WMP plays DVD but no sound or visual

[nikki]

I have tried everything I can think of and have no one to ask why my windows media player will acknowledge and play a dvd, but I cannot achieve sound or sight. I installed Nero 7 again but everytime the wmp comes up it wants me to re-submit serial no then it says cannot play because I already have that copy of nero registered on my computer. Confused and frustrated!
Please give me at least a clue.
Thank you
nikki

[blizard]

I think this link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectShow) to a wiki about DirectShow will help you to understand more what is going on behind all DirectShow based player like WMP. There are pretty good wiki for almost everything with media today, so you might try to search those with google.

When you install another DS based player and then remove it, it is possible that those codec where removed (or Windows Registry entry have been changed) which WMP and Nero shared.

Non-DS based player
You could try VideoLan or SMPlayer (MPLayer as core and a front end which look and work much like WMP). Those player have their codec in the player and do not need to connect directshow based codec and filter to decode a DVD or whatever media you want to use.


SMPlayer (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=121229&highlight=smplayer)
VLC or VideoLan (http://www.videolan.org/)


FFDSHOW tryout
I can also recommend you to install FFDSHOW tryout which is a collection of DirectShow based codecs in one user friendly interface where you can enable, disable codec. It have also capabilities to do post processing to enhance image quality or to mix up/down audio.

In FFDSHOW look for MPEG-2 and enable libmpeg-2 in FFDSHOW VIDEO Configuration, enable AC-3 (liba52) and DTS (libdts) to be decoded, if you use analogue speaker. Use S/PDIF pass through if you want to pass AC-3 or DTS through (no local decoding and no control from computers sound card).

FFDSHOW will be used by all DS based player incl WMP, but there might be some limitation for WMP as for kind of splitter and renderer that can be used for WMP. You can read more on this (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=123537&highlight=ffdshow+tryout) thread here on doom9.


Media Player Classic
MPC do also have its own codec and splitter which can be used, but as a directshow based player it is better to just enable some of there and use newer or more stable splitter, codec and renderer which are based on DS. Here is MPC+FFDSHOW a common combo that work very well.



Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=123537&highlight=media+player+classic)


Depending on how old or new your video card are there are different type of renderer which work better to take advantage of hardware feature from video card to process a image. WMR9 are for those video card that can use DirectX9 as base in hardware and WMR7 are for those realy old video card which are limited to DirectX7.

Haali renderer and splitter are really good if you have a newer type of video card and support for PS 2.0. Read more here! (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=108088) From this link you will get better understading of the difference between WMR9 (which Haali also made) and Haalis own renderer.


Haali renderer and splitter (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=108088&highlight=haali+renderer)


All link will go to doom9 forum (except link for VLC) where you can see more back ground and find link to download latest build. Some of those thread have become rather large, so it might be good to look on latest page to get the newest info about what build to download and possible change due to bugs. MPC and FFDSHOW have been forked over as open source project from the original developer behind those project and other have continued. That is why FFDSHOW tryout is the build you want and not FFDSHOW as that is forked over to and named FFDSHOW tryout.

I hope this will help you nikki and make it possible for you to watch your DVD.