How to Play DVDs on Windows 10 in 2024?
Summary: How to play DVDs on Windows 10 in 2024? There are many DVD software players in the market now, and here is a selection of best DVD players that can help you play DVDs/ISO files/folders on Windows 10.
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It had come to notice through Microsoft that Windows 10 is dropping the Windows Media Center because of its very low usage. The Windows Media Center was/is an elegant and gorgeous media center that houses all the contents by genre, name, and popularity and so on, segregated into different categories like TV Shows, movies by creating libraries and so on such that it is a bliss playing content from the library and search for something super fast. The UI was simply elegant compared to any library seen on an OS so far, but the media playback support was terrible with very few media codes to support that were native to Windows. However, it was used by many users for DVD playback and they have been worried about how to play DVD on Windows 10 after this removal.
Fortunately, there are alternatives, and some even free of cost, that allow you to play DVD on Windows 10 without any issues. It can play protected DVDs by legally removing DRMs as well as some can play Blu-rays Discs with the same ability. The third party media players have evolved and not dropped support for old DVD formats either, which make them still useful to play DVD on Windows 10 too.
The video formats in DVDs were usually AVI, RM, RMVB and then there were MPEGs, DivX, MKV and then came MP4 and so on. The audio formats were OGG, interlaced WAV, MOV with audio and video interlaced from Apple and so on. The DVDs were created from video clips from camcorders and so on. The media players are able to play DVD on Windows 10 or any OS due to native support of these formats such that the old file formats need not be converted to a new one and then played using a media player. This reduces 50% of the time and allows the consumers to enjoy their video clips and movies straight away.
In order to find out how to play DVD on Windows 10, one must first find a DVD Player that can be connected to a computer or laptop. You can find hardware that converts the output from DVD Players via USB to laptops. Then, your job is to install a media player like DVDFab DVD Player, VLC or SM Player and play your clips. Here we shall take into account both aspects of playing old DVDs and new HD and UHD content as well.
VLC Media Player
This is free software from VideoLan and has been in development for a long time. Thus, it has both supports for old formats as well as having the ability to play, 3D, HD, UHD contents provided your computing resources like RAM, and processing power is enough. It is the most famous among users of all genres, whether Mac or Windows or open source followers like Unix and Linux flavors. It can directly play DVD on Windows 10 from DVD Player with the DVD inserted into it. It can also read and play directly ISO files, DVD Folders. One can just browse to the location through the file browser and it can start playing the content. However, it is not known if it supports native DVD menus are now. There are other features also that it can support playback from other discs like CD, VCD, and SVCD. It has issues too that are posted online in forms regarding incompatibility on some Windows 10 systems, but on a basic level, it has been found to be useful without worries, and that is why it is so popular.
It is not known if it can play Blu-ray directly, but it has the capability of high-resolution media playback as stated before.
5K Media Player
This is another media player that can directly play DVD on Windows 10. It has features that allow one to play region protected or copy-protected DVDs on Windows 10 easily. It is slowly changing its design to suit modern users as well. It supports a wide range of media formats and among others also delivers a good quality playback in both audio and video too. It also allows direct streaming of videos from over 300 online websites like Dailymotion, YouTube and so on. 5K Player is also capable of playing high-resolution content like from Blu-ray discs that are encoded in UHD and HD through DVDs. It supports media playback using modern features that enable processing videos on multi-core processors helping smooth media playback too. It is a great alternative to Windows Media Center although does not possess a library architecture design like it, has a lot of video and audio codes under the hood that supports the playback in all formats. It offers the completely free download for Windows 10 and also is backward compatible with the older versions as well.
DVDFab Media Player
It is available for free trial and supports Windows and Mac platforms. The best feature of the player is direct to play DVD on Windows 10. It supports hardware acceleration through Intel Quick Sync and NVIDIA CUDA that allows GPU usage, thus reducing the load on the CPU. It allows even playing directly DVD/Blu-ray/4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs/folders/ISO files and 4K and 3D videos. And the most important is that it offers all-round navigation menu playback support when playing disc sources. When talking about the output quality, its support to HDR 10 ensures crystal clear image quality and it comes with the ability to output lossless high-resolution audios, such as Dolby Atmos, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master and DTS:X etc. It definitely is the best choice for you to play disc sources including DVDs.
This article shows you how to play DVDs on Windows 10, but if you also are looking for a way to back up your DVDs you can have a look at how to copy encrypted dvd to hard drive.