Fixing VCL Player for DVD

This post is primarily for teachers, but anyone who uses a VCL DVD player can benefit from this information. Many users of VCL DVD players are running into problems with playing certain kinds of DVD's. One problem for the inconsistency is the region copyright software issued by the manufacturer. Most VCL players are designed to play primarily Region 1 DVDs. However not all DVDs are region 1. So this is one part of the problem. Refer to the list below to see the different regions that are available.
The geographical regions are as follows:
REGION 1 -- USA, Canada
REGION 2 -- Japan, Europe, South Africa, Middle East, Greenland
REGION 3 -- S.Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Parts of South East Asia
REGION 4 -- Australia, New Zealand, Latin America (including Mexico)
REGION 5 -- Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Africa
REGION 6 -- China
REGION 7 -- Reserved for Unspecified Special Use
REGION 8 -- Persevered for Cruise Ships, Airlines, etc..
REGION 0 or REGION ALL --
So when you purchase a DVD find out what region it is. Most of the time it will be Region 1 but not always, especially if it is very cheap. Cheap DVDs mean copied or pirated copies that are converted to region o to be played in all countries. In order, to fight this piracy, software and DVD companies are creating more complex system to play videos. So if you put a region 0 DVD in a VCL player it will not read it. If you put it in a standard DVD player it will not read it either.

Another problem with VCL players is that they require certain codexes to play certain types of multimedia. Video player software has a default number of codexes that play basic types of video formats. Most all video player software will play AVI, MEPG 1 and MEPG2 files. Where the problem occurs is when the video format is in a different format than can be played by the standard default codex. MP4 or MPEG4 which is HD quality is a problem with many new DVDs. If the format is in HD then you need the correct codex to play it. What TV companies call "BLUE RAY" is simply MPEG 4 or HD quality DVD's.

HOW DO WE FIX THIS?
There is no perfect simple fix. But for most problems dealing with region copyright software and most codex problems, the more basic the video player software the more format types and regions it will play. It won't solve every format problem, but it will solve many of them. The one I have found that works the best is media player classic. For those of you who may not be windows users you can try MAC version of this media player. But for our school media player classic works great.

Here is the link:
http://www.afterdawn.com/software/general/download_splash.cfm/media_player_classic

Once downloaded, extract the zip file to your computer hard drive and create a short cut to the player so you can access the software.

I hope this answers many of the questions regarding VCL player and DVDs.