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I just picked up an Amicool External DVD Drive after I realized I’d lost my last means of accessing DVDs when my old computer died. There was no setup and no external power source – just plug it in to the USB, insert a CD or DVD and you’re all set.
The only problem was, it wouldn’t play DVDs. It would read discs fine and would see the track files on the DVD but three different player apps refused to actually play the movies, even VLC Player. There was no error message; the Play button would search for a movie and then just stop.
I finally found the problem by checking the settings under Device Manager.
By default, the DVD region was set to Region 2 and, being in the U.S. I get Region 1 discs. Once I fixed this, I had no problem at all playing movies.
As most computers are now shipping without DVD players, I figured more people are probably running into something like this so the Region setting is definitely high on the list of things to check.
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