DescentBB

What say you all? Free is a plus.

CCCP ( http://cccp-project.net ) includes media player classic and ffdshow which is the most widely compatible video player/decoder combo available for video files at the moment. But for playing pressed (meaning loaded with DRM DVDs) the free options are pretty limited. MPC-HC that comes with CCCP can play home authored DVDs and DVDs with no significant DRM, but modern commercial DVDs probably won't work. You might have some luck with VLC or MPlayer with the right plugins though, otherwise the only way to be sure is to get a commercial DVD player software (your drive might even come with a license for cyberlink powerdvd, since a LOT of burners do).

yeah, I got an old cd of powerdvd 5 that came with the old Dell, but I get the impression that it is not compatible with 7. Would it be a waste of my time to install Windows Media Center? From looking at it I don't think I need a lot of Media Center's features. Then again, maybe I'll just try VLC again, which I also have on my XP laptop.

VLC - maybe not. web page says the x64 version is "experimental" -
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html

VLC works just fine. As does Windows Media Player...

PotPlayer (yes the name is funny) is pretty much THE premiere video player out there. It can handle pretty much any video format you throw at it without needing any external plugins or codecs. It's developed by the same guy who created The KMPlayer, which was also great until it was sold to some Korean media company and got bogged down with crap.

I'll second VLC (you can use the 32-bit version without any issues, if you're worried about the x64 version) and WMP.

If you end up needing Blu-ray playback, I can tell you that while I was doing some Blu-Ray authoring development last year, PowerDVD and Corel WinDVD were the two which worked best, by far. VLC's Blu-ray playback is still undergoing work, and the "free" players out there are usually crap.

i have Corel WinDVD 11 Pro + BluRay and 3D