Built as an operating system to combine the best features of its predecessors both Windows 2000 and Windows 98 Second Edition (SE), Windows XP has done an admirable task of maintaining the maturity and robustness that those OS’s were known for. However like its mighty ancestors, pop in a DVD and the dreaded ‘compatible DVD decoder for XP does not exist’ error message shows up. The reason this error message appears is because any DVD player requires a DVD decoder in order to actually decrypt and read the MPEG-2 format that most DVD videos are delivered in. This is the case whether it be a home cinema device sitting underneath your HDTV or the Windows Media Player software on your PC. In the case of Windows Media Player, the dvd decoder is not installed since it is a licensed product and requires payment of a fee. To this end, Microsoft have left it to consumers themselves to decide whether they wish to upgrade the capabilities of WMP.

How To Install a Compatible DVD Decoder for XP

It is important to understand that you do not actually install a compatible DVD decoder on the XP system itself. Rather the codecs and MPEG-2 decryption libraries need to be installed on a player that runs on the XP operating system. By default, Windows comes with Windows Media Player bundled and it is this very player that gives the compatible DVD decoder error for XP.

The available solutions are two-fold. Either you can buy and install an approved and recommended plugin for WMP that includes the DVD playback libraries or you can download a separate playback application altogether that includes the DVD decoder pre-installed within them already. Click here to learn more about how you can download a free compatible DVD Decoder for Windows XP.

In case you want to pursue the Windows Media Player plugin route, read on.

Windows Media Player Compatible DVD Decoder for XP

The latest version of Windows Media Player that runs on XP is WMP 11. Just like WMP 10, Windows Media Player 11 is a simple evolutionary step that introduces various new products and services, but not any newer versions of Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio (WMA) or Windows Media Video (WMV) codecs.

Click here to learn more about how you can download a compatible dvd decoder for Windows XP.

About Windows XP

Microsoft Windows XP Professional can be normally run on a X86 32bit processor PC, and also on a 64bit processor which can also be run on an Apple Macintosh computer as a sub-process. Generally speaking, Windows XP will not run well with a processor slower than 700 Mhz and there should be at least 512 mbytes of RAM.

With the introduction of Service Pack 2, XP was made more rugged. SP2 added basic security measures such as firewall and improved defenses against viruses, worms and hackers. Even though support for multi-media hardware was increased as well, as explained above, the compatible dvd decoder for XP issue was not resolved as it was not seen as a problem with the operating system itself.

In summary, Windows XP is a software product that is preferred over its successor Windows Vista which has recieved very poor feedback from both user and business communities.

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DVD Decoder for Windows XP

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