I have a .dat file that cannot play using media player but after convert it to mpg , it plays properly. Why?

-- Chen (chen_sw@hotmail.com), October 11, 1999

Answers

Chen

I assume your talking Windows Media Player & not the old Media player that has been around for a long long time. My version of WMP is 6.4.05.0809

Also I assume the .dat file is a vcd file?????????

WMP does not show .dat as a playable media file, have you tried "all files" and then selecting the .dat file?

Interesting also that WMP uses different extensions for mpeg2 to some other programs I use - Cyberlink PowerPlayer for example. I have my LSX set to give the extension for the cyberlink program so I have to use "all files" to play mpeg2 in WMP. Be nice if there were standards that people complied with!

I have the LSX Player plugin for WMP installed so I am not sure if that allows more to be played than a standard version of WMP.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), October 12, 1999.

I do know that you can use MS Media Player 6.4 to read the .dat but I do have some original VCD that Ms Media will give filter errors and It will not work until I convert it ti MPEG format.

you can donload the dat2Mpeg from http://www.sonic.net/~alan/vcd/utils/dat2mpg.zip

Even if you copied into your harddisk and rename it to MPG. it will not work, unless I use the above software to conver.

I still don't understand what is the difference between .dat and Mpeg files and why Ms Media Player, Quicktime and certain software will not work.

So far I tested VCD powerPlayer and Xingmpeg, it works on all VCD but not Media Player. Does anyone know why?

-- chen (chen_sw@hotmail.com), October 13, 1999.

It seems you have not properly installed either the O/S or Media player download the latest WMP 7.0 from microsoft website (serach for "windows media player") and select view-> options ->file formats and select all file formats this may help u play .dat files.

If nothing works better u reinstall O/S. Thanx

-- Ravi (xtreme_007@mailcity.com), December 01, 2000.

Caution with Windows Media Player 7.0. It now has spyware on board like RealPlayer does. It also takes LONGER to load and is harder to view the detailed file info of the file you are playing. IE bitrate, etc.

-- The Big O' (big-o-biscuts@alabama.net), December 02, 2000.