DVD Player is an app developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

for playing DVD-Video on Microsoft

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. Originally introduced in

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was the second operating system in the 9x line, as the successor to Windows 95. It was Software ...

, DVD Player was included in

Windows Me Windows Me (Millennium Edition) is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was the successor to Windows 98, and was released to manufacturing on June 19, 2000, and t ...

and

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...

but was removed starting with

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

, where DVD playback capabilities were integrated into

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP, officially referred to as Windows Media Player Legacy to retronym, distinguish it from Windows Media Player (2022), the new Windows Media Player introduced with Windows 11) is the first media player (application soft ...

and Windows Media Center. With

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...

, Microsoft removed DVD codecs from Windows Media Player, and in

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

, Media Center was discontinued entirely. As a result, DVD Player was reintroduced in Windows 10 as a standalone app, available for download from the Microsoft Store to support DVD playback.

Windows 98, 2000, and ME versions

When DVD Player is launched, it scans all local drives alphabetically, starting with the C: drive, searching for a Video_TS folder. Once this folder is located, the player loads the data file within it and begins video playback. If a Video_TS folder is found on a drive that precedes the DVD drive alphabetically, the player will attempt to play data from this first-located folder instead. In Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, and Windows 2000 RTM, DVD Player requires a hardware-based MPEG decoder to play DVDs. However, beginning with Windows Me and Windows 2000 SP1, DVD Player supports software-based MPEG decoders as well. Starting with Windows XP, DVD Player was removed in favor of DVD playback capabilities built directly into Windows Media Player. While the DVDPlay executable remains in %Windir%\system32, it simply redirects to launch Windows Media Player instead. In Windows 8, DVD playback and Windows Media Center became part of a premium add-on available only for Windows 8 Pro, due to the licensing costs for DVD decoders and the market's gradual shift away from DVD-Video.

Windows 10 version

Windows DVD Player was made available for Windows 10 on desktop computers to provide DVD playback functionality. When launched, it searches for movie files in the disc drive. It can also be picked as an option in the AutoPlay dialog when a disc is inserted. However, if the disc is switched, the app needs to restart. It is available as a paid app through Microsoft Store, although it is distributed at no charge to those who had upgraded from an installation of

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

or Windows 8 that included Windows Media Center.

References

External links

Windows DVD Player
on Microsoft Store Microsoft software Microsoft Windows multimedia technology Windows media players Universal Windows Platform apps Software DVD players {{windows-stub