More CODEC follies

The guy from SageTV seemed rather incredulous that the DVD drive didn't come with a DVD codec. I believe that his words were "I've never heard of such a thing." Then he suggested that I go to the Optical Drive's manufacturer's website and see if there wasn't a download for it.

So, I went to the LG site and didn't find a codec, but I did find a knowledge base article that said:

First, make sure you have proper software installed to view a DVD movie. DVDs require DVD software in order to play DVD Movies. LG bundles PowerDVD by Cyberlink with its drives. We do not offer it for download. A full version of the software can be found at www.gocyberlink.com (Also available in stores)

I wrote LG and explained that I was having the same problem and that PowerDVD is not installed with the LG DVD-RW drive that I bought from them, only PowerProducer and CyberLink DVD Suite.

So, I went in search of a DVD codec. It is not that I dislike PowerDVD, I just don't think that I want to pay for two DVD players, when SageTV will do the job.

The first thing that I did was to install McAfee on the HTPC. You never know where some software has been.

I then searched for DVD codec in Google, but I didn't find anything that excited me. I wound up at one site called freewarecentral.net and tried to download xVid, but McAfee started complaining about detecting a potentially unwanted program named Artemis!06EBEBB5771B and Firefox said that I was opening a file from prompt.zangocash.com. I told McAfee to remove the Artemis program and Firefox to cancel the opening the file from the suspiciously named website. (As I said, you've never know where some software has been.)

Finally, I ended up at Uberdownloads.com and I downloaded and installed VLC Media Player. It is an open source player that Uwe mentioned as being versatile. I was able to play some media files that he had given me last week. But, I still can't play a DVD. SIGH.

I went ahead and purchased SageTV, but I still don't have a DVD codec. SIGH.