I have my portable dvd player connected to my laptop. How can I play the dvd?

I am wondering how you managed to connect a dvd player to your laptop and why you don't play the dvd using the drive most laptops are equipped with?

In my experience the average dvd player provides an analogue output via a scart socket, sometimes via a variety of phono or composite video outputs and perhaps a digital output via hdmi, none of which feature on the average laptop.

You might have "connected" the dvd player to your laptop using an adaptor or adaptor lead but it isn't really connected until it is recognised by the laptop and the device appears in the device list of My Computer and even then you probably won't be able to use it until appropriate software has been installed.