What codec pack do you guys recommend?

[charleski]

As an experiment, I installed ffdshow and PowerDVD 7, then tried to play a Divx avi in PowerDVD -> CPU usage of 80% on an E6600 running at 3.2GHz!

The same file plays fine using ffdshow in zoomplayer or bsplayer, and PowerDVD plays it fine using the built-in AVI decompressor if I disable Divx in the ffdshow codec page. The problem probably lies with PowerDVD, but this shouldn't be happening at all in the supposedly improved AV environment of Vista.

I agree, VLC is an excellent player, pity it's written in an obscure dialect of Pascal.

[this_is_gav]

I got PowerDVD 7 yesterday, installed it, ran it (to enter my serial number), and the thing locked up. Marvellous. It seems to be getting rather poor, slow (at loading) and dare I say bloated.

Fact is they still make a cracking MPEG2 decoder though, so I install it for that, then use WMP or MCE2005.

Oh, and yeah, as with the concensus, codec packs are the work of Satan's less talented younger brother.

[leeglf]

i have been using FFDShow and Media Player Classic for a while now and have never had any probs

[BeoWulf]

Codec packs are evil, avoid them like the plague.