Enable DVD playback in Vista Basic and Vista Business

Can't play DVD's in Windows Vista? Unfortunately, Microsoft Windows Vista does not support DVD playback evenly across all its many versions; only Vista Ultimate and Home Premium have the MPEG/2 codec installed out of the box. Notebooks and desktop computers running Vista Business or Vista Home Basic lack this crucial software component, preventing them from playing DVDs.

For the new Vista user settling down to watch a favourite movie, there is nothing more alarming than the unexpected blank DVD screen that results... no matter if the media player is Windows Media Player 11 (WMP11), PowerDVD, or VLC. Luckily, fixing this isn't difficult.

Oddly enough Vista Business / Home Basic itself doesn't offer any great help, suggesting an "upgrade to Vista Ultimate", or occassionally to "reduce screen resolution". There is no need to upgrade the entire operating system just to watch a DVD, and screen size is just fine. The fix is much simpler, and you don't need to go online and pay $15 to $50 for the privilege of adding this feature. A better course of action is to download a free codec pack, essentially a set of decoding tools to allow Windows to read and playback DVD (and DivX for that matter) media.

we recommends the K-Lite codec pack, available here or via an easy Google search. K-Lite Codec Pack 3.6.5 Standard covers all your DVD watching needs, and a good many other codecs too. Download K-Lite from the link above, install the default set or select just the codec you need, then restart the media player. From now on you will be able to watch DVDs in Windows Vista.

Incidently, codec's are like drivers for media files. Whichever media player you choose to watch DVDs on will work once it has access to the correct codec files, but without them even a versatile player like VideoLAN VLC will be unable to play DVD content.

If you are running Windows Vista X64 Business with the 64-bit version of Windows Media Player 11, you will need K-Lite Codec Pack 64-bit Add-on 1.2.0. It can be found here at Betanews.com.