   "windows media player can't play this dvd because of a copy protection error"
  That''s the error I got when trying to play a DVD I bought.WTF?  What the hell are they thinking?  BTW, what has microsoft even got to gain by this, ms isn''t gonna have any disadvantage when someone wants to copy a DVD. 
  This may have something to do with Macrovision protection which was fully supported on nVidia cards starting with driver version 44.72(if i remember correctly). This means you can''t watch DVD''s with Macrovision protection if you have your S-Video output enabled. This is a problem for some graphics cards(namely mine, CreativeLabs Geforce 3 Ti 200) as you can''t actually disable it.Or on the other hand you may have an ATI card and all that means nothing  If you have an nVidia card you may be able to disable S-Video output and watch it, otherwise use drivers prior to 44.72.I''m not 100% sure on the driver version, so still check it, you should be able to find something on google about it.   [[ Pancake Meat ]] ;  Unless there has been a recent change ATI cards won''t stop you from playing Macrovision stuff if SVideo is enabled, they just show a black box on the SVIDEO output (plays fine on the screen).Your other problem is region encoding. What region is the DVD, and what region is your DVD drive? (for instance a region 1 DVD drive [North America] can''t play a region 2 DVD [Japan, Europe, South Africa, Middle East]). DVD drives normally come with 5 changes allowed. Once you have changed the region that many times it will not change anymore. ;  This seems to be a problem with nVidia cards - a friend of mine had exactly the same problem.Solution: buy an ATi ;  Hmm, my problem got fixed by using Media Player Classic instead.Anyway, why do those companies bother with these protections, why do the makers of videocards put money in the development of this stuff while they only make customers unhappy and have nothing to gain?  And I can''t imagine a law that sais "vidcard makers MUST put this protection in their vidcard!!" ;quote:Original post by Boops  Hmm, my problem got fixed by using Media Player Classic instead.Anyway, why do those companies bother with these protections, why do the makers of videocards put money in the development of this stuff while they only make customers unhappy and have nothing to gain?  And I can''t imagine a law that sais "vidcard makers MUST put this protection in their vidcard!!"   My knee-jerk reaction is to go and look at Microsoft jumping in bed with all these movie companies re: their WMV format in the movies, and then consider that there might be some backroom dealings going on.But more than likely it''s just a flawed implementation of the Macrovision algorithms which are necessary to watch the freaking movie at all.Bet you''re glad we got over the DeCSS thing early. Now go get a DVD ripper.   Resist everyoneI am your only friend. Click here for more information. (MOVED);quote:Original post by Boops  Hmm, my problem got fixed by using Media Player Classic instead.Anyway, why do those companies bother with these protections, why do the makers of videocards put money in the development of this stuff while they only make customers unhappy and have nothing to gain?  And I can''t imagine a law that sais "vidcard makers MUST put this protection in their vidcard!!"   They do it mainly because licensing the dvd format requires the support of copy protection schemes.