. adding subtitles and advanced settings for playing. 

• MicroDVD (1.20)- www.tiasoft.de

• PowerDivx (3.12) - www.powerdivx.com

• BSPlayer (0.834) - bsplayer.cjb.net

MicroDVD

• This is probably the best known movie player with Divx which can do a lot. Most useful features: quality movie playing, adding and setting up the subtitles and their changing, possibility of cooperating with your remote control.

• System  Requirements: Pentium 233MMX or faster, OS Windows 9x/ME/2000/XP, Microsoft Media Player 6.4 or higher, MPEG4 Video Codec ("DivX ;-)" recommended), MP3 Audio Codec (Fraunhofer recommended, included in the DivX package).

Starting playing a move with subtitles:

•  

• The M button switches between the File and DVD modes. The E button specifies source location for the DVD options - loading from CD, directory or by help of the QuickIni mode.

• 

• By help of the M button choose the DVD mode and by the F button choose the QuickIni option.

•  

• Now, by help of the button for ejecting CD you choose the source files - 1. Primary Video/audio file (main *.Avi video file), 2. Secondary Language Audio File (an *.Avi file again), 3 Subtitle File.

• - Switching between window and full screen display

BSPlayer

• Very simple graphical interface with very easy handling. You will find all the functions in the local menu displayed when playing. 

• A lot of different settings for subtitles - Size, font, color and types of fonts according to the language (Central European, Greek, Western, Cyrillic....). Possibility of choosing displayed subtitle line. Support of displaying subtitles in a window. 

PowerDivX

• A very simple graphical interface again.  

• Unfortunately, it does not support the *.srt subtitle format and when I tried the converter it didn't always work for 100%. Hope that newer version removes this problem. 

Related Links

Web links»Hardware»CD and DVD

Print Print article | Recommend Send link