Recently, the hard disk on my laptop broke and, unfortunately, the laptop was out of warranty. I called PC World’s support line (as it was a PC World Advent laptop) as I realized I’d need a recovery DVD (I’d previously tried making one but the DVD writer had always been a problem and for some reason the recovery DVD burning process would not complete). Of course, they were of no help and wanted money out of me to send a recovery DVD.
As I already had a legitimate license for Windows XP Home (it came with the laptop), I purchased XP home second hand very cheaply (at least compared to the cost of purchasing recovery media) .. however, of course, I was without the software which originally came with the laptop (unfortunately) so I set about downloading and installing free alternatives.
Mainly, it was not a problem except when it came to DVD software. The previous DVD playing software I had was commercial but included for free as part of the laptop bundle and unfortunately the free alternatives I had tried weren’t particularly good (or just did not work at all) so I set about looking for a commercial alternative.
Finally, after looking through many sites, I came across a great DVD software site which has reviews of commercial players, plus many other kinds of DVD software (such as rippers, copiers, converters, et cetera). I personally liked the sound of PowerDVD and haven’t been disappointed so far it has played everything I’ve thrown at it, unlike my previous player which had issues with some titles.
Helpfully, I found a lot more information in the DVD forum about DVD ripping software, as recently I’d tried a commercial solution from Ashampoo but it hadn’t worked too well, especially for re-encoding some previously ripped files (it didn’t recognise the file type), so finally I can again convert my DVDs to small xvid files for playback on my PDA (a great way to pass time on the way to and from work!).
Well worth checking out also is the DVD blog – there are topics not just on software, but also media, hardware, and the DVD/video industry. Admittedly (and unfortunately), it has not been updated for a while but there’s still plenty there of interest to read.
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