Need Help playing a .dat file

[moonrocks]

There's a nice video on the web from one of the contestants to this year's Eurovison Song Contest. The video plays fine inside Internet Explorer when visiting the website that hosts the video. Also, I can locate the video file in my Temporary Internet Files folder, it's a 7 meg .dat file.

Even with my Internet connection closed if I double-click on the .dat file in my Temporary Internet Files folder it launces Window's Media Player and it plays fine.

The problem is, if I copy the .dat file out of my Temporary Internet Folder to save it somewhere else on my hard drive then Windows Media Player won't play it anymore, neither will any other video app I have. I've tried Media Player Classic, PowerDVD, VirtualDubMod, and Nero ShowTime.

The error messages I get are:

Windows Media Player: "WMP cannot play the file. The file is either corrupt or the player does not support the format you are trying to play."
Media Player Classic: "Cannot render the file".
VirtualDubMod: "Cannot determine file type of 'C:\....sylvia_nott13[1].dat'"
Nero ShowTime: "Cannot play this media file."

Is there any way I can get this file out of my Temporary Internet Files folder and saved in a format I can play later?

[benbryant]

Can you copy that file to a folder and rename it with extension of .mpg and play with Media Player Classic?

Regards

[moonrocks]

Just tried copying the file to a new folder and renaming it with a .mpg extension. Still the same "cannot render file" error message from Media Player Classic.

[benbryant]

Please try the latest version of ffdshow. Hope that it will work for you:

http://ffdshow.sourceforge.net/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=Getting+ffdshow

Regards

[moonrocks]

Thanks Benbryant for the help. I've installed ffdshow. I don't see any .dat formats listed so I enabled Raw video, DivX3, DivX4 and mpeg in AVI. I still can't get Media Player Classic to play the .dat file but I'll try tweaking the settings in ffdshow some more. Thanks again

[paglamon]

Use GSpot to try and identify the codecs needed.

[moonrocks]

With Gspot, in the Stat window it says "Not a valid AVI File". All the other windows in Gspot then say "n.a.".

What I don't understand is why this .dat file will play fine while it's in my Temporary Internet Folder but as soon as I copy it out of there then nothing can play it. If it plays inside my Temporary Internet Folder doesn't that mean I already have the needed codec installed to play the file? I'm confused.