mpeg-2 vs windows media player -- how did I do it last year?

[miamicanes]

Last summer & fall I did lots of DVD ripping, video capturing, and SVCD encoding on my pc (running Windows XP, ATI AIW128pro). Among other things, I distinctly remember being able to view mpeg-2 files in Windows Media Player without problems, including .vob files simply renamed to .mpg (as long as I ripped it to a single multi-gig .vob file so the necessary headers were in place).

Now, one year, a few months of relative video inactivity, a few hardware upgrades, and 2 re-installations of WinXP later, I can't do it anymore. Windows Media Player sometimes chokes outright and can't find the codec, and other times makes a stab at it, but can't display the video, or displays video with no audio. A few times, it's taken Windows down in flames while trying. It seems to have Real Issues with AC3 audio (something I never even had to give a second thought to last year, most likely because whatever gave WMP the ability to play mpeg-2 was taking care of that detail too).

Confession: I never actually tried to play the videos on anybody else's PC, so I can't confirm for sure whether it worked because of a specific software configuration of my PC.

I know Windows Media Player picks up new codecs and capabilities from third-party apps and figure that some other app I had installed apparently blessed WMP with the ability to properly play MPEG-2 videos... but I can't figure out what the hell it was. I thought it might have been ATI's DVD player app or MMC, but I've got both installed (now with an AIW 8500DV) and WMP can't play them.

Here are my current working theories:

* Windows Media Player 9 is majorly fsck'ed and can't do things that Windows Media Player 8 could do just fine. Except I don't actually remember what version I used last fall... I never really paid attention to the version & just used the newest version available from Microsoft at the time.

* ATI's old DVD app (the one that came with the AIW 128pro) magically gave WMP the ability to hijack its codecs and play MPEG-2, but their new DVD app (the one that came with my new AIW 8500DV) isn't quite so generous.

* Some third-party encoding codec (Xing, Panasonic, etc) that's no longer installed did the trick.

[Gazorgan]

Install the free MPEG2 and AC3 codecs over on the left.

WMP9 has major, major issues. Try the WMP classic, it's a single exe that plays dam near anything (DVD playback needs some setting tweeking to get it into 24 bit color).

[FOO]

I would try reinstalling WMP. Last time I had that problem
WinDVD demo timed out and broke everybody else. (i suppose by
disabling a codec.)
Unfortunately i didn't record everything I did to fix it.
I have fixed problems by deleting video codecs one at a time.
If it's necessary you can get it back.