Maybe there is a hardware accelerated version for your graphics card, like ATI.

cyberlink and intervideo had good software dvd players.. but i don't know if there is a win95 version

I have an AGP GeForce 256 in my system. I have other cards available, but I've had bad luck with drivers for ATI cards.

Try K-Lite 3.45. I saw swaaye recommending it for K6-III CPUs in an older thread, seems to be a sweet solution!

Intervideo WinDVD was the first to software decode DVD at an acceptable playback rate... I think. Unsure what the min spec would be for early version, however win95 isn't really DVD era, more win98. You may need a decoder card (e.g Creative PC-DVD dxr3), I needed one in 1998 but can't remember my actual spec at the time. Certainly about 2000 with a P3/800 I could use WinDVD with no problems without hardware decoder iirc.

My lowest specs were a Pentium II @333 with 128 megs, Windows 98 and GeeXboX.

I guess that anything below this would need a DVD accelerator card.

Yeah, that sounds about right. PII 450 should be enough, PIII 450 is even better thanks to SSE, which really helps AFAIR.

VLC 0.8.4a
Windows Media Player 7 (Unofficial) MP7195NT.exe

I remember using a Sigma Designs Hollywood+ mpeg2 decoder card back in the day when I had a Celeron 300A (overclocked to 450) with Win98. Software decoders had stuttering with some DVDs in non-hardware-accelerated mode even with the overclocked CPU. But who knows, maybe later they came up with better optimization for the software decoders, so try some late software players that run on Win95. Sorry I can't come up with names of software right now. It's been so long.

(I used that card until I had money to upgrade to an AthlonXP a few years later. Never tried any of the later software decoders because I couldn't afford to buy them anyway, I was a poor college student. The card itself I got cheap on an upstart website called ebay 😀 it was one of my first purchases there; still have the card)

Zoran SoftDVD. Not sure if it works for Win95 though.

Zup wrote:

My lowest specs were a Pentium II @333 with 128 megs, Windows 98 and GeeXboX.

GeeXboX was excellent for playing DVDs on those old machines, yes. Unfortunately it seems to have changed substantially in recent years. Movix2 was pretty great as well, but its development halted entirely.

But regarding Windows 95, http://toastytech.com/guis/miscb.html recommends VLC 0.8.6d or an old version of WinDVD.

computergeek92 wrote:

I am looking for several lightweight DVD softwares for my Pentium II 450 with 128MB ram. I test installed Win2k on it before and used VLC without trouble but I need something for Win95. It would be sweet if there is one to work on slower computers such as the Pentium 133... They had to have good software back then. I remember seeing Pentium 1 Toshiba laptops with DVD drives.

Thanks.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 4.0 will work fine on a Pentium II 450 provided you can boost the RAM to more than 192 Mb (it needs 194 Mb RAM free to run properly without a hardware decoder). Heck, it runs fine on my 266 MHz system (320Mb RAM) with no hardware decoder. However, I've not tried to run it on Windows 95, only 98se.

I'd suggest Cinemaster 99 after my experimentation with the different options awhile back. But I'm not sure what works in Win95.

KLite 3.45 is indeed a great option for 98SE. It includes a Cyberlink PowerDVD decoder with DXVA support, and Media Player Classic is lightweight.

GeForce 256 and Pentium II 450 should be sufficient. GeForce doesn't do much of the decoding process though. No iDCT support.

swaaye wrote:

I'd suggest Cinemaster 99 after my experimentation with the different options awhile back. But I'm not sure what works in Win95.

KLite 3.45 is indeed a great option for 98SE. It includes a Cyberlink PowerDVD decoder with DXVA support, and Media Player Classic is lightweight.

GeForce 256 and Pentium II 450 should be sufficient. GeForce doesn't do much of the decoding process though. No iDCT support.

You're right, swaaye about the Geforce 256. I heard it was fast for games rather than DVD processing. ATI was the best choice. Very popular on the Macs. What is DXVA and iDCT? I tried a trial version of PowerDVD 1.5 from 1998 and it worked good but for some reason while watching a DVD, the audio track would stop playing after about 2 minutes. Software bug or something else perhaps. I dunno. But I ordered a brand new copy of WinDVD 2000 from Ebay complete with a product key for just 3 bucks combining shipping. Too bad the old trial versions on the internet you can download may not be able to be registered anymore with the company, as to buy a license. Which is a better player in general, WinDVD or PowerDVD?

F2bnp wrote:

Try K-Lite 3.45. I saw swaaye recommending it for K6-III CPUs in an older thread, seems to be a sweet solution!

Thanks friend! I'll take a peek at it when I come back from my trip.

Jorpho wrote:

Zup wrote:

GeeXboX was excellent for playing DVDs on those old machines, yes. Unfortunately it seems to have changed substantially in recent years. Movix2 was pretty great as well, but its development halted entirely.

But regarding Windows 95, http://toastytech.com/guis/miscb.html recommends VLC 0.8.6d or an old version of WinDVD.

Yes, GeeXboX has grown heavier and heavier... I'd recommend using 0.9x or 1.x versions, so it will be light enough to run in slow machines.

And yes, GeeXboX is a linux distribution that runs from CD. It doesn't run on Windows 95, but you can skip Windows 95 desktop and get more resources for playing media. GeeXboX don't need installation, and after loading it ejects the CD so you can put your DVD on the optical drive.

DosFreak wrote:

VLC 0.8.4a
Windows Media Player 7 (Unofficial) MP7195NT.exe

I thought Windows Media Player always needed a downloadable DVD plugin. I think WMP9 for 98-XP required you to buy their plugin if you wanted to watch DVDs on it.

Zup wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

Zup wrote:

GeeXboX was excellent for playing DVDs on those old machines, yes. Unfortunately it seems to have changed substantially in recent years. Movix2 was pretty great as well, but its development halted entirely.

But regarding Windows 95, http://toastytech.com/guis/miscb.html recommends VLC 0.8.6d or an old version of WinDVD.

Yes, GeeXboX has grown heavier and heavier... I'd recommend using 0.9x or 1.x versions, so it will be light enough to run in slow machines.

And yes, GeeXboX is a linux distribution that runs from CD. It doesn't run on Windows 95, but you can skip Windows 95 desktop and get more resources for playing media. GeeXboX don't need installation, and after loading it ejects the CD so you can put your DVD on the optical drive.

Well that's convenient. 😀 You can just boot it from the CD whenever you want to play a DVD. But I think it's rediculous that they choose to make GeeXboX heavier. There's no reason to do that. You can still find modern software so lightweight that can still fit on a floppy, like VLC player.

computergeek92 wrote:

DosFreak wrote:

VLC 0.8.4a
Windows Media Player 7 (Unofficial) MP7195NT.exe

I thought Windows Media Player always needed a downloadable DVD plugin. I think WMP9 for 98-XP required you to buy their plugin if you wanted to watch DVDs on it.

I've never, ever had that requirement.

I can confirm that Windows Media Player for Windows 98 mentions DVD playback in the help files, but it can't actually play back DVDs. Never managed to get it to work.