[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] Vista, DVDs and codecs - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"
Tue, Oct 23 2007 21:45 bradley

Vista, DVDs and codecs

Larry had a client that had a Vista Business that couldn't play DVDs... and I pointed out that it was probably like my Vista Ultimate on the
Tablet that because it didn't have a decent video card and thus couldn't do Aero, Vista didn't load up the Codecs.  Now why Codecs aren't shipped in every version of Vista ... I don't know why...

But you can install Codecs from here:

http://www.pcstats.com/NewsView.cfm?NewsID=57742
And then ANY version of Vista can play DVDs.  
(Score one for Mac where they do like the Ford Model T and only offer up one version whereas Vista has six -- and sorry
 the EU ones without media edition doesn't count).  Vista should have shipped all versions with Ultimate and be done with 
it as that's the one I'm ending up ensuring I get on computers with Vista lately
Oh and I had to laugh... there's a screensaver in the Mac that is called beaches and this same image is also on Vista.  
So far, my personal opinion...Macintosh is Vista with less legacy baggage and smarter end users.  :-)

A certain person asked if I had to go over to the dark side and I just explained that I wanted to rant
authoritatively on patching issues on different operating system platforms as well as I was just following his orders.

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# re: Vista, DVDs and codecs

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 4:44 AM by John Currie

The codec-pack mentioned in the article is awful, far to many codecs for what you actually need.

I would reccomend something like cccp codec pack with a separate mpeg2 decoder for DVD.

Nvidia purevideo is a good one but costs, here is the related ms kb support.microsoft.com/.../306331

My ideal setup is cccp codec pack, nvidia purevideo for mpeg2 decoding and coreavc for h264 decoding.

# re: Vista, DVDs and codecs

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 5:49 AM by Vlad Mazek

Couldn't you have gone over to Linux instead?

-Vlad

# re: Vista, DVDs and codecs

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 6:51 AM by indy

Here it is folks... The SBS diva is knocking Vista, and a few more pro-mac posts more, and I'm thinking a lot more is going to change around here...

# re: Vista, DVDs and codecs

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 9:12 AM by bradley

I can't run any of my business programs on it, but hey.

The fact is that there are 5 versions too many of Vista and hardly anyone debates that.

Otherwise I don't like that I don't have tools worth a darn over on alternative platforms.

# re: Vista, DVDs and codecs

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 9:31 AM by John Currie

Our badley written access come document managent system works in Vista to my suprise.

Also all of our CCH software works (although not supported)

To be honest it's less hasle than I thought it would be. It will be about 6-12 months before the majority of our users start shifting, that's when the fun will start!!

It's funny that codec pack includes coreavc and cyberlink mpeg2 codecs when both companies charge for it..