Playing PAL and NTSC Before Burning

[IWishIWasBlank]

I'm running 98SE on this dinosaur. That may matter, may not. Question is:

Is there a way to watch NTSC and PAL DVD's from the hard drive without first burning them to a DVD? I was looking around the forums last night looking for this solution. Closest I could come was

1) Downloading a virtual DVD player
2) Burning the files to a virtual DVD Iso
3) Playing that ISO in Alcohol

Is this my only option? I mean, that's a lot of software and a lot of steps. This old girl (slug really) doesn't need additional software that I'm not going to use all that often. I thought I did a thorough search here in Technobabble but I'm not coming up with a solution.

Thanks

Oh... just thought of another method: Converting the files to MPEG or AVI (or whatever.) Don't want to do this because I don't like converting material, especially if it's lossy once you convert it.

(BTW I do intend to upgrade my system *AND* get a DVD burner. I don't want to stay in (what's now) the stone age forever.)

[E_rock]

Not sure about 98se compatibility but VLC media player will play just about everything. just drag and drop the VIDEO_TS folder.

[IWishIWasBlank]

I was looking at VLC and didn't see the specification that it would play PAL and NTSC.

[DanielG]

I was looking at VLC and didn't see the specification that it would play PAL and NTSC.

PAL and NTSC only relate to watching videos on a television. Computers can play anything and VLC will play any DVD regardless of its format.

[IWishIWasBlank]

Thanks Daniel. That's just the information I was looking for. So long as VLC works on Win98.

Here's what the official VLC site says in case any 95/98/ME users read this:

Windows 95/98/Me users: Please note that these versions of Windows are not officially supported. No VideoLAN developer uses any of these systems, which makes them hard to support. VLC should mostly work with them, but some incompatibilities might appear. You might need to download The Microsoft Layer for Unicode on Windows 95/98/Me Systems. The two MSLU files need to be put in the C:\Windows\System\ folder.

The link for the Microsoft Layer for Unicode:
http://www.microsoft.com.nsatc.net/globaldev/handson/dev/mslu_announce.mspx

[IWishIWasBlank]

I've also found today that you can't use the latest version of VLC on Windows 98. I downloaded

vlc-0.8.6h-win32.exe

which did NOT work.

I found an older version...

vlc-0.8.6d-win32.exe

which DID work.

I'm watching my Bob Marley PAL from Plaza del Toros Monumental, Barcelona Spain right now. Fantastico! Except for the Spaniard who keeps talking over Bob's mumbles. Stifle yourself buddy... I'm trying to listen to Bob here.