Marvin wrote:
>any one experienced in playing avi or video files on their machines.>>


Windows Media Player is about the most functionless player there is. It 
will play Microsoft's .wmv files and nothing much else. It will play .avi 
if you have the appropriate plugin codecs.

There are many movie formats, the most common being .avi, .vob, .H264, 
Divx, .mpg1,2, and 4, and .mkv. There are many others.

Among the free movie players which will handle all these formats, in my 
order of choice, are:
Gom Player, VLC ("Videolan", JetAudio (yes, it plays video), Kantaris. 
There are many others, but those are my choices. Gom player will even 
handle .ISO files without having to extract them.

As well, you can use plain old Irfanview, though it is very limited in its 
functions. Winamp would be my last choice --- I find it very buggy and 
cumbersome for video. Its interface may appeal to some, but I find it much 
too messy.

Most of the above players have more functions than you'd ever use, 
including 10-second jump forward and back, freeze, still capture, section 
repeat, frame by frame advance, color settings, slowmotion, etc.

Google for each of them.

Also google for and download the K-Lite set of codecs. This free package 
will install all the codecs you'll ever need.

I have them all.  It depends what you want your player to do. Gom is 
probably the most versatile, Kantaris has arguably the best quality, though 
there's very little difference between any of them.

If you have sound problems with all of them, the problem is within your 
computer, not with the player.

If you are playing regular commercial DVD movies, you are better off with 
players such as Win DVD or Power DVD (which usually come bundled with your 
DVD burner) or Nero Showtime. None of these are free on their own.

Gom etc will play the individual .vob movie files which are inside the DVD 
disk, but won't give you the menus.

Don Penlington

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