How to play a DVD using an external drive on a Surface RT

dvdmicrosoft-surface

I have a Surface RT, I have an external DVD drive with a USB plug, and I have a DVD (actually, quite a few) that I want to watch on it.

  • I don't want to rip or convert the DVD into some other format that I can access from the Surface with a MicroSD or over the network.
  • I don't want to put the DVD in another machine on the network and "play to" the Surface

I don't know if either of those approaches would even work, I just think they are unworkable for being tucked up in bed or on the couch and wanting to watch a movie or part of a TV season by popping a DVD into a player. And I know they are unworkable if I'm traveling.

I've tried hooking up the drive and putting a disk in, but it doesn't offer to play it and I can't see any way to request it.

Best Answer

There's no DVD or Blu-Ray playback codecs/capabilities included with Windows 8 RT, and (currently) no add-on ones.

You'll need to rip and convert the DVD's to a format that is playable on the Surface (RT) tablet.

Surface RT inherently supports the following video formats for playback:

  • .avi
  • .mp4
  • .wmv
  • .asf

There are many utilities out there to do this.

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