I encountered an interesting issue last night that has converted me to a user of VideoLAN otherwise known as the VLC media player. I'd borrowed a DVD to watch which did have some light scratching on the surface of the disk and when I put it in my Mac the default media player from Apple DVD Player took over. As the disk started to play the scratches conspired to ruin my fun by causing the video to freeze up and ultimately resulting in DVD Player crashing. After several tries I was about ready to throw in the towel on the idea of watching this DVD until I remembered downloading an open source media player called VLC. I ejected the DVD and launched VLC then selected the disc to be played and success! I'm not sure of the reason that VLC was able to play the disc but I'm guessing that the codecs used by VLC enable finer control of the DVD drive. Regardless this experience has converted me to a VLC user.
- To get your copy of VLC check out their website which offers a free open source product with support for Mac OSX Intel, numerous Linux distributions and Windows.
