Trouble Playing Movie

I am trying to play my X-Men dvd and it won't play saying that Direct Show is not installed.....what is that and where can I get it? :?

[BSPeter]

http://forum.bsplayer.org/viewtopic.php?p=4676#4676

[Evelyn]

sorry if this sounds like a dumb question but do I download all those codecs? Which one is direct show?

[Quietseb]

is "directshow is not installed" the exact message ? or more like "a directshow codec is needed" ?

in order to play a dvd you would need an mpeg2 codec (or at least a decoder) as adicoto suggests in the thread pointed by BSPeter. The Elecard decoder suggested by adicoto is a DirectShow filter. (you only need that one from adicoto's list, no need to download every codec in his list)

DirectShow in itself is not a codec, it is an (I may not be completely exact here) architecture, a thing that manages filters so they can work together.
Each directShow filter has inputs and outputs; directShow decides what filter should be used where and how the inputs/outputs of the filters are connected.
There is a tool called graphedit with which you can see it in detail (and even tell directShow how to behave)

As far as I know DirectShow is part of windows; if your DirectShow is broken you can try to reinstall directX from microsoft.com but I doubt this is the case

hope my paragraphs are readable
;)