I recently did a full rebuild of an old system for a client and
discovered a problem which showed up as an inability for
Media Player 9 to play commercial DVD movies.

The problem showed up as a "Security Failure", where
the error dialog box indicated that the movie would not
play due to a security violation.

After playing around with the loading-order of the three
programs affecting DVD operations on this machine
(PowerDVD 4XP, Windows Media Player 9 and Nero
Burning ROM 6) I discovered the following:

1. If Nero Burning ROM 6.3.1.25 was installed from the
   CD-ROM and then updated to 6.6.0.6 using the files
   at the Nero Website -- and then Power DVD 4XP was
   installed to allow playback of commercial DVD movies,
   then starting up Windows Media Player 9 to play the
   movie would show a security-violation dialog and the
   movie would not start.

2. If Nero Burning ROM 6.3.1.25 was installed from the
   CD-ROM and it was left *unpatched* -- and then Power
   DVD 4XP was installed to allow playback of commercial
   DVD movies -- starting up Windows Media Player 9 to
   play the movie would work properly and the movie
   would appear normally.

Things I discovered:

1. The problem occurs with both Windows Media Player 9
   and Windows Media Player 10.  Version is irrelevant.

2. The problem occurs with PowerDVD 3.0-series and
   Power DVD 4.0-series, Version is irrelevant.

3. The problem does not occur with Nero Burning ROM
   6.3.1.25 -- it *does* occur with Nero Burning ROM
   6.6.0.6 (latest update available from the Nero
   website).  Version is significant.

4. The problem does not occur with Roxio Easy Media
   Creator 7 -- either the 7.01 that came on the client's
   disk or the 7.1-update available from Roxio's auto-
   update procedure.

Others who are having "mysterious" problems with
unplayable movie files and/or unplayable music files
using Digital-Rights-Managed content may be having
a similar problem to the one mentioned above.  This
requires further investigation.

Best I can do for now. <tm>

Bill