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Does anybody know any alternatives to windows media player which will play dvds in high defintion?

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2  
Since there is no single best answer, please mark this as community wiki. – alex Nov 2 '09 at 7:11
1  
Title edit would be in order since you specify hi-def DVD playback as a requirement. – Nathaniel Nov 3 '09 at 1:24

closed as not constructive by Ivo Flipse♦ Jul 15 '12 at 11:36

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7 Answers

up vote 14 down vote accepted

There are plenty, but VLC will play almost anything you throw at it.

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+1 I should have thought of that! ;-) – DaveParillo Nov 2 '09 at 5:39
only annoying thing about VLC is that it takes all your media file associations unless you untick them, other than that it's great – Matthew Lock Nov 2 '09 at 6:17
Second that, I haven't come across a media file it can't play yet – James.Elsey Nov 2 '09 at 8:53
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VLC has a horrible interface. – hasen j Nov 3 '09 at 3:49
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To each his own. We're talking about playing media, not the program's interface. Most (normal) people play high definition video in full screen anyway, so the program's look and feel isn't of much importance. – John T Nov 3 '09 at 3:56
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up vote 9 down vote

Media Player Classic Home Cinema

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nice find! I was gonna propose mpc + xp codec pack, but this seems to beat it! – hasen j Nov 2 '09 at 5:59
Media Player Classic's full screen interface is nicely clean. – Nathaniel Nov 3 '09 at 1:25
+1 for MPC. I have to add that K-Lite Codec Pack (standard and up) is bundled with MPC-HC, an excellent way to ensure your system can handle 99% of the formats out there. – invert Nov 5 '09 at 13:29
up vote 3 down vote

I recommend KMPlayer.

The KMPlayer is a versatile media player which can cover various types of container format such as VCD, DVD, AVI, MKV, Ogg Theora, OGM, 3GP, MPEG-1/2/4, WMV, RealMedia, and QuickTime among others. It handles a wide range of subtitles and allows you to capture audio, video, and screenshots in many ways.

The player provides both internal and external filters with a fully controlled environment in terms of connections to other splitters, decoders, audio/video transform filters and renderers without grappling with the DirectShow merit system. Internal filters are not registered to user's system to keep it from being messed up with system filters.

The KMPlayer includes almost all the essential decoders required for media playback. Furthermore, to get beyond the limitation of internal decoders, the external ones such as commercial h.264 decoders or cyberlink/intervideo audio decoders can be specified, so that KMP works optimally by the users' own customization. Even though the KMP is based upon directshow structure, it supports Winamp, Realmedia and Quicktime by the internal logic. Thus, it is possible to specify where to try to connect firstly the media in preferences.

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KMPlayer is the best! <3 – thenonhacker Nov 3 '09 at 2:02
How about subtitles? Does it eat anything? – Shimmy Jun 26 '12 at 20:38
I posted this answer almost 3 years ago; so in the meanwhile, I gave up using KMPlayer because of some stability issues. As far as I can remember, KMPlayer was handling subtitles well. Now I am using VLC Player. – Mehper C. Palavuzlar Jun 26 '12 at 21:30
up vote 2 down vote

I prefer SMplayer - mainly for the MPlayer backend + it can resume playing from wherever you stopped - for any number of files.

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somebody want to explain the downvote ? Have the courtesy to explain why you voted down so that I can improve my answers – Sathya♦ Nov 3 '09 at 10:26
A belated vote for the new info I've got :-) – Ϛѓăʑɏ βµԂԃϔ Nov 16 '12 at 15:56
up vote 1 down vote

GOM Media Player is decently ranked on cnet.

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up vote 0 down vote

if I read this question correctly, we're looking for something a wee bit more sophisticated than the usual suspects (no offense, i love the freebies too):

Does anybody know any alternatives to windows media player which will play dvds in high defintion?

have a look an WinDVD 2010 Pro, amongst other features it offers

GPU-accelerated upscaling for smoother playback of your DVD-Video on high-definition display. Upscale DVD-video to fit your HD display, regardless of the platform!

WinDVD 2010 Pro is shareware, try before you buy.

or get nVidia's PureVideo codec for High-Quality Hardware Scaling that delivers a clear, clean image when upscaling low-resolution video to HDTV resolutions up to 1080i and maintains image detail without any annoying flicker, even when scaling down high-definition video.

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up vote 0 down vote

MPlayer, of course. For windows, I recommend MuldeR's package :

This package contains the latest builds of MPlayer for the Windows platform as well as SMPlayer and MPUI. Thanks to the award-winning MPlayer engine, more than 192 Video- and 85 Audiocodecs are supported natively! For maximum performance the package includes optimized MPlayer binaries for various CPU types. Furthermore the Full-Package includes the Binary Codec Package to enable even more audio/video formats. Everything in one self-contained download :-)

The Light-Package is a stripped-down version of this package, that includes MPUI and the MPlayer binaries only.

I actually prefer the MPUI front end to SMPlayer for its minimalism

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