DVD Player is an app developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

that plays DVD-Video on Microsoft Windows. DVD Player was 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. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to ...

, and was included in

Windows ME Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun "me"), is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is the successor to Windo ...

and

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was officiall ...

before removal from

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 upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

and beyond. After Windows XP, DVD playback was built into other apps such as

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player (application software), media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing sound reproduction, audio, video and viewing images on personal computers runnin ...

and

Windows Media Center Windows Media Center (WMC) is a defunct digital video recorder and media player created by Microsoft. Media Center was first introduced to Windows in 2002 on Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE). It was included in Home Premium and Ultimate ...

instead. Following the discontinuation of Media Center in

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

and the removal of DVD codecs from Windows 8, DVD Player was reintroduced to Windows 10 as an app available from

Microsoft Store Microsoft Store (formerly known as Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It started as an app store for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform app ...

Windows 98, 2000, and ME versions

When the DVD Player is launched, it searches all local drives in alphabetical order from C:, looking for a Video_TS folder. When this folder is located, the data file within it is loaded, and video streaming begins. If this folder exists on a drive that comes before the DVD drive, the player will try to play the data in the first folder it finds. In Windows 98 and Windows 2000, DVD Player only plays DVDs if a hardware-based MPEG decoder is present. In Windows ME, DVD Player supports software-based MPEG decoders. DVD Player was dropped in Windows XP in favor of the DVD functionality introduced into Windows Media Player. While the DVDPlay executable still resides in %Windir%\system32, it simply executes Windows Media Player. On Windows 8, Windows Media Center and DVD playback support were relegated to a premium add-on for Windows 8 ''Pro'', citing the costs of licensing the decoders and the market moving 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 AutoPlay, a feature introduced in Windows 98, examines newly discovered removable media and devices and, based on content such as pictures, music or video files, launches an appropriate application to play or display the content. It is closely re ...

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

, 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 released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to ...

that included Windows Media Center.

References

External links

Windows DVD Player
on

Microsoft software Microsoft Windows multimedia technology Windows media players Universal Windows Platform apps {{windows-stub