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Codec Packs is probably what your friend was referring to. These aren’t really recommended. One such pack is Nimo. Nimo in particular can mess with all sorts of things in a system since it installs unnecessary things and when uninstalled, it’ll uninstall necessary things. It has been the cause of many a - reformat.

This is what I use:

FFDShow-Alpha
(http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=53761&package_id=59355)

- DirectShow decoder filter which supports older XviD and DivX encoded files.
- It can safely be installed on a system at the same time that the XviD and DivX codecs are installed.
- Can be configured to be used or not used to playback DivX etc

XviD 1.0 RC3 (by Koepi)
(http://www.roeder.goe.net/~koepi/xvid.shtml)

- For files that have been encoded with the latest version of XviD codec. Early versions of the XviD codec cannot correctly playback files encoded with the latest version of the XviD codec.

If you don’t want to install any codecs at all, try using VLC (VideoLAN Client):
www.videolan.org

It uses DirectShow to play files (much like FFDShow uses DirectShow), but has everything builtin to a single media player.

For playback of Real or Quicktime format try:

Real Alternative
(http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm)

Quicktime Alternative
(http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm)

Both are small packages which come with the required codecs as well as a media player called MPC (Media Player Classic). MPC is what’s used to watch the Real Media or Quicktime files.

MPC also supports many other formats.

All files are free.

Hi folks,

Not sure if this is true or not, but someone I work with was talking about somewhere where you could download all of the most popular codecs for free in a bunch. This sounds cool, as it I could just dump all the popular ones on my system then presumably I could play movies without too much hassle.

Does this ring any bells to anyone? Also, for want of Microsoft writing a proper O/S, I’m still on Windows 98. If this download exists, do you think it would be compatible?

Cheers,

Simon