Awful DVD playback quality

[HamishM]

Hi, I have ripped some DVDs to my hard-drive to watch on PC.
When I play the VOB files through Windows Media Player (using, I assume, the Vista Ultimate built in codec), the quality is absolutely terrible, especially considering that these are rips from modern films on dual layer DVDs. All the colours are very flat, there are no gradients anywhere, like all similar colours have been replaced by the same colour. The problem can be fixed however by renaming the .VOB files to .mpg and then playing them that way, but this is somewhat inconvenient and means that I don't get to use the DVD menus and stuff.

Anybody know what this problem is and how I can fix it?
Your help would be very much appreciated.

[Baldrick]

Have you tried another player? VLC or MPC or KMPLayer. Same problem?

[HamishM]

Using VLC it's fine, however, I like using Windows Media Player because I'm used to its interface. Any way I could make it work in there?

[Baldrick]

Maybe try another mpeg2 decoder like ffdshow.

[HamishM]

Okay I've installed ffdshow, however I'm not sure if it's being used by WMP, as I still have the same problem. Is there anyway to turn off the Vista MPEG-2 Decoder and force on ffdshow?

[HamishM]

Did a quick check and ffdshow doesn't work for DVDs on Windows Media Player 11, and I don't plan on playing 30 quid for a commercial decoder. Looks like I'll be using VLC.

[jagabo]

MPCHC's UI is like the old WMP 6 and has built in decoders for most common videos. And the old WMP 6.4 is in the WMP folder as mplayer2.exe.

[cobalt]

I think we have finally solved the lifetime mystery about the 1 remaining WMP fanatic !