Since Win 8 does not have DVD playback support I was forced to seek other options after upgrading my older 2005 laptop from XP. I first tried VLC after reading so many positive reports about it. I found it to have very choppy performance in playing DVD’s. I then decided to install an old favorite, MPC-HC (Media Player Classic - Home Cinema). It played my discs flawlessly. The best option, however, turned out to be HP MediaSmart DVD. It works perfectly and automatically starts playing the movie when the disc is inserted. I don’t know if it can be used on computers that weren’t made by HP but I think it can. Just a heads up for others looking for a free option to play their discs in Windows 8.
VLC Player works perfectly fine here on Windows 8, the only time I ever noticed choppy playback was after enabling the " use GPU accelerated decoding " in the inputs and codecs settings.
It should be unticked by default.