MS vs 3rd party dvd and movie player

K-Lite Codec Pack Mega contains a few extras that you don't actually need for what you are trying to achieve. So, instead of the Mega, you can choose the Full. The installer of the pack can walk you through multiple menu screens if you pick 'advanced' instead of 'standard' at the beginning. I recommend the 'advanced'. After that, you can just leave alone any settings that you don't know what they are for. You can still run the installer again later, it conveniently lets you add/remove/change every option.

That being said, I find that choosing MPC-HC (x64) as the player and madVR as the renderer is the way to go. Unlike Windows Media Player, MPC-HC doesn't hog system resources so it's the best way to save more power and to keep the PC's cooling fan speed down low enough to be silent. The main important reason why I prefer to use madVR as the renderer is because the other ones have a bad tendency to cause visible stutter in the smoothness of the video output.

With this setup there are tons of additional options that you can explore. For one, it lets you do audio bitstreaming over HDMI if you, like me, have an AV processor. (Or if you have an AVR, which is essentially the same except it uses a built-in power amp.) Another thing is that madVR can also be used to upscale DVD video to higher resolutions like 1080p Full HD, and, the resulting picture quality actually is better than any other upscaling technology that I have ever seen. That's right... even the expensive hardware solutions in the upscaling department couldn't hold a candle to it. Granted, there's a little bit of a learning curve involved. But it's not that complicated.

To suppress judder in the video output, upsampling can also be used in madVR if your monitor can't do 23.976Hz (24:1001) like every TV can, but you'll need to have extra CPU power on tap if going this route. Most monitors are 60Hz fixed. Upsampling produces 'soap opera' side effect so, for watching a movie, just hook up a TV to the PC's HDMI output, and, in the control panel of the PC's graphics hardware, under the resolution settings, try changing the vertical refresh frequency to 23p, as that will change the video output to 23.976Hz (and will revert back if you don't confirm after so, if your screen stays black, then you can just wait for it to undo).

With just about any modern TV, this should work just fine, but you'll notice the mouse pointer moves less smooth until you change the frequency back to its original default setting, usually 60p. That's all perfectly normal. I always just change it back to it's default setting after the movie has ended. I know that madVR has an option to change it automatically for you. But that option has just never worked for me, for whatever the reason might be.

During playback of video in MPC-HC, you can press CTRL + J to toggle statistics overlay. It lets you see the framerate of the video content being played, and whether it matches the vertical refresh frequency of the PC's graphics hardware─the video signal that it outputs to the display device used. They need to be in sync for smooth video playback. That is, each time when a video frame either is skipped or is repeated, a singular moment of judder occurs, especially noticeable if it happens during a scene in which the camera is panned. (Once you've seen how judder looks like, you will more than usually notice it each time when it's there.)

Hi there

@retiredat44

another + for VLC. Kodi is also good.

Another tip - if you have physical DVD's you can rip them to ISO's via software like AnyDVD from slysoft or whatever its called these days (de-regionalises, decrypts commercial DVD's and de-DRM's DVDs) and then you can play these on remote TV's with things like amazon firestick -- side load KODI on to the firestick box and then browse to the ISO on your computer from the amazon fire stick --just play -- no server needs to be installed on the computer. In the KODI on the firestick (or equivalent box) start initially to find your computer via browse SMB Windows shares - then add the path to the VIDEO section and simply play !!! Enjoy !!

Note KODI playing DVD Iso images on the firestick (or equivalent device) into a decent TV will give you menus etc just exactly like the physical DVD.

KODI if you want to use it for remote TV's can be loaded easily onto any ANDROID box (e.g Amazon firestick, Hulu etc).

Cheers
jimbo

idgat said:

VLC and or Daum Potplayer

Both, no need for codecs which often carry unnecessary (and sometimes undesirable) baggage

Hi there
remember though VLC won't necessarily decrypt commercial DVD's -- that's why I suggested ripping them with things like anyDVD. On Linux it's OK as you can install libdvdcss to do the decryption.

Cheers
jimbo