watching DVDs on a net book

Greetings. I bought 2 dell net books for my kids for Christmas. Along with the net book I purchased externally DVD optical drives so we could load software, backup music, burn Cd's, watch DVDs etc.

Do I need to add some kind of software to watch DVDs with the external optical drive? When I put in a DVD the net book recognizes it but wont play it. I'm using windows media player. I get a message back saying it can't decode it. Thoughts?

Thank You in advance,
KC

 

Hi,

You need to install a codec pack to enable the playback of DVD's and many other media types.

I prefer the K-Lite Mega codec pack. Others, I'm sure, will have their own favorites, but you can't go wrong with K-Lite.

Get it from here:

http://majorgeeks.com/K-Lite_Mega_Codec_Pack_d5230.html

Do a standard install - just accept all the defaults during installation and you'll be good to go.

Cheers.