Software DVD player and Macrapvision

[Borg]

Hey folks!
New to the forum, so please be nice

I cannot play DVD's with Macrovision on my pc using a any software player but cinemaster 99.

WindowsME player, mediaplayer, mswebdvd (microsoft directx) etc etc will not play them.


After much 'surfing' I found that Cinemaster uses it's own software decoder that bypasses macrovision. It works on my system.

I CAN play using the Creative Dxr2 decoder board but as I am developing software I need to be able to use these other players, particularly directx to play the DVDs.


Any suggestions would be appreciated!

[setarip]

1) I've got WinDVD installed on my system and it plays DVDs properly, without a hint of Macrovision protection.

2) I've also installed DVD Genie and, through it, registered the WinDVD video and audio DirectShow filters. As a consequence, Windows Media Player and the freebie DVD Player on the Win98 install CD also play DVDs flawlessly.

Let us know of your success ;>}

[admin]

Macrovision shouldn't be a problem if you are playing back DVDs on your computer's monitor - they are only suppose to come in if you are using a TV-output device that does not conform with Macrovision standards (ie. someone didn't pay the "protection money" to Macrovision Inc).

Both PowerDVD and WinDVD comes with directshow decoder files, although I don't think they are enabled by default (setarip's DVD Genie tip is needed for WinDVD, and you can use regsvr32 to register PowerDVD's .ax filters).

There are also some free DVD filters, although I can't guarantee they work well :

http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/encoding_plugin.html