DVD Playback... codecs?

[Connoisseur]

Okay, here is the problem. My computer has a DVD drive. I put in a DVD from Blockbuster the other day to watch it on the computer. I tried viewing it on my Roxio DVD player. No go. Then I tried on my Intervideo WinDVD 4 player. No go. Finally I tried it on Windows Media Player 10. No go. Win Media gave me this error message:

"Windows Media Player cannot play the file. One or more codecs required to play the file could not be found."

What the heck are codecs? What I am missing here? I thought this stuff was plug and play when I bought the computer having the DVD drive built in. I'm ignorant about this stuff unfortunately. Still learning. I thought perhaps my computer has a corrupted driver maybe? Who knows... Any help out there?

Edited post: oh yeah, in case this means anything to anyone, I have a Toshiba DVD-Rom SD-R2312 drive on my HP Pavilion ze5375 notebook. Can't play DVD's of any kind on my WinDVD which came with the laptop. These are the same DVD's I've played in the past, so something has obviously changed on my computer. Ugh...! help...

Regards,
Connoisseur

[backpackerx]

Yeah, it does sound like something has changed with your computer. A codec is simply a Compression-decompression format. Like an Mpeg-2 codec is a compression format for converting to Mpeg-2 and then the format for reading (decompressing) Mpeg-2 formatted video.

If you have DVD software, which you do, you already have the necessary DVD codecs (Mpeg-2 I believe) built in. It sounds like your codec got erased or corrupted somehow then.

Other than that background info, I don't know much about your problem, Sorry. I'm sure others have much more experience and insight.