Setting DVD options for Videos in Windows Media Player 11

Invoke the options panel by right-clicking a blank area of the toolbar and hover the mouse cursor over Tools. Click Options, and the Media Player 11 options sheet appears.

To see the DVD options, click the DVD tab. The window in Figure 1 appears.

FIGURE 1: DVD options



The top of the window shows your current DVD playback restriction level. Restrictions are a form of parental controls, which limit users of the computer from watching DVDs higher than a certain rating. If you click the Change button, a screen like the one shown in Figure 2 appears, with a dialog box in the middle of the screen that permits you to change the restriction.

FIGURE 2: The Windows desktop with the Change Rating Restriction dialog box invoked



If you select a rating—for example, PG-13—affected user accounts won’t be able to play DVDs higher than that rating. So, for example, if you were to select PG-13, the user accounts subjected to that rating would be able to play PG-13 movies, but not movies rated R, NC-17, or unrated movies.

The next option on the DVD tab allows you to set the language defaults for DVD audio, subtitles, and the DVD menu system. Click the Defaults button to invoke the dialog box.

You can pull down each of the menus to select a language for that aspect of the DVD. For instance, if you pull down the Audio language button, you will see part of a huge, scrolling menu of languages.