Fusion and Vista on a Mac - DVD playing on the windows side
I haven't seen much discussion on this elsewhere and my posting on one forum didn't get much of a response so perhaps it is only an issue to me or perhaps no one has a concern about this.
I can't play DVDs while running in Windows (XP and/or Vista) under Fusion on either a MacBook Pro or MacBook.
Mac Information
MacBook Pro 17-inch 2.5Ghz, 4GB RAM, 512 Mb VRAM GeForce 8600M GT, have tried one and two processors running,
Assigned 1.79Gb of RAM to windows
Device Manager
Driver Provider VMWare
Date 10/29/2007
Driver Version: 1.6.0.4
MacBook 12-inch 2.0Ghz 2GB RAM, 64 Mb VRAM GMA 950
Fusion 1.1.3
Windows Vista on the MacBook Pro
Windows XP (with all updates) on the MacBook
When a DVD is inserted Windows Media Center starts up and then the following alert window appears
VIDEO ERROR
Files needed to display video are not installed or not working correctly. Please restart Windows Media Center or restart the computer.
Then I quit windows and quit Fusion and the movie is launched automatically in Mac OS X so i know the DVD player works (on the Mac side).
I have read that some persons have downloaded the latest drivers from NVIDIA but I don't see how that does anything because isn't the control VMWare which as shown above provides the driver which isn't reflective of what graphics card or capability you have in your Mac. But I see in various readings that it is a virtual video card of 64Mb which is what my MacBook has so why doesn't a DVD play in windows????
Some have said there is no virtual or real decoder for the DVD Player (on the windows side) and that needs to be installed. Can one be installed? Which one?
Granted perhaps I shouldn't worry about running the DVD in windows but there are enhanced DVDs which only run in Windows, and perhaps there are other programs that won't run since it only has 64Mb of VRAM and why shouldn't I be able to do it?
I have installed AutoCAD and while I haven't given it any major push at this point just simple 2-D stuff, it works fine on XP and Windows in Fusion on both Macs... with only the 64Mb of virtual VRAM. Will this be a problem when a big file is handled? Will it handle 3-D drawings (I have seen some demo showing it does but now I wonder)
What am I doing wrong? or what can be done? I hate to think that this is all the video performance you can get out of Fusion. I see the YouTube video with windows games being played so how is that done with only 64Mb of virtual VRAM?
I know you guys will have plenty of answers and solutions.
Thanks
AI
