I don't like messing with DVDs and their cases when I want to watch a movie, so I went and bought a 250 GB Maxtor OneTouch 4 external hard drive. Over the next few days, I plan to rip my DVD collection to it so I can watch them on Windows Media Center via my Xbox 360. As a test, I ripped "Leon The Professional" to my new drive and attempted to play it in WMC.

The movie showed up in my DVD Library just fine.

However, when trying to play it, I got the following message:

DVD Error:
Windows Media Center cannot play this DVD. Please Restart Windows Media Center and insert the DVD again.

To troubleshoot, I attempted to play one of the VOB files in Windows Media Player. However, I was met with this:

Windows Media Player cannot play the DVD because the disc prohibits playback in your region of the world. You must obtain a disc that is intended for your geographic region.

That's odd. It was ripped from an NTSC disk, so I should be able to play it. The solution?

Well, it's not very obvious. First, I removed the drive from my list of watched folders. Then, I shared the external hard drive to the network. I then re-added the drive to WMC, but this time, I referenced it on the network instead of on my local computer, like this:

Viola! "Leon The Professional" plays perfectly now!