DvD Codecs for Windows Media Player

[alonebfg]

ok this will make you laugh (not) we decided that we needed a dvd codec and as a law abiding school would pay for it. Guess what 1 dont do educational licence for it and have also been told will have to pay full price for every machine we want to put it on. This has made me give up the will to live as we have just been given 7 pcs they have nothing on them so installed xp using a volume licance they all have dvd roms and we were going to use thm as a media pc but have got to buy 7 +5 laptops with no dvd player on a codec and at full price i can see this getting very expencive.
any ideas for a legal cost efective way.

[webman]

If you use a set top box device for playing DVDs then you will have already paid for the "license" when the device was bought, as it includes the decoder.

[alonebfg]

what do you mean a set top box all have some machines with dvd players on them but like i said some dont and some of these are teachers laptops

[DMcCoy]

A dvd *drive* has no decoder chip so no license fee has been paid (unless it is bundled with a commercial software dvd decoder (intervideo or cyberlink usually). A stand alone dvd player will have a chip/software to decode the mpeg data on dvd discs, so the fee has already been paid and included in the purchase price of the hardware.

[webman]

A set top box like the ones you buy from the supermarket or Dixons and have a couple of SCART sockets on the back. And as DMcCoy said, the manufacturers purchase the code to decode dvds and is included in the hardware.

DVD drives for PCs are different in that they only include the physical reading mechanism and transfer of data. Decoding of DVD video is done, in the most part, using software (powerdvd, windvd, vlc+codec etc) but IIRC, it's possible to get PCI hardware decoders to do this job instead.

[alonebfg]

yes i understand that but i still ned to pay for the codecs for the machines that do not have the correct software which is not cheap.

[john]

Why not just buy licences for Power DVD, as I am sure they do a VL agreement for schools

[john]

Just checked Pugh (yuck) out and they list Power DVD as a VL product.

Education Pricing:

PowerDVD 7 Standard ex. VAT*
1-4 Users £27.95
5-9 Users £23.76
10-24 Users £22.36
25-49 Users £20.96
50 Users £19.57
51-80 Users £18.17
81-100 Users £16.77
101-200 Users £15.37
201-400 Users £13.98
401-500 Users £12.58
501+ Users £11.18

So its avalable,

[alonebfg]

so for 12 machines i need £270 which is money we just have not got at the moment. Never mind i will have to look into somthing else. wish you could just buy the codec cheap lol

[Norphy]

You can get PowerDVD-SE here for $15, about £8. Is that any better? It doesn't have any fancy players with it but will let any DirectShow complaint player play DVDs.

[alonebfg]

that seems a lot better dont want the player just need the codec wmp will do as a player

[Dos_Box]

Try Media Portal (http://www.team-mediaportal.com/) as it coems with its own DVD codec which work just fine, and its all free. Its dammed good software BTW and seeing as Vista Ultimates MCE won't doo UK DVB unitl at leat the end of 2008 it makes for more sense than buying the full version of Vista.