2013 Archives

[kelsie90]

Hi,

I got a new Acer Aspire V3-571 with Windows 8 on it, I am very happy with it and it runs smoothly. My step-dad bought it for me so I could have something to watch my DVDs on as my last laptop was just too old and started to run slow (it had a good run, almost 6 years of the same laptop ), they got this because it claims to play blu-rays, however I went to put a DVD in and nothing happened, I put a blu-ray in and the same thing.

I have just found out that Windows 8 doesn't do DVD playback but then I feel this is false advertisment on Acers behalf because they shouldn't say they can play DVD/Blu-rays when it clearly can't because of Windows 8. When I put the disks in the laptop doesn't detect anything in the drive what-so-ever.

I did download VLC but because nothing is recognised in the disk drive it won't play.

Does anyone know what I can do? I refuse to pay for an expensive app from Windows to play DVD purely out of principle because it's completely ridiculous to have a disk drive but not recognise the disks.

Thanks in advance.

Kelsie.

[Acer-Tommy]

The drive in the system is what we state is a DVD or Blu-ray drive.

Microsoft made a decision to stop including playback codecs several years ago.

We do have an article which discusses this issue:

No DVD playback in Windows 8

Microsoft's DVD playback options for Windows article:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dvd-playback-help

[kelsie90]

I was told by someone else who works for Acer (I think they said they worked in hardware department so therefore couldn't give me an answer) that I should see if Acer provides a software that has a way around the "no DVD playback" since they do claim to have DVD/blu-ray drives but so far no luck.

I was just wantng to know if there is somethng Acer can provide because it really is false advertisement and so far I've had a few people argee with me on that.

I think it's ridiculous that Windows think DVD playback is a thing of the past because people stream more but they allow CD playback, I'd have thought CDs were to be a thing of the past since more people download music than buy CDs. I'm not paying for an app to download because that's just plain ridiculous considering how much the laptop cost alone!

[Acer-Tommy]

I'm sorry you're not happy.  Unfortunately, Microsoft does not include the codecs on any version of Windows 8, for any manufacturer.  Including codecs has a cost associated with it and that is usually the cost of bundling additional software, which most people seem to prefer that manufacturers avoid.

You state that you've already installed VLC, which should play DVD Video, as indicated on their features page:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html

I'm sure that there is additional information or software that you can download for Blu-ray playback.

https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=106570