Hi Everyone. This is my first post. Sure hope i can help someone out.
I had the same problem playing dvcpro content on a pc.
Finally i ended up buying the DECODER from one of the mentioned 3rd parties in this thread and all worked fine.
Just for the record. ONLY buy the ENCODER stuff if your final movie has to be converted to DVCPRO from another codec. It will save you around 100 bucks.
Looked for freeware or opensource around the net and could not find any.