Since I'm spending less and less time at home and more and more time chained to my laptop, I was wondering if anyone could recommend a really good software DVD media player. I've noticed that my DVDs look fine on my 13.3" laptop screen at 1280 x 800 but the picture gets a bit fuzzy on my 19" 8ms Samsung LCD at 1280 x 1024.

InterVideo WinDVD 5 for VAIO. I'm using the InterVideo WinDVD 5 for VAIO which shipped with my VAIO. It's ok but I'm sure there are better out there.

Windows Media Player 10. I've also used Windows Media Player 10 which is good but it's not really DVD friendly - you can't fast-forward or rewind in an easy way. Picture quality is ok on the laptop screen but it's "fuzzy" (as in not sharp) on my 19" LCD.

RealPlayer 10.I also tried using RealPlayer (the free one) it's ok as well, but not brilliant. And I've used DivX Player which is good for watching individual video files but I can't figure out how to watch an entire DVD with it, rather than the individual .vob files.

Nero Showtime (got it with Nero Ultra 7). I also tried this, it was actually the worst of the lot! Controls were poor and the picture quality was too dark in general.

So does anyone have a software DVD media player that they swear by? I don't know if the fuzziness I'm getting is because I've got my settings wrong or because I'm using a crap player.

Any advice would be appreciated! [img]smile.gif[/img]

I quite like Cyberlink PowerDVD, it has frame capture!

Good Question, I usually use Cyberlink Power DVD that came with my burner but I'd like to find a better one too.

I hope this isn't a silly question, but are you using the digital input for your large lcd?

I'd swear by MPlayer myself, I've never seen media software with as many options and configurations. There's a windows version on the downloads page.

[ 01-16-2006, 06:41 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

Power DVD.

Div X every time... or even Windows Media Player Classic never fails for me [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Power DVD as well.

[ 01-16-2006, 07:26 PM: Message edited by: Larry_OHF ]

VLC all the way.

Also works on any media file you can stuff onto your hard disk. In addition, for a media center solution the client is streaming capable.

OK, I decided to give PowerDVD a go. But when I installed it, it made itself the default player for all video files (I didn't want that). I tried to edit that in the configuration screen but I couldn't find an option to do it. Where do you change the default play options?

Theatertek is the best Software DVD player on the market. I use it on my Home Theater System, it integrates seamlessly with ffdshow and enables you (assuming you've got enough processing horsepower) to do on the fly processing of the DVD stream (unsharp mask and progressive denoise would be the two you'd be wantin).

If you think a DVD looks bad on a 19" screen, you should see it on a 120" one... but with Theatertek/ffdshow they become quite watchable, not HD quality but pleasingly sharp and clean.