"thunder" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 06 Oct 2006 11:44:26 +0000, JoeSpareBedroom wrote:


Two months ago, I did a reformat/reinstall of XP Pro on my desktop
machine.
WMP plays DVDs. I did nothing special to make it happen.

If I'm not mistaken, I think the problem lies with MPEG-2 being
proprietary. Somebody has to pay licensing fees to the patent holders,
via the Moving Pictures Experts Group.

Maybe. But it's odd that on two machines, I used the same install disks
(yes, multiple licenses), same checklist, did all the MS updates, and the
result is that one plays DVDs while the other does not.