I want to play VCDs on my laptop

[Michel-lyn]

I'm a Canadian and I bought my laptop in Canada. It's an Acer Aspire 5630 with windows vista as it's operating system. (I'm not very computer savvy, so that's about all the info I can give you about it.) I have recently moved to Thailand. VCDs are very widespread here and, as they are cheaper to buy and don't have regional codes as DVDs do, I'd like to start using them. I bought a VCD the other day, but windows media player won't run it for me. I have tried downloading Winamp 5.51. It gives me very choppy sound and no picture. To be perfectly honest with you it totally confuses me. My computer geek friend couldn't get it to run for me either and he blamed it on the fact that I have Windows Vista. Is there something that I can download that will let me watch VCDs with Windows Vista?

[CobraPilot]

Take a look at VLC freeware: www.videolan.org/

Plays just about anything, including VCD, and provides its own codecs.

NOTE: During installation, you will be given the option to associate VLC with playback of dozens of file types. You may want to uncheck the association options (video and audio) while you give VLC a try. If you go with the default, you will find most (if not all) your video and audio files will use VLC to open them. This may not be what you prefer.

Another freeware option: www.geocities.com/lalimsoftware/

This software author has several different video players available, including a VCD player: www.geocities.com/lalimvcdplayer/index.html

[jman98]

While I also generally recommend VLC because it's free, unfortunately it's VCD playback is weak. It sometimes has errors during playback. I've had better results from commercial products like PowerDVD or WinDVD, but you could try VLC and maybe it will work OK for you.