Playing a DVD on Windows XP

Recently, my gf and I watched A Room to Rent on my fathers laptop. While watching the movie, the laptop did the following stupid things:

1. Start a previously unknown program to play the dvd, that apparently had no way to make it go full screen. This means that there are 4 programs on my fathers machine that can play a DVD, and all of them cannot even get close to Totem for ease of use.
   
2. Turn on the screensaver
   
3. Go into hibernation
   
4. Shutdown due to no battery life, with absolutely no warning. No beeps, no interrupting the movie, nothing.
   

Not impressed.

But my machine now boots again, so I am back to being useful.