DVDs don't play in Fusion w/ Vista or XP

[waterman]

(if this is a duplicate or similar post from me - sorry, I either lost the file or posted it)

I haven't seen much discussion on this so perhaps it is only an issue to me or perhaps no one has a concern about this.

I can't play DVDs while running in Windows (XP and/or Vista) under Fusion on either a MacBook Pro or MacBook.

Mac Information

MacBook Pro 17-inch 2.5Ghz, 4GB RAM, 512 Mb VRAM GeForce 8600M GT, have tried one and two processors running,
Assigned 1.79Gb of RAM to windows
Device Manager
Driver Provider VMWare
Date 10/29/2007
Driver Version: 1.6.0.4


MacBook 12-inch 2.0Ghz 2GB RAM, 64 Mb VRAM GMA 950

Fusion 1.1.3
Windows Vista on the MacBook Pro
Windows XP sp 1 on the MacBook


When a DVD is inserted Windows Media Center starts up and then the following alert window appears

VIDEO ERROR
Files needed to display video are not installed or not working correctly. Please restart Windows Media Center or restart the computer.

Then I quit windows and quit Fusion and the movie is launched in Mac OS X.


I have read that some persons have downloaded the latest drivers from NVIDIA but I don't see how that does anything because isn't the control VMWare which as shown above provides the driver which isn't reflective of what graphics card or capability you have in your Mac. But I see in various readings that it is a virtual video card of 64Mb which is what my MacBook has so why doesn't a DVD play in windows????

Granted perhaps I shouldn't worry about running the DVD in windows but there are enhanced DVDs which only run in Windows, and perhaps there are other programs that won't run since it only has 64Mb of VRAM and why shouldn't I be able to do it?

I have installed AutoCAD and while I haven't given it any major push at this point, it works fine ... with only the 64Mb of virtual VRAM. Will this be a problem when a big file is handled?


What am I doing wrong? or what can be done. I hate to think that this is all the video performance you can get out of Fusion.

Thanks


Juan

One more thing. On the MacBook, Windows is running in BootCamp through Fusion and it doesn't work that way either.

 

[erikistired]

xp required a seperate program (dvd decoder) to watch dvds through windows media player. i'm not sure if this is the same for vista though.

 

[Stridder44]

xp required a seperate program (dvd decoder) to watch dvds through windows media player. i'm not sure if this is the same for vista though.

I tried it once, and Windows Media Player was the default player to pop up. Why they STILL don't have a basic, good old fashioned DVD player program like OS X's "DVD Player" (creative name, I know) is beyond me. I know there's several (free) programs that will play DVDs, but yeah, it's still pretty ridiculous.

WMP just lists all the chapters and, well...yeah. The experience feels nothing like watching a typical DVD.