Oh the message is showing now...
hardware acceleration for video, not necessarily for DVD.
ah confusion of terms.....yes I do remember years ago Mpc did take advantage on one machine of mpeg2 decoding on the vid card on 98. If not available Vlc can do half resolution playback which was a good workaround for slow machines and DVD.
Mpc is basically a directX player that fills in the missing links. For Dvd it used in my case the Dvd decoder included with Nero burning rom which was nice and fast. Vlc does include its own based on ffmpeg and libcss.
Another player that includes one is Cyberlink which could be used by other players.
Thanks for the memory jog
Mike